18 ATTACHMENT 11 - Laserfiche WebLink

turns round on the perch, flies in any other direction other than towards you or tucks a foot up, then she is not yet hungry or well manned enough to begin this stage. Man her or put her up for the night and begin the next day if she does this. If she does fly to you with eagerness, then fly her as far as the creance will allow. A length of 50-100 feet is acceptable. She should be so eager to fly for her food that she should be coming to you BEFORE YOU CALL FOR HER. Most likely you will not even be able to get to 75 feet before she takes off after you. If you must wait longer than one minute, flap your arms, shout, or put up with any other such nonsense then she is not ready for the ultimate stage of training -free flight. Before beginning free-flight, there is one more thing that should be addressed; the falconer's insurance policy -the lure. Even if you never again use the lure, train her for it now. Fat hawks with no intention of returning to the glove will happily nail the lure out of greed. Tie a full crop's worth of meat onto the lure after calling her to the glove on the creance a few times. You should do this a time or two to cement the concept of 'lure = a full belly' to the hawk. Once she is done with the food on the lure, offer the garnished glove and hold onto the tidbit hard to prevent her from bolting it down or taking it to the ground. Eventually she will tug and be forced to step to the glove to eat. Hide the lure as she does. Out of sight, out of mind or possession for a hawk. If she is a falcon, the lure will increase in importance from here. The next major step in training a falcon is to take the lure away from it just as it is about to lay foot upon it, making the bird wheel round, and attack the lure again. Once this is achieved the lure will be swung around artfully by the falconer in wide circles, encouraging the bird to make more 'passes' at the lure, to attempt to catch it. This becomes a game of "keep away" between the bird and the falconer, a game which challenges both of their skills and dexterity. The falconer's job is to keep the lure enticing, yet pull it away at the last moment, while the bird tries coming in faster, turning more sharply, and even anticipating the falconer's actions. A bird may make upwards of forty passes at the lure once fit. If the bird should catch the lure, the falcon is rewarded with the small piece of meat tied securely to the lure. At the end of the game, the bird is generally fed a goodly portion of food as reward for the entire exercise. Another useful thing to do before free-flight is to call the hawk still on the creance down from a height. For some reason, a new hawk who finds itself high up in a tree can develop a habit of being 'blind' to the falconer. This can mean she is too fat, not manned (acclimated to humans and the human world) well enough or perhaps being up high is simply more enjoyable than being down near the ground. Either way, she can be trained to avoid this hawkish inclination of being up high and not coming down. Throw her to a rooftop or other similar object that is at least twelve to thirty feet up. DO NOT choose a tree as the creance tends to get tangled up in the branches. 9