Sunday, February 24, 2013

Falconry: Day 4

Z and Tess having their hoods removed before hunting. 

To rustle rabbits and other game, Al often has to go into the densest parts of wooded lots.


Al talks to Z about their lack of catches for the day. 

Kit struggles to pluck the squirrel while Al wrestles it away from her since it is not dead and he is unable to suffocate it. 

Kit looks after Al after he's made the trade and, in her eyes, stolen her catch.

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*The first two are photos and the others are still grabs from video*

Today was poor for hunting- we went from noon until 2:30 and the two older girls missed a rabbit and a squirrel. Al packed up and went to a park in Greece and took the youngest, Kit, out around the park.

 After Kit caught the squirrel he took it to feed her at home. More people were beginning to show up at the park and he's been heckled by animal rights people for torturing the squirrels. However, today the one guy that saw us playing "catch" said it was the coolest thing he'd seen all day. I was like, "damn straight it is." Definitely the coolest thing I did today. 

Below is a picture of me that Al took after we played catch which began with him giving me a bag of raw squirrel meat and walking to the other side of the lot. We took turns whistling to Kit when we had a piece of meat on our gloves and she would fly from one person to the other.

 It was her reward for catching the squirrel and having to wait and my first chance to have a bird land on me. Earlier I'd picked up Tess without a glove and was suddenly hyper aware of Al mentioning they have hundreds of pounds of pressure in each toe. "She won't grab on...probably," were his reassuring words.