Game-Hawking
Partridges, pheasants, and other game birds may be killed with
several kinds of hawks. In ancient times it seems that the former
were taken in England with the jerkin, or male ger, and occasionally
with the gerfalcon,--though this was mostly reserved for much bigger
quarry,--with the peregrine falcon and tiercel, the lanner and
lanneret, the barbary falcon and tiercel, the male goshawk, the female
sparrow-hawk, and sometimes even the tiny merlin and almost equally
diminutive hobby. In our times most of these varieties have been almost
disused for the flight at game birds, for various reasons, the chief
of which is that peregrines are found to be more useful at it than the
other sorts. It is true that goshawks have been flown quite lately both
at partridges and pheasants, and with some success; and it will be seen
in treating of the sparrow-hawk that she has also done some execution
amongst the denizens of the swedes and stubbles. Even merlins have been
found occasionally to take a young partridge in September. But goshawks
and sparrow-hawks are seldom speedy enough to catch many full-grown
partridges, unless they can be approached nearer than is usually the
case nowadays. Probably not more than one merlin in fifty could be
induced to fly partridges with any zest; and not one in a hundred could
hold a full-grown one on the ground without great difficulty and risk
to the tail feathers. And, as merlins will not wait on, the flight with
them at partridges, if it were to be accomplished, would lack the chief
attraction of game-hawking, and not be much worth seeing. The lanner
and the barbary, as well as the ger-tiercel, would still certainly
show good sport with game; so would the two kinds of shaheen, and very
possibly the saker. But the supply of these hawks is extremely limited;
and the climate of England does not suit them so well as the peregrine.
Moreover, the mode of training and flying them does not materially
differ from that of the commoner and hardier bird. It may be assumed,
therefore, for the purposes of the chapter, that game-hawking means,
what falconers generally understand by it, the flight with peregrines
at grouse, black-game, or partridges. Pheasants, snipe, hares, and
woodcocks will be dealt with in another chapter.
Grouse and black-game hawking differ in no important particular from
partridge-hawking; and, generally speaking, what is to be said about
the latter may be said with equal truth of the other two. It should be
mentioned, however, that falcons, from their superior strength, are
much to be preferred for the flight at the bigger quarry. Although
there have been cases where tiercels have done well at grouse,
these are exceptional. Usually they are averse to tackling so heavy
a quarry, and, of course, still more reluctant to take the field
against blackcock. They are, however, perfectly equal to the flight at
partridges. Some falconers have even professed to prefer them for this
flight to their sisters. This, however, was not the view taken in the
classic age of falconry; and if a fair comparison is made the falcon
will be found to be at least as good for the stubble-fields, while
vastly superior on the moors. Here again the method of training and
working, whether the one sex or the other is used, is identically the
same.
In game-hawking, the eyess is much more on even terms with the passager
than in the flight out of the hood at rooks and larger quarry. In fact,
some of the very best and deadliest grouse-hawks in modern times have
come from the nest to the falconer's hands. The records of the Old
Hawking Club show a quite exceptionally brilliant score made by one of
their eyesses, Parachute, who took no less than fifty-seven grouse in
one season, heading the list of that year's performances on the Club
moor. In the same year, 1882, Vesta, an eyess of her first season,
killed as many as forty-three grouse. Yet it must not be inferred from
this that every nestling is as likely to kill grouse or partridges
as well as a passage hawk. It is rarely that the latter does not fly
at least creditably, when trained, whereas with eyesses the general
rule is rather the other way. A really first-rate performer is amongst
eyesses the exception, however well they have been hacked and trained.
On the other hand, the making of the eyess to this flight is beset by
few of the difficulties which trouble him who would train a wild-caught
hawk to it. It has been said already that a passage hawk, waiting on at
any height, must naturally be more apt to check at passing birds than
an eyess. The latter has been, or ought to have been, reserved, from
her youth up, for the one flight for which she was specially destined
by her owner; whereas the other, from her youth up, until captured, has
been accustomed to fly at whatever happened to be most ready to hand.
There is, too, generally a special reason why the passage hawk should
be apt, when expected to wait on for game, to check at any rook which
may be in sight. As a rule she has come into the trainer's hands in the
late autumn, has been deliberately entered by him at rooks in early
spring, and has flown them with his entire approbation for some weeks.
No wonder, then, that if on the twelfth of August a rook comes past she
should think it her duty to go for him.
Let us, however, speak of the eyess first, and we can see afterwards
what modifications are to be made in the case of the older hawk. When
your pupil will come well to the lure do not keep her long, if at all,
at work in stooping at it. On the contrary, let the interval between
the time when she is thrown off and the time when she is invited to
come down on the lure be as long as possible. Keep her on the wing
as long as you dare. But you must not at first go too far in this
direction. If you wear out her patience she may go to perch, either
on the ground or perhaps in a tree half a mile away. Take her down,
therefore, if you can, before she is too much tired. But if you should
make a mistake, and the inapt pupil goes to perch, do not hurry after
her, unless there is any special reason for doing so. Stay where you
are if she is well in sight; or, if not, move to a spot where she can
easily see you, and do not have the air of pursuing her. Make her
understand that, in this case, it is she who must come to you, and not
you to her. When she finds after a long sojourn in the tree or on the
ground, that after all, she has either to trouble herself to come or
else go without her food, she will be less likely to be troublesome
next time. She will think to herself, "What was the use of all that
delay? I might as well have kept on the wing and had my dinner sooner."
Such reflections are very salutary. You do not want to be beat by your
pupil, but your pupil to be beat by you, and to learn that your way
of doing things is the best both for her and for you. She will learn
it, too, if you go the right way to work and persevere. With an eyess
you have the whip hand. She cannot easily feed herself without you;
and she knows it. For weeks she has been indebted to you, directly or
indirectly, for her daily rations. Even in her wildest days at the
end of hack, when she would let no one come near her, she was often
watching you with eager eyes as you put out her meat on the hack
board, and since that, have you not always either given her her food on
the lure, or at all events taken her to a place where she could fly and
kill a quarry which you had put up for her?
Have patience with her, therefore, and induce her by slow degrees to go
up higher and higher. You must use all imaginable devices to accomplish
this main object. Try to make her understand that the higher she goes
the more chance there is of your producing the lure. Thus, suppose she
has made three or four circles without going more than forty feet high,
and in the next goes to fifty or sixty feet, bring out the lure and
let her have it. Here is another device. Two men go out, each having
a lure. One stands on higher ground than the other. Then call off the
hawk alternately, each man showing his lure in turn, and hiding it as
the hawk comes up. But let the man on the upper ground never indulge
her with any success. When she is gratified let it be when she comes
from above. She is not unlikely to associate the idea of success with
that of toiling upwards and then coming more swiftly down. This is,
moreover, a view of the matter to which the minds of all hawks are
naturally prone. The flesh is weak, particularly in eyesses, but the
spirit knows that the proper way to earn a living is to mount and then
stoop down.
It is not good to defer needlessly the moment when you give your hawk
a flight. Flights at quarry, even if it is bagged quarry only, almost
always improve the mounting of a hawk. Why? Because first nature and
then experience teaches her that from a height she has more chance
of catching a live bird. It is not a bad plan, if your hawk mounts
badly, to start for her (from a place of concealment, of course) a fast
house-pigeon at a distance of five or six hundred yards up-wind from
a thick covert. She will have plenty of time to make a stoop or two
in the open. But she will almost certainly fail, and the pigeon will
get off easily into shelter. Then if your hawk comes back to you at a
good height, give her a much worse pigeon, which she will have a good
chance of taking. If she comes back low, take her down to the lure, and
save the second pigeon. The next day you may take out two pigeons--a
good and a bad. If your hawk mounts better give the bad pigeon; and if
not, give her again the one which she will not be able to catch. These
are not infallible methods; but they may succeed, and they are worth
trying, when a hawk is averse to mounting naturally. In the lone hours
of darkness, when her hood is on, such a hawk may fight her battles
over again, and inquire seriously of herself what was the cause of her
ill-success. And, reflecting on the experiences of hack, she may very
likely conclude that she could have done better if she had started in
pursuit from higher in the air.
The old falconers had a device which is not often adopted now, but
which seems to have been effectual, at least, in some cases. They
"seeled" (see Chap. V.) the bagged quarry,--usually a duck or a
pigeon,--and the effect was that, when so blindfolded and let loose, it
flew upwards, like a towering partridge, avoiding the risk of striking
against obstacles which it could not see. The hawk flown at such quarry
was naturally induced to keep high when waiting on. The objection to
any such flight is that the quarry has not a fair chance of shifting
from the stoop when it comes.
The giving of bagged quarry is not a thing to be encouraged or
continued for any length of time. Bagged game never fly well, seldom
passably even; and they demoralise a hawk. Bagged house-pigeons fly
admirably; but then they are not the quarry you want your hawk to
pursue. On the contrary, you are particularly anxious that as your
hawk is waiting on for a covey to be put up she shall not start off in
pursuit of a chance pigeon. Be very stingy, therefore, with your bagged
pigeons; and if you give any at all, leave off directly your hawk has
begun to mount at all decently.
Eyesses of all kinds are often given to raking away, _i.e._ wandering
away from the falconer to inordinate distances, when they ought to be
waiting on nearly over his head. And these aberrations are generally in
a down-wind direction. It is fortunate, therefore, that in game-hawking
the quarry is usually put up by walking down-wind. Otherwise many
young hawks would have little chance of coming up with them. For it
is a curious thing that, as compared with game birds, the speed of a
peregrine is greater when going down-wind, whereas in rook-hawking she
gains more rapidly when both are flying up-wind. On the troublesome
habit of raking away, some observations will be found in the chapter
on "Vices." Practice is usually the best remedy. A hawk generally has
gumption enough to see that by constantly waiting on down-wind she
puts herself at a great disadvantage for killing her bird if it goes
up-wind; and when she has come to understand that the bird is going to
be put up by you, and not accidentally, she will begin to place herself
willingly in such a position over you as to be ready for the stoop when
the birds are flushed. "Why-loe!"--a cry with a rather Chinese sound
about it--was the shout used for calling in a raking hawk. Of course,
while flying her at the lure you may do something towards habituating
your eyess to keep up-wind, by rewarding her when she stoops from
there, and not from the other side. So also, in actual flying, keep
still, and let the game lie, while she is wide; and move on when she is
in her proper place. If she can get a kill or two from a pitch over the
falconer's head it will be better for her than any number of kills made
when she was waiting on wide.
The glory of a falconer who goes in for game-hawking is "a falcon
towering in her pride of place"; and her "place" is some hundreds
of yards above her master's head. A high pitch is the beauty of a
game-hawk. It is what enables her to kill, and to kill well. The best
game-hawks go up until they look quite small in the sky. A thousand
feet is often attained. When a peregrine is as high as this, it matters
comparatively little whereabouts the game gets up. She can come down
upon them nearly as easily at an angle of 70° or 80°, as at an angle
of 90°. Sometimes even more easily. The time occupied in coming down
is a mere nothing compared with the time which would be occupied in
flying along the level to the same spot. When once, therefore, you see
your hawk at a good pitch, use every effort to get up the game. When
she sees the men running she will very likely be all the more ready to
keep in a good place. After a week or two's practice she will know well
enough what the whole show means, and will play her part in it _con
amore_.
If your hawk will not mount properly, but potters about in a useless
way at a mean height, you may try other plans. You may call her off
half a mile or so from the lee side of an open moor, and, as she comes
across it up-wind, let beaters from each side try to drive grouse
inwards towards her line of flight. If you can once enable her to take
a grouse there are hopes of her yet. You may even fly her from the
fist at a grouse if you can get near enough to one to make it at all
likely that she will catch it. I have seen this done with a backward
young falcon, which would not wait on. There ensued a stern chase all
along the ground for at least half a mile, both birds flying at almost
exactly the same pace. The sight was ridiculous enough; but in the end
the falcon managed to catch the grouse, and was allowed to take her
pleasure on it. The success, small as it was, saved the hawk at anyrate
from being disgusted with grouse-hawking, as she would otherwise
very soon have been. It is wonderful what good is done to a young
hawk by catching a difficult quarry by her own unaided efforts. The
encouragement she derives from it is occasionally so great that she
seems suddenly to develop her latent powers beyond all expectation.
You must not, however, expect that every young falcon will be a good
grouse-hawk. Indeed, you must not expect many to be so. The quarry is a
difficult one, and until you have trained a good many partridge-hawks
you are not likely to make one for grouse. In partridge-hawking no very
great speed is wanted, if only the hawk will mount well and throw up
well. Partridges can be flushed much nearer, as a rule, to the hawk
than grouse. Although they are fast, especially up-wind, they are not
as fast as grouse, nor as wild. Nor perhaps, I may add, as perverse in
getting up at the place and time you like least, though both are clever
enough at choosing their time for making off. In an enclosed country,
if you do not kill your partridge at the first shot, he will often put
in at the next hedge, and there you may mark him and get him out. But
on an open moor the grouse generally go so far before putting in that
you cannot mark the place near enough to get them out quickly. Thus out
of a hundred eyess peregrines, probably more than 70 per cent. will,
in good hands, fly partridges very fairly, whereas out of a hundred
eyess falcons--leaving tiercels out of the account--you will not find
anything like fifty which are really good at the bigger quarry. Of
tiercels it would be rash to say that even 1 per cent. would fly well
at grouse. Of the falcons which fail some appear to be too lazy, and
others too slow. A good deal depends on the first few flights. If a
hawk has good luck on two or three occasions when she is first taken
out, and a young grouse gets up well within reach, the young hawk
will take heart, and, feeling assured that she can take the quarry,
will try hard and will improve. Choose, therefore, for a hawk that is
of doubtful courage the flights which seem likely to be the easiest.
Remember that an immense deal depends upon the conditions under which
you call upon your hawk to make her first flight at a grouse.
There are still some places where you can shoot grouse over dogs. If
it be your good fortune to have access with your hawks to a moor where
this can be done, you are in luck. As soon as there is a steady point
(you are, of course, on open ground), unhood and throw off your hawk,
which has already learnt to wait on. As long as she is moving upwards,
making each circle a little higher than the last, stand still and let
her go on, or, if the point is far off, walk steadily towards it. The
grouse will have seen the hawk, and be in no hurry to move while she
is mounting; but presently they will be aware also of your approach.
Then there will be a small debate in their minds--or rather in that of
their papa--whether it is best to keep still and eventually be shot
at, or to start off at once and at once be stooped at. The nearer
you approach, and the farther the hawk rakes away, the more does the
decision incline towards making a bolt of it; but papa grouse is not
going to make a fool of himself by bolting at the moment which you
would prefer. Your programme, of course, is to wait till your falcon
is heading in towards the dog, and then rush in upon the hesitating
assembly. Unfortunately, this plan does not fit in with the views of
the worthies in question. They have also been waiting till the hawk's
head was turned away, and now, as she is near the outer part of her
circle which is farthest from the quarry, up they get, and off they go,
whizzing along the top of the heather.
At this stage of the proceedings the modern falconer does, for once,
find the use of his voice. He shouts loudly to call the hawk's
attention and to cheer her on. "Hey, gar, gar, gar!" or "Hoo, ha, ha!"
are old-fashioned cries for encouraging a falcon to stoop from her
pitch, and are still often used. There can be no doubt that a shout of
some kind, or a blast on the horn, if you prefer it, has an inspiriting
effect on hawks, and that not only when they start for their first
descent, but at each successive stoop. I almost fancy that I have
actually seen them cheer up as they heard a loud "Bravo" come from the
field far beneath after a brilliant stoop or a masterly throw-up! It
is with grouse and black-game, more than with any other quarry, that
you see at once when they get up the immense advantage of a high pitch.
When the falcon is some hundreds of feet high she commands a wide area
below. At the height of a quarter of a mile it matters little whether
the range of her circling flight takes her a hundred yards to one side
or the other. She can come down with equal ease upon any one spot in an
area of thirty acres.
No one knows how the speed and force of a falcon's stoop are gained.
All we can say is that it is the fastest movement made by any living
thing in the world. It is not flying, and it is not falling, but
a combination of the two, with some other impulse which we do not
understand. Mere weight must be at least a most important element, for
a heavy hawk seems always to come down quicker as well as far more
forcibly than one of the same species which is lighter. But weight is
only one factor in the agglomeration of influences which make the stoop
of the peregrine and the ger so swift. It must be seen to be believed
in. There is no conceivable way of measuring its speed, but it is
such that the momentum of it alone carries the hawk with half-closed
wings right past a grouse at his best pace, making that pace appear
absolutely slow by comparison. The descent from above is often made
so that the hawk is at the end of it a few feet or yards behind the
grouse, and nearly on a level with him. Hence the course of the pursuer
bends forwards horizontally, but with such deviation from the straight
line as is necessary to correspond with the flight of the pursued. It
is so regulated that it may pass through that part of the air where the
quarry is expected to be. Of course the expectation may be falsified.
The hawk may suppose that the grouse will swerve to the right, whereas
he may swerve to the left. But, just as a fine fencer will divine by
some subtle skill whether his adversary is going to parry in _carte_
or _tierce_, or to make a single or double disengagement, so the good
game-hawk judges from some slight movement or attitude where the grouse
intends to be at the moment when she rushes past. This power is not
so surprising in a haggard, but some eyesses seem to be instinctively
gifted with a share of it. Others acquire it rapidly both in stooping
at the lure and in their actual flights. But with eyesses it is rather
the exception to be really good footers, whereas with haggards and many
red passage hawks it is almost the rule.
Passage peregrines are, of course, much more likely to succeed with
grouse and black-game than eyesses. Out of a dozen falcons skilfully
taken in hand, and kept specially for game-hawking, it would not be
unreasonable to expect that eight or nine would take their quarry well.
By rights a passager which is intended to be flown principally at game
should be captured in the spring. There is no use in keeping her all
the while idle from November to the next August. If taken in April she
would be well fit for flying on the twelfth of August. There would,
it is true, be some trouble about the moult, but this might often be
deferred till very much later than it can be with eyesses. According
to modern practice, which is to catch no wild peregrines in spring,
the passager has almost always been more or less flown at rooks in the
early part of the year. She has accordingly to unlearn a good deal
that she learnt then, and be introduced to the much more risky and
artificial accomplishment of waiting on. That she should take kindly
to this habit is not a thing to be anticipated. It would be going
rather too far to expect her to moon about overhead humbly waiting
till the falconer below pleases to throw out for her a morsel of cold
and uninviting food. You will generally find it best to employ with
her rather different tactics from those which served for the eyesses.
Thus you may call her off to the lure from the other side of a wide
moorside, and, as she comes across the heather, contrive that there
shall get up out of it a very fast pigeon. On the first occasion it is
ten to one that she will start at this from the very moderate height
at which she was flying towards you; but whether she takes the pigeon
or not, she will know very well that she ought, for her own advantage,
to have been higher when he got up; and the next time you call her off
at a similar place and in a similar way, the odds are that she comes
to you higher in the air. A third trial will probably find her higher
still, and you may let her make a circle or two before starting the
pigeon. When she has once flown a grouse in a somewhat similar way the
effect will be still more marked. Do not now dream of lowering her
pitch by ever letting her stoop to the lure. Indeed, after the passager
is once made to the dead lure, it need scarcely be used at all, except
to call the hawk back after unsuccessful flights.
For the first twelve months you must still be mistrustful of your
passager. Some of the old writers advise not to try her at waiting on
until she is intermewed. But when once she can be trusted she will
do better than almost any eyess. To begin with, she can kill from a
much lower pitch than the latter. She is swifter on the wing; she is
a better footer; and she knows much better how to play her cards. And
one of the best cards of a game-hawk is a high pitch. Why should she
not play it? Has she not already done so to perfection long before you
had the honour of her acquaintance? How often, in far northern lands,
has she from above the highest mountains come down like a thunderbolt
upon the fast-flying ptarmigan or shifty rock-pigeon? Does she not
know that it is this altitude which gives power and success? When she
has begun killing grouse she will soon enter into the spirit of the
thing. Every bird--and a hawk not least--knows that what has happened
once or twice may happen again. She was thrown off; she saw no lure,
no rook. (For we took care, did we not, that none was in sight?) After
a while you put up a grouse for her. And now, on another occasion, to
the same beginning will there not be the same end? She will almost
certainly think it well to be prepared for such a contingency; and the
only way to be prepared is to get up a bit, and to remain pretty near
the falconer. As soon as her pains have been rewarded she is "made."
The mischief of it is that you cannot, with grouse, make sure of giving
her these fair trials just when you wish. Grouse are such "contrairy"
birds, that you cannot always find them when you have the best right
to expect that you will. You must, however, do your best; and I, for
one, verily believe that the hawk knows when you are doing your best.
Otherwise, what is the moral of that pretty story, so well told by
"Peregrine," of the falcon which, finding the pointer rather slow in
putting up the covey, made a stoop at him by way of a gentle hint, and
then got up to her pitch again?
Black-game are still more difficult to take than grouse. An old cock
will hardly be taken unless from a good pitch and under favourable
circumstances. Grey-hens, however, have a way early in the season of
sometimes lying very close; and when this happens, and the hawk happens
to be waiting on near, she will cut the poor wretch down easily. With
black-game the first stoop is generally the most deadly, but it must
be made from a high pitch. A gerfalcon or tiercel stooping at an old
blackcock in a really open place is the perfection of game-hawking, and
from certain points of view--that of mere speed, for instance--the _ne
plus ultra_ of all hawking.
Partridges, on the other hand, are easier in all respects--easier to
find, easier to approach, easier to kill. The _modus operandi_ is
exactly the same as for the larger game. If you can work with a pointer
or setter, so much the better; the hawk will generally know after a
while what the dog means and where the birds are likely to get up. An
old game-hawk will often display marvellous intelligence in waiting on
in the right position. When this is the case, and the country is good,
the bag fills rapidly. No sooner is there a point than off goes the
hood. After a short delay the hawk is at her pitch, and you can walk
or ride in. Any partridge must be clever which avoids the first stoop
of an old peregrine. Even if he does, except in a country where there
are thick covers, the fatal blow is merely deferred. Putting in at a
thin hedge is only a temporary escape, for you can mark the place. The
hawk will mark it also, by making her point, _i.e._ throwing up into
the air over the spot, and she will wait on while you beat. A spaniel
or retriever will generally rout out the fugitive. The orthodox cry for
encouraging the hawk when the game is so routed out is "Howit! howit!"
Sometimes the partridge which has put in is, as an old author says,
"so surcharged with fear" as to be caught by the dog or picked up by
the hand. It should then generally be thrown out for the hawk to take,
especially if she is a young one, and the dog admonished by the cry of
"Ware, hawk! ware!"
If you use no dogs, mark down a bird or a covey, and put your hawk on
the wing to windward of the place, then, as she waits on, walk or ride
down-wind towards the spot. If the hawk flies wide make a halt till she
is coming up, and then go on at full speed again. As long as she is
facing the birds, and not down-wind of them, you have a good chance of
a kill. When you are quite sure that there are birds on a ground you
need not wait to mark any down, but beat the ground down-wind, keeping
the men in line, with the hawk in the air. When the birds are wild this
is often the only way in which you can get a flight. The worst of it is
that the first bird which gets up may get up a quarter of a mile ahead,
though there are plenty of nearer ones on the ground. Of course the
hawk will go at the first which gets up, and there will be a long stern
chase, with small chance of a kill, and perhaps a long delay before the
hawk is got back. If you have to go down-wind after her--which ought
not to be the case, but often is--you must make a dead beat in coming
back so as to get up-wind again, and begin afresh to drive to leeward.
Such, as far as the aërial part of it is concerned, is game-hawking.
A much more complicated affair than rook-hawking, as the hawk has to
be trusted all alone to mount to her pitch, and stay there sometimes
for many minutes without raking away, and, above all, without checking
at other quarry. The hawk, moreover, is not the only actor in the
play. You must arrange your beaters and markers properly, even for
partridge-hawking, and much more for moor-game. If you intend to hawk
over dogs, which you should certainly do if you have the chance, the
hawk, while being manned and entered, must be induced to make friends
with them and they with her. In the nature of things a hawk mistrusts
a dog, even if she does not actively dislike him, and you must get rid
of this mistrust. Your pointer or setter, and your retriever too, or
whatever dog you intend to use for any purpose, must often be present
while her ladyship is being fed and carried. First, of course, at a
respectful distance, but by degrees nearer and nearer, until the pair
of them are on quite good terms with one another. A few raps over
the nose will teach Ponto not to be too familiar; and a nice wing of
chicken offered to Stella within a foot of that same nose will do
wonders in reconciling her to its proximity. A long step will have
been gained when you can let the dogs play about on the lawn while
the hawks sit still on their blocks, watching with contemptuous eye
movements which are clownish and undignified as compared with their
own in the air. But the real triumph will come when they have all been
out for a day together; when, with Ponto standing at the point, Stella
has glittered high above him in the sunshine, circling gracefully
with expectant eye turned down; when Ponto, down-charging humbly,
has seen the lightning-like stoop a hundred yards ahead; when the
partridge, shifting cleverly, has put in to a hedge; and when Pompey
the retriever, tugging at his leash, has been led up to the spot and
has enjoyed the felicity of putting out that same partridge for Stella
to finish off with another dash from the sky. Then it will be a pretty
sight, if you have time to enjoy it, to see the hawk, with the pride of
victory in her eyes, pluming the dead quarry on the ground, while the
two dogs, stretched at length close by, look on contentedly, conscious
that part of the credit for the whole performance is due to them.
[Illustration: PLUMING THE DEAD GROUSE]
Even if there are no dogs, the falconer must have a watchful eye on his
company in the field, especially if it includes new hands at the now
unfashionable sport. These must be warned mildly, or it may be reminded
sharply, to maintain that repose of demeanour which befits the sport of
kings. To keep still as the falcon mounts is quite as essential as to
press on when she has got to her pitch. If a kill occurs it is lawful
enough to join in the death-cry, but not to hurry up. Such ill-timed
zeal might cause an infinity of mischief, and even, in the case of a
falcon or ger, the loss of her then and there. Everyone present should
stop fifty or more yards from the fatal spot, except the one man who is
authorised to take her up; and while he makes in, no noise or violent
movement should disturb the solemn scene. Cigars may be lighted, and
the incidents of the flight may be discussed; but it is only when the
falconer, rising from his knees with the victor on his glove, gives the
signal to come on, that curiosity may be gratified by a good look at
the vanquished.
There is some variety in the mode employed by hawks in taking game. In
rook-hawking they all "bind" to the quarry, that is, they clutch it in
the air, and retain their hold as they come down to earth. I think I am
right in saying that when a hawk strikes and does not hold a rook, it
is almost always either accidentally or because her talon has not held
fast. Many peregrines--perhaps all eyesses--begin by binding to grouse
and partridges. But the tremendous speed of the stoop in game-hawking
often carries the stooper so fast up to her quarry, and onwards after
it is struck, that the talon will not hold. Something in the body of
the victim gives way--the skin, or maybe a bone or two. Moreover, the
strain upon a falcon's foot, if she dragged along with her a heavy bird
flying only half as fast at the moment as herself, might be painful and
even dangerous. Consequently a hawk which has a very "hard" stoop, as
all passage gers have and many wild-caught peregrines, will sometimes
not endeavour to catch hold or bind. They then "strike" in the truest
sense of the word. They deal a blow, either downwards or forwards,
using the two hind talons for it, and either break some bone or knock
all the wind out of the victim struck. The jar of the blow as they rush
by tells them that it has come home, and instead of throwing up high,
as they would if they had missed, they check their flight quickly, and,
swinging round in the air, descend rapidly on the panting or dazed foe.
Instances have been known when a stoop has cut the head clean off from
a grouse, and one of Mr. Freeman's falcons cut through several ribs of
a partridge as she hit it down. And yet the ger's stoop is accounted
much "harder" than the peregrine's.
Game-peregrines, when well entered, may very well be flown four or five
times a day. Some of them, when in good fettle, more. Six kills in one
day is a decided feat for a peregrine; though it has been accomplished
in modern times, and probably surpassed occasionally. But it is unwise
to overdo the thing, and so tax the hawk too severely. If you have a
very high-mounter, you may as well remember a piece of advice upon
which D'Arcussia insists. This is to fly her not many times in any one
day. Her high mounting is such a grand thing in itself, he says, that
it is better to maintain it, even if your bag and your score suffer,
than by letting her kill more--which she could undoubtedly do--to
run the risk of lowering her pitch. If, however, a hawk has had bad
luck, and still seems "full of flying," you may go on after several
unsuccessful flights in the hope of rewarding her at last. It is a
very good thing in all sorts of hawking to "leave off with a kill."
Accordingly, if the third or fourth flight is successful, the wise
falconer will often feed up and leave well alone. I should like to go a
little further, and say that at any time after a very hard flight, in
which the hawk has triumphed over exceptional difficulties and greatly
exerted herself, it is a wise thing to feed up. "Oh, do fly her again,"
is a seductive cry which some friend is likely to raise. But though
next time she could not fly better, she might perhaps fly worse. I
should be inclined to tell such enthusiastic friend that I would wait
until the morrow. I would let that hawk go to rest with the memory
of that one big flight in her mind. It will be a pleasant memory,
embittered by no thought of subsequent failure. One really severe
flight, after a good bout of waiting on, is a fair day's work for any
long-winged hawk, unless she is owned by a mere pot-hunter. It may be
the first flight of the day, or it may be the fifth--perhaps the sixth
or seventh; but I think it will be well to finish up with it.
I am glad to be able to give here some actual records of the
performances of game-hawks, which have been most kindly given me by Mr.
St. Quintin, whose skill in this department of falconry, as in many
others, is second to none.
1881
_September 24_ | _September 30_
|
Partridges Pheasant | Partridges Rook
Belfry 2 ... | Aide-de-camp 1 ...
Butcherboy 2 ... | Belfry 1 ...
Parachute 3 1 | Butcherboy 2 ...
Vanquisher 1 ... | Heroine ... 1
Mosstrooper 1 ... | Parachute 3 ...
| Vanquisher 2 ...
| Mosstrooper 1 ...
--- --- | --- ---
9 1 | 10 1
1882
_August 16_ | _August 19_ | _August 25_
| |
Grouse Hare | Grouse | Grouse
| |
Parachute 1 1 | Parachute 5 | Parachute 4
Angela 2 ... | Angela 2 | Angela 1
Creole 3 ... | Aide-de-camp 1 | Aide-de-camp 3
Aide-de-camp 1 ... | Amesbury 2 | Amesbury 2
Amesbury 2 ... | Vesta 2 | Vesta 2
Vesta 1 ... | | Virginia 1
--- --- | --- | ---
10 1 | 12 | 13
In the season of 1882 Mr. St. Quintin and Colonel Brooksbank, on a moor
which they took in Sutherland, took with the hawks 200 grouse, besides
three blue hares, killed by the eyess Parachute, and one wild duck.
After returning to England, Parachute killed no less than seventy-six
partridges, besides five pheasants.
On the same moor, in 1884, the same gentlemen killed in one day (August
18) five grouse, four black-game (greyhens and young blackcock), and a
hoodie crow; and on another day (August 20) eleven grouse.