HAWKING HYDRO

NAFA 2009 and other things

2009-11-29T20:49:00.000-08:00

Well its been a rough week for us. The NAFA meet was a blast and we finally took our first head of game. Three head actually, 2 cottontails and a pigeon. The glory of it all was Scotch took his rabbits from a soar both times. The second one was less flashy, but he still had some heigth on him!

Heres a video that Eric Edwards shot of the first rabbit. I was trying hard to pull Scotch in close because he had apparently not seen the last rabbit we kicked up. He definetely saw this one!

More details to come when Im not so tired!

2009-11-19T16:59:00.000-08:00

More good times today. Walter did a little trapping and caught a really nice harlans that we photographed before releasing. He was very tiny and I was actually surprised that he weighed 32 ounces! There are lots of interesting birds in the area this time of year and raptors seem to be coming out of the wood work lately, today alone I saw three prairie falcons.

Anyway, I took Fat Scotch (as I call him on days like today) out to a new field I've been eyeballing for the last week. Im sure there are plenty of rabbits there, but there is way too much junk to successfuly hawk it. So we went to a local industrial area on the edge of weatherford were I failed to obtain permission on one spot and discovered that another promising field had been bulldozed just this week! Its getting a little frustrating finding new fields lately.

Ended up at a friends place that usually has rabbits in his back yard. In fact Rob took a CT with his gos there last weekend when he came down to visit. Scotch was not pleased by the presence of Seth's beagle, otherwise I think we would have bagged one of the several bunnies we chased. He hit a barbed wire fence on one stoop out of a large tree but it didnt seem to bother him. He ended up blowing out after about thirty minutes and landed in a wind row about a quarter mile out. He was heavy, it was hot and windy and there was a strange dog, so I decided to call it a day and I lured him back. He came instantly and we were on our way home.

Today I ran the numbers one last time and decided I simply cant afford to attend the NAFA meet this year. Im very upset about it, but theres really not much I can do about it. So I will be making the best of things here and try to get a kill under my belt with Scotch. Squirrel hawking is going to be difficult once deer season kicks off this weekend, so Im really going to have to focus on finding some new rabbit fields with less cover if I plan to have any luck!

Some pics of the harlans that Walt trapped.

The Trapping Story

2009-11-18T12:21:00.000-08:00

Scotch is the product of a wild hair : ). I headed out one afternoon on a mission to trap a passage male redtail, and it was gonna be a lone wolf, smash and grab, no bullshit trapping expedition. When I trap alone, I am very particular and I will drive past a dozen immature birds looking for one that "looks right". This afternoon was no exeption but I only had to pass up a half dozen birds that either looked to big, or werent in ideal trapping situations before I stumbled upon Scotch.

He was on the corner of a paved three way intersection on some lake front property that divided a golf course and a motocross track. There were dirt bikes and quads noisily making rounds under him, and a steady string of traffic along the main road. Scotch seemed completely oblivious to all the comotion and payed no attention to me as I nearly stopped underneath him with my head hanging out the window admiring his coloration and overall steadiness. So I decided to throw the trap and proceed down the road to turn around and watch.

My trap is a dome shaped BC with heavy black nooses and a wood/metal base. Its very compact and very effective. The bait was two gerbils, Savory & Delicious as Ryan dubbed them! Anyway, I was no more than a hundred feet down the road when he left his perch and committed to the trap! But at that same moment I noticed a hag female headed in from the other direction. The two birds saw each other and pulled up to land on the same pole above the trap. But the female drove Scotch away and he went back to his original pole. After moving the trap closer to him and scaring away the hag, Scotch was on the trap and in my hands in no time.

I was immediately attached to him. He has an interesting personality and he is a very odd color for a passage bird! Its hard to describe him but he gets a lot of compliments from the folks that see him. He was trapped at 37 oz. with a small crop. He was vary wild, and would barely stand on the glove the first couple of days. But I will save the training details for another chapter! So anyway, thats the story of how I trapped Scotch!