Good falconry should be simple, affordable, appropriate, successful, and (at least sometimes) beautiful. It should strive toward all these virtues at once. Any component of my falconry risks being judged against this standard -- my choice of hawks and quarry, of hunting spots and hawking schedule, of equipment and training technique. Some choices fall short of meeting every criteria, but I am improving. There have been times past when my falconry met none of them.

My criteria overlap and intersect a bit. They're also vague (what's beautiful? or appropriate?) and maybe self-serving, too. You might wonder why "sporting" is not listed among them (I wonder about that myself): It could be that this goes without saying. Falconry is difficult -- even when it's easy. It has always been among the most fair, most sporting, least exploitive ways to kill game. It is self-limiting in dozens of ways.

...Which all dodges the issue. Ultimately, the sporting quality of falconry has to compliment the other values (affordable, appropriate, successful, etc.); falconry can't be so sporting that it is not successful. And the hawk can't be forced to consider the sporting aspects of it. The best I can do is avoid overmatching the game with technology, and be willing to work as hard as the hawk in the field. Given these concessions, one can't afford to feel guilty about success.

To help flesh out some of the criteria, here are a few questions that might follow:

On Simplicity: How many "moving parts" does my plan have? Can it work with any part removed? Can I put it into action without another's help? Will it work in all weather? Is it an obvious choice or does it need justification?

On Affordability: Do I have the time for this? Do I have the resources (money, contacts, equipment, mobility) to support it indefinitely?

On Appropriateness: Does my plan consider local conditions -- is this the right hawk for the right quarry, the right cover, the right climate? Am I the sort of person who can pull this off?

On Success: Am I catching game? Am I having fun?

On Beauty: Would I come here if I wasn't hawking? Would I bring my family here? Which flights do I remember most clearly? When I pause between flights, or as the hawk feeds, what do I see?

On Sport and Challenge: Is there room for improvement? Is the hunting routine? Am I working or coasting?

On Getting a New Hawk

• "Pet Keeping:" An obvious pejorative among falconers, but a much harder thing to define in objective terms. The jist is that some falconers keep some raptors ostensibly as hunting birds, yet never fly them at game or do so rarely and unsuccessfully season after season. We intuit that the falconer's main purpose in keeping the bird is for personal aggrandizement or amusement. Generally speaking, the larger the bird in question, the greater our suspicion. If the falconer is seen speaking at Rotary lunches with an eagle on his fist or featured in a full-color spread in the local paper, our suspicion is usually confirmed. We frown on "pet keeping," although the fact that successful and hard-working falconry birds also boost their owners' egos, provide amusement and are sometimes photographed for the newspaper doesn't seem to bother us much.

  Stephen Bodio observed of falconers that, like many self-made men and women, we expect others to pay their dues. Being known as "real falconers" is a source of pride because it represents much hard work, earned skill and regular success at something very difficult; it's much easier to speak to a group of Boy Scouts about hunting with a hawk than it is to successfully hunt with a hawk. For some falconers to don this mantle of accomplishment without earning it--to accept the kudos and admiration (however hollow when received from an audience of laymen)--without doing the real work of falconry, is at best annoying. I am annoyed and sometimes angered by it.

  Eric Edwards sees the conflict as natural. He writes that falconers "are competitive by nature, being involved in a noncompetitive sport or activity. Somehow you have to try to differentiate yourself as being better than the next guy. If we were all on a basketball court or running in a race, the pecking order would be more clearly defined, and there would be no discussion about it."

  And this suggests another truth: Viewed at even a short distance, the difference between myself and the average "pet keeping" falconer is slight. I love my hawk. He has a name. He makes me proud. I show him to Boy Scouts. That he hunts, too, and that I hunt with him as hard and as often as I can is a matter of importance mainly to me.

• Sky Trials: Pure competition using trained falcons and homing pigeons to evaluate in standard terms the elements of pursuit. I'm pretty sure this isn't falconry. It's more a cross between canine field trails and horse racing. It is probably an inevitable extension of human tastes for competition, gambling, selective breeding of livestock and spectator sport. I'm not against it; but just don't call it falconry.

• Gang Hawking: I'm not sure we agree on a definition here. I think the term generally applies to any sort of falconry using more than two Harris hawks at once, but it has a decidedly negative connotation for some. Having spent almost all my time in falconry at least participating in (if not practicing) mutliple Harris hawk hunting, I don't see the basis for the negative slant. Group hunting (a better term) can be as good or bad, as practical or impossible, as fruitful or fruitless as any other form of falconry. When done well, it can be sublime.

• Multiples: Any number of kills per hunt beyond one. Again with the negative connotations... And again with the caveats: Continuing the hunt after the hawk has made a single kill can be exciting, appropriate and sporting, legal, totally acceptable to the hawk (even beneficial) and most practical in terms of putting food in the bag. It can also bring out the worst in a falconer and in some circumstances damage his relationship with the hawk. It is skill, practice and attitude that make the difference; multiples by themselves are not intrinsically bad.

• Falconry Schools: Commercial operations using trained hawks and (most often) bagged game to both entertain clients with a sort of "eco-tourism" experience and perhaps instruct them in some basic principles of falconry. I would prefer if these groups employed licensed falconers to hunt wild game, allowing the clients to follow along and participate (as beaters and spotters or dog handlers). Have each of the clients buy a short-term small game license from the State. If nothing is caught, nothing is caught -- that's why they call it "hunting," ha ha. This at least is a true picture of falconry in action; if someone is willing to pay to see that, someone should be allowed to show it to them.

• Bagged game: Presentation of a live captive animal to a trained hawk with the intention that it be killed or at least chased. There's no way to put that to make it sound good. Bagged game is rarely neccesary; it is always an expedient. But so long as the captive animal is killed quickly and well-maintained while alive, and so long as its use is not elevated to the status of an actual (if artificial) hunt, and so long as the falconer feels motivated to discontinue the practice as soon as possible, I won't take a stand against this.

  An aside: Is bagged game ever the same as wild? Bagged game can never stand in for real, wild game, but not all baggies are created equal. Differences in how they are raised (or sometimes, how they're captured) and presented to a hawk lead to huge differences in the length, effect and "quality" of their pursuit. At one end of the spectrum, the released animal may only flutter briefly or take a few halting steps before being caught by the hawk. On the other end, the game may prove so capable or be presented with such an advantage that the hawk has virtually no chance of catching it.

  As distasteful as the first example seems, there are some circumstances under which this experience can be beneficial to a hawk's development. Done once or twice, it can be a huge confidence boost to a young or timid bird, and may encourage it to chase harder at wild game (though if done repeatedly, it tends to have the opposite effect and to discourge the hawk's interest in any prey other than bagged).

  So, what if the baggie is a "really good one?" What if it's raised in a huge pen and rockets from the hand or the launcher like a missle? What if the baggies are so capable in flight that the hawk misses them regularly? The pinnacle of the bagged game flight is at strong homing pigeons flown over their home territory; good homers released in familar terrain are almost never caught. And this fact suggests the main reason why even the best bagged birds are poor substitutes for wild game: An animal "in its home" is far better able to defend itself and elude capture than one, however healthy and able, that finds itself in a new place and under pressure. Annie Dillard writes that "things out of place are ill," and this applies well to bagged game. Even starlings and feral pigeons, freshly caught in a net and released moments later in the training field, lose so much ability for this displacement that their tremendous native powers of flight and stamina are almost nullified. Their capture is often a foregone conclusion in a straight-line flight. The benefits of this kind of flight to the hawk or to the falconer are debatable on both practical and sporting grounds. For the more "spiritual" argument against them, see next entry.

• Catch and Release: The act of releasing game (usually ducks and rabbits) after being taken from the trained hawk who caught it. Here's one that actually sounds good, but isn't. First, it's illegal -- state and federal game laws require that every effort must be made to retrieve and dispatch crippled game and maintain it in the hunter's possession.

  But the law is usually the worst justification for anything worthwhile, and so it is with this. Falconry is hunting. Falconers are hunters. These facts and their boundaries are debated even within the falconry community, but what is beyond debate is that hawks and falcons mean to kill. They are not designed to let things go (there is no "barbless" hawk).

  What it comes to is wether the falconer means to kill. And this only he or she can know. My question is why -- if one doesn't want to kill game -- does one want to harm the game and risk harm to the hawk? There is no knowing in the field how damaged a rabbit or duck might be after it has been caught by a hawk or falcon, then wrestled from the bird into the possession of the falconer. Hawks do not "soft retrieve;" they try mightily to damage (in fact, they try to kill) whatever they catch, as fast as they can. Harm is inevitable.

  But say for sake of argument this wasn't so. Say it would be possible to remove a rabbit from a hawk without the rabbit harmed in any way. Say the hawk gladly gave it up. Its release would in an instant reduce the hunt to a game, no different (except in setting) than any human game where nothing is risked, nothing real is lost or won. And when it reduces the hunt to a game, it reduces the rabbit and the hawk to playthings. It reduces the entire natural history of all rabbits and all hawks (and all men) to mere entertainment.

  This is a degree of detachment and debasement we should spare ourselves, even if we do not consider its effect on our hawks and their quarry.

• Car Hawking: Slipping a hawk at game from a vehicle. When mentioning this, it's important to distinguish what sort of game is being hunted. No game species for which there are legal seasons may be taken from a vehicle in the U.S.; the law discourages shooting deer along the roadside, for example, or ground-sluicing a flock of feeding mourning doves. These laws are not specific to gun hunters, so can be expected to encompass the actions of falconers as well.

  However -- the hunting of unprotected pest species (starlings [Sturnus vulgaris], house sparrows [Passer domesticus] and pigeons [Columbia livia]) is not regulated (except perhaps locally where bird sanctuary rules might apply). Provided falconers pursue these quarries on private property (ie, from private roads), there is probably no restiction to slipping the hawk at them from a vehicle.

  This is what my friend Bruce H. calls "ugly falconry." There is no doubt about that. Car hawking lacks almost every inherent virtue of sport, save that it can be a lot of fun and provide bagsful of food for a hawk. While I have had much fun doing this myself and have filled many bags with starlings and sparrows over the years, I can't pretend that this method of hunting meets my own standards of beauty and sport; it is merely simple and successful. Provided that I don't ever (or again) confuse this expedient with proper falconry, I will probably continue to hawk starlings from the car when necessary to keep the larder full.

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