Saturdays hunt

Oh boy Norma, it was one of those days that I could say, "You should have been there!" You know I invited you and Justin to go hawking in Kansas yesterday. Well I sure wish you could have made it. We ended up meeting in over in Kansas in mid afternoon. The weather was great, the temp in the low 50’s with a strong North wind.

We started out by putting the tail up first. I thought that the wind was going to play a big role in the way the hunt would go down. Several times this season the hawk seems to get blown downwind on days when the wind was really kicking up like that, but it wasn’t the way things unfolded.

We put the dog out and headed into the wind. The hawk flew strong and took a perch out in front of us, overhead in a tall cottonwood. We hadn't gone far when the dog flushed the first bun and ran it in the direction of the big old tree. The hawk turned in the tree and dropped straight down, with that little corkscrew action. We took off running and before we could see the hawk we could hear that he had one in his talons. I was wishing there was more time to fly the tail.  He is a good hawk for buns, but I knew Justin had driven a long way to hunt the Harris's together, so I did what anyone else would have done, I begged Justin to give him a little more time in the air!

He agreed and we put him back up. The hawk moved upwind to the edge of some rail tracks chocked full of brush and cedars. The dog was cutting back and forth in the heavy cover. I looked up at the hawk, and he was craning his head watching the dog work. The dog circled a group of dead cedar and I knew, by the way she was acting, there were rabbits inside. She found an opening and dove in. Suddenly three rabbits shot out in different directions. Boy, the cover was thick and the hawk chased well and dove after one, but when I got there he was standing on a pile of railroad debris. He went right back up, the wind blowing strong. He was intent on staying close to the dog. He wasn't disappointed by the dog’s performance either, because within a couple minutes the dog sent another one down the line of tracks. I watched as the rabbit disappeared into cover. Meanwhile I lost sight of the hawk. I yelled over to Justin to ask just where had he gone, and he pointed to a pile of old cedar down the tracks another twenty yards or so. We found him shortly thereafter, drug under the pile, with his second of the day.

We headed back to the trucks after cropping him up and drove to another area that we knew held rabbits more open and suitable for hunting the Harris's hawks. Not to bore you with all the details, but the birds flew very well together. It seemed that if one missed,
the other would take its shot and come up with the rabbit. When one had it and didn't have control of its head the other would come in and get it done.

We had several downwind flights that took the bunnies through creeks and one where the hawks bound to the rabbit before hitting the creek and the hawks held on through the water for the ride of their life. I ended the day with my hawk taking a flight straight downwind through the creek and just short of the huge mound of dirt we had dubbed "mount Olathe". The hawk got one foot on the bunny and the rabbit drug the little guy twenty yards or so before they hit some cover and then the hawk flipped around backwards and was taken for another fifty yards or so before the hawk’s wings stopping the forward movement of the two in heavy cover. I was trying the whole time to catch up with them but I wasn’t fast enough on my feet after hunting for several hours. Both the hawk and I were spent, and even after a minute or two the hawk was still heaving and had not untangled itself. Of course I had stepped in as soon as I could and dispatched the bun and finally the hawk untangled himself. I let him gorge himself on his prize. He is doing a great job of keeping me outdoors and active. This takes him up to eighty-five rabbits so far for his first season. Hope we can get out during the holidays and hunt together.

We will talk soon, Bob