I had some time to hunt before going to my sister’s house to open gifts. It's been very cold and with working extra we hadn't hunted in 6 days. The morning was sunny with a light wind. I had planned to hunt in a patch of woods that is only huntable on the weekends or holidays. It’s next to a school that is normally crawling with people. It’s a good spot to hunt squirrels with a few rabbits to boot. I arrived and took Solitaire, my 3x inter mewed Red Tail out of the giant hood. He's all business and up into the trees he goes. Solitaire starts to ladder up and I take 2 steps into the woods and down he comes into a small brush pile. All kind of commotion is coming from the pile. I run over to help and before I get there 2 bunnies bolt in 2 different directions. (Go figure) I look in to see what I thought was the squirrel biting Solitaire’s leg, with his talons sunk into the squirrel’s butt. I try to reach in to help. As I look closer I see that the squirrel only has a bite on the hawk’s chaps and not his leg, but it’s too late. The squirrel sees me reaching in and at the same time Solitaire loosens his grip to get a better hold, and the tree rat lets go of the chaps and takes off running and up a tree.(Drats) After cutting Solitaire out of the brush pile he looks really rough with his feathers all messed up. I let him get his composure back and cast him up into the trees. What a way to start. After a few more chases things settle down and Solitaire is following well. As I come up on a large brush pile I poke my walking stick in, and out goes a bunny running towards the edge of the woods. Solitaire is off with a good tail chase. As he gets close the rabbit decides to duck back into the woods. That's all Solitaire needs. He seems to be better in cover than in the open. The grab is right on and we have our first rabbit in the bag. If the day starts like this we won't be out here long. It’s been cold for a good while so there seems to be more rabbits out today. I normally hunt for squirrels here, and am lucky to connect on a rabbit so it looks good. After the trade I cast Solitaire back up into the trees and start shaking vines and making a lot of noise when off he goes after a tree rat. These trees are old and contain many hiding places so the chase doesn't last long. I go on ahead and keep trying to shake something loose. Solitaire catches up to me and starts watching for something to chase. He flies over to an old snag with many holes and starts tilting his head to look down inside a broken off branch and begins footing inside it. I take my stick and start poking inside holes down at my level. Out runs the squirrel and the chase is on! A few quick stoops and the squirrel is gone; vanished into thin air! It is something how they can do that! I start back at kicking and shaking vines and a rabbit squirts out from behind a fallen tree. Solitaire drops out into a long stoop and just as the rabbit turns the corner he's there to nab him. That’s two. What a good day. I only plan to do two today because I need to get to my sister's to spend time with the family for Christmas. So I let Solitaire break in and eat a bit and start to trade him off. As Solitaire finishes his bite on the lure and I start to offer the glove with a tidbit on it, I realize that I forgot to clip his jesses. I must have been thinking about presents. I try to clip him on the glove but Solitaires is still showing the “I'm not finished hunting' yet look.” Since it’s still a good walk back to the van I say “what the heck" and cast him back up into the trees. I start back toward the van shaking vines etc, and I hadn't walked 30 yards when out of the corner of my eye I see Solitaire in a slow stoop toward the ground. I ran over to where his stoop would take him and he doesn't arrive there. I walk back towards where I last saw him and he wasn't there either. I stand there and listen for bells and I hear them coming from above my head. There, attached to the side of a tree was Solitaire with a squirrel pined to some vines. Wohoooo #3 what a day! Solitaire floats to the ground and I subdue the back end of the squirrel as Solitaire keeps a firm hold on the head. The rest of the day I had a big grin on my face and was in a good mood.

            That was Saturday and now it’s Monday. My 7 yr old is off from school today and the wife wants to go shopping. That's not my or Aaron's favorite thing to do. We decide to take Solitaire out back to the little woods and hunt. This is the best place to take Aaron because in the woods is a nice rocky path where Aaron can follow me and keep up if I have to run off after the hawk. There isn’t much game out today. We get a few chases but nothing connects. Solitaire was following good and we've have been out about an hour.

       This end of the woods is next to an interstate and the wind was blowing off the cars toward us, so it makes it hard to hear the hawk's bells. I try to keep a close eye on the hawk when it’s like this. Solitaire was midway up in the trees and right behind me.  I jump on a brush pile but nothing comes out. I turn around to make sure Solitaire is still behind me, but he is gone. I didn't hear him fly or see which way he went which is not good! No big deal I think, he has to be close. The woods aren't that big and he couldn't have gone very far. Normally when this happens I just keep trying to get something to move and he will start chasing it. Soon I bumped a rabbit but there wasn't a hawk to chase so I started to worry a bit. I began to turn my attention to finding him, whistling and swinging the lure and walking around the immediate area. After an hour or so I widened my search. I looked down wind and toward the other end of the woods. Now Aaron's feet were starting to get cold. We hadn't planned on staying out this long so he didn't have his cold weather boots on. Aaron tried to help me make up my mind and give up by saying “Dad, sometimes we just have to let go of the things we love ".Wow! Coming from a 7 year old that was deep. I told him I wasn't ready to let go just yet.

          I gave my Dad who lives close by a call on the cell phone, and asked him to come pick Aaron up and keep him so I could keep looking for Solitaire. We had to walk back to the van and wait for him to show up. After Aaron was with my Dad, I started to look around once more but it has been about 2 hours since I last seen him. It’s now about 3pm and no sign of Solitaire. I'm getting concerned. While walking around I saw an opossum and started to worry that if Solitaire was on the ground on a kill that the opossum would do some damage to him before he would give up his kill. As time went on I started to notice that the squirrels were back out running around on the ground so I knew that Solitaire wasn't around. Solitaire has spent the night out before but that time it was right before dark, and I saw where he decided to roost for the night. He had caught a robin deep in cover and finished it before going up to roost. This time was different. He had all afternoon to move around and I didn't have a clue where to look. I decided to take one last look around the woods and then drive around the area looking for him. Then I would just have to throw in the towel and give up for the day. It sure was a hard thing to do, drive away from that area knowing Solitaire was out there somewhere. My plans were to release him this spring, but not with my good set of chaps and bells on. I will come back in the AM and look for him, but my hopes weren't too high. Just like the last time he spent the night out, I was in a bad mood and didn't sleep much. As I got out of bed my wife wished me luck, and off I went back to the little woods. Again the wind was blowing off the interstate and the noise was making it hard to hear. I walked around the woods before light, whistled and listened to see if I could hear Solitaire put his foot down but after 2 trips around I didn't hear anything. I waited till it got light and started walking around and whistling. I had only gone about halfway around when something caught my eye about 10 feet from the path and 20 feet up in a tree. There was Solitaire standing on 1 foot with this HUGE crop. Whatever he caught the day before he must have gorged on. I took the lure out to bring him down with a small bit of meat on it and tossed it out into the open. Solitaire showed no interest in it. He didn't even put his foot down. I reloaded the lure with a piece of a rat and tossed it out again. That peaked his interest. This time he put his foot down and readjusted the load in his crop but decided there just wasn't enough room in there for more. I kept it up for a while and the lure finally became too irresistible and he dropped off the limb. I don't know where he put it, but he managed to eat the entire rat on the lure. As he was eating I clipped him up and breathed a big sigh of relief. I was glad I trained him to the lure. It has retrieved him several times. After we got home I put him on his night perch and took off his equipment. Normally he would jump to the window perch and watch the world go by but he was soooo stuffed that he didn't fly to the window perch until the afternoon. He must have been miserable. It took a week to shave his weight back down to hunting weight. Things are now back to normal. This sport sure has its emotional up and downs.

That's it for now, I hope thing are going well with everyone.

Mike Mallett