"free" falconry!!!
Three of us got out on Fri/Dec 18th & WOW were the little devils starting to get awful cagey-&-crafty at this point of the season!!! They were blowing out the sides and ends even as we stuck a silent toe into the front-edge of the grass and weeds!
Still managed to scratch out some birds, but had to work our butts off for every single one! The day was warm & sunny with a lot of wind - & what a difference/contrast from the snowy, sub-zero "duck shoot" with easy limits for all only a week before! Key word of the day was "DISPERSED" - with all those bunched-up birds from the week before scattered to the wind...
Best moment of the day--watching a pair of hawks double-teaming on birds, chasing them from a cut-corn field into some nearby long wheat stubble - one of them buzzed high-speed at ground-level like an F-16 & put the hens and roosters to flight, while the other one hovered high above for the kill-shot dive, and then they traded places back-n-forth - it was quite an impressive sight to see!
But it gets even better...After our watching the show for several minutes, with all of the birds somehow managing to fly away completely unscathed, the hawks finally pinned a rooster & had him hunkered down in the wheat a couple hundred yards away from us - that's when I decided to make a move! Since we had a newbie with us trying to get his first bird, I asked him "Wanna see if we can get that rooster while the hawks have him pinned down?" - which was followed immediately by "Yeah" & "Well, let's move quick then"! Since I wanted him to get the bird, I almost didn't even take a gun along - but opted at the last second to take one dog along and grabbed the over-&-under with only the two shells in the chambers...
As we neared where the rooster was & the dog got really birdy, that's when all hell broke loose!!!...Up went the rooster & a couple of hens, and down came the rooster really hard in a crumpled heap!
After the shot and retrieve, the dog was birdier than ever & so we continued following him thru the wheat rows all the way to the narrow point at the end of the corner...Initially looking for what we had assumed was one lone rooster, we wound up flushing at least 15 birds (4-5 of them roosters) & all of them held tight-as-a-drum like quail right underneath our feet out in the middle of what normally should have been very "runner"-prone wheat rows! We came away with not just one, but two roosters! It was almost like a planned combo of "for-free" falconry & good dog work all rolled into one!!!
Knowing the drill fairly well now & having already done this very same song-&-dance a couple of times before with one hawk and a lone rooster involved - HAWKS ARE NOW MY NEW BEST FRIENDS!!! :cheers: