Not Just a Rabbit

Stacia A. Novy

 

Repetitive, long-term exposure on a specific quarry can raise a falconry bird’s hunting prowess to such a high level that the sport loses its novelty. That was the case with my wild-caught, second year tiercel, Red-tailed hawk, Tawney.  I had flown him all last winter on Eastern Cottontails (Sylvilagus floridanus), which is the predominant game species in my area.   By late last year his flights had become shorter and far more efficient; I began doing multiple kills just to increase his time in the field.  Molting him out over the summer didn’t dampen his enthusiasm either; Tawney caught rabbits in rapid succession the very first day out of the mews despite his lack of fitness, the high temperatures and impenetrable brush.  Throughout September and October I’d get up, go hawking, catch a rabbit (or two or three) and go home.  By the time the 2005 NAFA Meet neared Tawney had bagged well over 50 rabbits and that was just the start of the season for many falconers and me. Dressing out his kills became a commonplace chore, and I worried over the disposition of so many rabbits. Monotony had somehow settled in, so early this winter, and I anticipated upcoming hawking opportunities with a lack of spirit.  After one particularly successful hunt, lasting no more than a few odd minutes in length, I found myself wishing for more. “I need to fly a more challenging hawk or more challenging game.  This is becoming too easy”, I said out loud to no one.  I didn’t know then that the Falconry Gods had heard my prayer…and answered it. 

 

I arrived in Vernal, Utah with several friends from the Midwest on the weekend prior to the NAFA Meet. All of us were seasoned shortwingers, flying Redtails, and had taken our fair share of Eastern Cottontails. With several hours of daylight still left I immediately began scouting the area for new fields.  Our quarry of choice for the coming week would be the Mountain Cottontail (Sylvilagus nuttallii).  I was sure its habits would be identical to that of the Eastern Cottontail; after all, how different could one species of cottontail rabbit be from another?  I checked weedy feedlots, riverbanks, residential areas, farms, junk piles; places that were familiar to me, but not to un-urbanized western wildlife.  I found not a single rabbit.  My friends consoled me that first day, thinking I was rushed and there simply wasn’t enough time to look for sign properly.  It was still early in the week, and we were confident about locating game the very next day.  But we didn’t.  The next two days brought more of the same fruitless searches; we couldn’t find any quarry for our birds to fly.  I was so exhausted from searching fields that by nightfall I didn’t have the strength to socialize with any other falconers or vendors; I simply went straight back to the hotel and slept.  In the following days we would repeat the same sequence of events: waking up hopeful each dawn and searching till evening, walking and driving miles, enlisting the help of local guides who proclaimed to have “many rabbits around”, but finding nothing.  The Mountain Cottontail was invisible to us. 

 

It was frustrating to see my hawk following perfectly and anticipating flushes that would never come.  By mid-week Tawney had lost his faith in me:  he showed his insecurity by soaring just inches above my head, alighting on my shoulder or at my feet, and calling plaintively.  I was failing him, and he knew it.  With only three days left of the Meet I finally lost faith in myself too, believing I would go home without a game pin to signify my success.  If so, it would be the first time ever in my falconry career that I went home empty-handed from a NAFA Meet.  In final desperation I asked an older falconer one night, who had lived out West and knew it well, how to find rabbits.  How embarrassed I was to admit that I didn’t know the natural history of the quarry I sought.  How disrespectful it was to assume that I knew a game species that I had never hunted.  The man kindly explained to me that Mountain Cottontail rabbits lived in rocky outcroppings.  They do not hide in grassy fields near habitation, nor do they sit tight waiting to be flushed by the falconer.  They stay above ground and run many yards ahead of the hunting party, as a hare would.  “Look for rabbits in the broken rock piles of mountain slopes,” he said.  “The rock piles are the junk piles for western rabbits”.

 

The next morning some friends and I headed straight for the rockiest place we could think of, a gorge so treacherous and deep that all the other falconers had shunned it during the Meet.  Its course cut through many miles of open badlands and the canyon walls rose 200-300 feet above the valley floor.  Even before sighting any rabbits I knew it to be a magical place, for I found the broken fragments of fossilized tree limbs and bark scattered along the canyon’s rim.   Tiny remnants of perishable wood that stubbornly defied time testified to the riches of life that once existed there, and still do to this day.  We carefully climbed down and finally found an abundance of game!  Rabbits were running everywhere, high along the rocky walls, and some were even nestled beneath the sagebrush thickets of the valley floor.  Without waiting a moment longer, we put our birds up and began hawking in earnest for the first time since our departure from home.   But after a full day of hunting and many chances, Tawney didn’t connect.  He tried to catch Mountain Cottontails the same way he had caught Eastern Cottontails: by following closely and waiting for slips at my footsteps.   No such slips came, for these rabbits flushed hundreds of yards away, darted among the boulders, and teased us with their cunning. My bird and I became wholly dejected, believing these rabbits were beyond our skill to possess.   It took another full day of hunting and much practice, for Tawney to learn to perch on the canyon rim and stoop on the rabbits below like an eagle.  He was forced to change his ways in respect of the Mountain Cottontail, as was I. 

 

From a perch on the cliff top Tawney could command the entire gorge, seeing rabbits a great distance away and swooping down upon them, as we walked the cavern below.  He began to make spectacular dives through the canyon, some so far away that none of us could see his intended target.  Nor could we tell the outcome; we simply waited to see if he flew back up to the cliff face after a miss, and resumed walking in his direction.  The distance was so great that we could not hear his bells or see his jesses; he looked to be a wild haggard hunting rabbits in the bright thin air.  We finally flushed one that Tawney chased, but it squeezed beneath a large rock and hid before he could get close.  We poked underneath the rock with our flushing sticks and, to everyone’s surprise, the rabbit bolted from the opposite side.  It ran along the crooked edge of an open cliff face and Tawney neatly plucked the rabbit off the rock.  Success!  It was not a phenomenal flight, but we had caught our first Mountain Cottontail after so many hard days of trying, and I was elated.  I had never felt such a sense of accomplishment before, not even when I was an apprentice falconer flying a hawk for the first time.   I inspected the prize gently in my hands and was intrigued; this rabbit didn’t resemble the Eastern Cottontails that had become so mundane.

 

The Mountain Cottontail rabbit was much smaller, only a half to two-thirds the size of an Eastern Cottontail.  Its soft, fluffy gray fur easily detached from the body at my touch, and floated away down wind.  Its hind feet were wide, shortened, and heavily furred like that of a snowshoe hare, and the black-tipped ears stood straight above the head.  It had a high-pitched bird-like squeal, and tended to rest above ground in open forms rather than burrow into the hard earth.  It relied on sight, keen hearing, speed and maneuverability to out-run predators at a distance.  I wondered at the evolutionary time and harsh desert forces that had sculpted this rabbit into resembling more of a hare, rather than its Eastern Cottontail cousin. 

 

On the final day of the Meet I awoke early, expecting another arduous full day of rock-climbing in search of rabbits.  In the early morning light I released Tawney and he immediately flew towards a rock, high on the crest of the gorge, to wait on me.  As he climbed into the sky, the sunshine shifted through him and bleached his red tail feathers white.  My leg muscles were stiff from many days of exercise and I couldn’t trust them any longer to hold my weight.  I used my hands and flushing stick to claw my way up the mountainside.  Halfway up the slope I turned parallel to the cliff, too tired to climb any higher, and walked straight away from Tawney.  After a while I fell into a leisurely pace, enjoying the warmth of the sun and the smell of the junipers.  I wasn’t really trying to flush any Mountain Cottontails, we had already caught one, and I didn’t dream of a second.  I left my hunting partner and friends far behind as I went on. 

 

Suddenly, I heard a rush of air—the hollow, high-pitched vibration of feathers at very high speed—the kind of sound that normally only a longwinger is privy to.  Some liken the sound to the whine of an engine or that of ripping canvas; whatever the likeness, it never ceases to stop me in my tracks and send a shiver up my spine.  I instantly stopped and spun around, and caught the image of Tawney in a full stoop, wings tucked in and heart-shaped, as he hurtled toward earth.  It was a long, drawn-out stoop, over many hundreds of yards and from a descent of many hundreds of feet.  He must have been travelling at tremendous speed for me to hear him.  He hit the earth with an audible thud, sending a plume of dust into the air, which caught the wind and drifted over me like a veil.   Then I saw the rabbit jump, six feet straight into the air upon impact; it sailed right over Tawney and a small juniper bush to the right and sped away as soon as it hit the ground.  Tawney instantly rebounded, twisted through the branches of the juniper like a goshawk, and grabbed the rabbit as it emerged on the far side!  The last flight of the Meet and it was the best one.  Tawney had finally mastered the Mountain Cottontail, as well as I.

 

At the banquet that night I proudly received my game pin and realized, for the first time, that it meant more than “just a rabbit”, more than just game in the bag.  That small, bright-colored token represented the enlightenment of learning a new game species and habitat.  It symbolized the physical and mental strain of the hunt; wandering fields in search of slips, climbing up and down mountains, all day, breathless in the cold.  It represented the despair of almost certain failure, and the triumph of success. It represented a rabbit that pushed everything to the limit; testing my endurance, faith and tenacity, and that of my hawk.  The Mountain Cottontail humbled me for a time, and in doing so, brought back to the sport a merit I almost lost.

 

 

 

The picture below illustrates the difference between the Mountain Cottontail and Missouri's Eastern Cottontail.