Basic Gamehawking methods outlined?

[Hawkmaster]

What would you normally do to train up a HIGH flying gamehawk?

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[BFC 007]

in the past i have used the kite with traditional lure training

[GregMik]

Most of the longwingers I know use the Kite. They only use the lure for a call back device. But we are allowed to use baggies. So it is easier to transition off the kite and into hunting.


Greg

[Hawkmaster]

So Greg would you say they do this?


Basic training
Kite Work
Baggies
On to Game:?:

[MattSpar]

I've never used a kite, though it certainly seems like a good idea. I begin by casting the falcon off on a slope with a headwind to help her go up, and reward her for gaining any height. They usually get the idea pretty soon.

[Hawkmaster]

Good idea in the winds we are getting now. Any good places that work around you MS? I like an Easterly at Labrador Bay.

[Merger]

I have seen many good gamehawks over many years and have flown many falcons, but have not trained many elite ones.Game hawking is different things for different people, some want hieght some want style, some want duck, some pheasant, some grouse. here is what I have done to be very succsesfull,first find a naturarly bouyant falcon, tircels prefered, decide on game bird to fly,for me english partridge,when the falcon starts making a little hieght, flush accordingly, this means for success or failure, you decide? success at one hieght, failure at another, the bird should find its killing pitch very soon, and you wont change it!! The more open the ground, the further the game has to fly, the higher the bird goes? why wait for your bird to take its own pitch, your in charge of the flush, try flushing when he,s pumping,change his thought prosses!! yesterday you flushed at 200 ft today he,s at 400 and still pumping, know if he tires, else he will take a pitch, we all have our own recipe, thats what makes it interesting, this account is of blaine my partridge hawk, a robotic killing machine!!! a male pere/lanner who has taken over 450 head in five years and never ever let me down!! we wont talk about the three hundred or so falcons before him,,one thing we should all agree on though, almost never ever fly a game hawk, for no game!!

[GregMik]

So Greg would you say they do this?


Basic training
Kite Work
Baggies
On to Game:?:

2.5 Kite with baggies

Greg

[Accipitra]

If I flew longwings(Never have)
And lived in america :wink: (Which I dont:( )

I would say

1. Basic training
2. Lure work
3. Pigeons
4. More pigeons
5. Even more pigeons
6. Game

[Hawkmaster]

Mmmm I found pigeons in South Africa were an evil thing to get into.

[MattSpar]

As I've said before, I am absolutely against the use of bagged quarry, whether legal or not, but that aside, why teach your falcon to check at pigeons?

[GregMik]

If I flew longwings(Never have)
And lived in america :wink: (Which I dont:( )

I would say

1. Basic training
2. Lure work
3. Pigeons
4. More pigeons
5. Even more pigeons
6. Game

The problem with this Rhi is that pigeons carry desease and they are everywhere so it is hard to keep a loft 'Clean". If you were flying a Peregrine it is fine. But a Gyr or a Gyr hybrid it isn't the best. But there are alot of guy down south that use pigeons for Peregrines. I live in Minnesota so the Peregrine isn't used as much a Gyr or Gyr hybrid.




Greg

[Merger]

agreed, FLUSH ONLY GAME BIRDS, falcons cannot resist, there almost non directional in flight, wich any falcon will come to adore!!

[Sprout]

The idea of pigeons is the falcon DOESn'T catch them, ie put out when out of position. This hopefully teaches them they can't catch pigeon

[GregMik]

The idea of pigeons is the falcon DOESn'T catch them, ie put out when out of position. This hopefully teaches them they can't catch pigeon

If we want to talk pigeons lets start another thread. Paul wanted to keep this on topic.

Greg

[Hawkmaster]

why teach your falcon to check at pigeons?
Unfortunately they learn it far too easily without help from baggies.

[James_Falconry1]

Ive seen some ppl use pigeons and as SJ's apprentice for 6 years i was taught game hawkin and one thing he said and has stuck is,

"if you dont want ur hawk to fly check e.g. pigeons why the hell chuck em out as either baggies for them to catch or when the hawk is out of position and to teach it a lesson to either go up or stay ryt ova head".

thts just teachin it to folow pigeons if it catches 1 it cud lead to more.

Id go
1.basic training only lure swing to teach first turn
2.Kite training
3.get the hawk goin up to kite with no lure and make a slip underneath
4. remove kite nd c wot happens if good put it away til nxt year if not use for a bit longer until weaned off it.
5. lots of easy slips for confidence and build the hawk up.

My ideas havent ever trained a gmehawk but being around them solely for 6 years thts wot i wud say.
Hopefully nxt year will be my year on greys if my plans work.

Jimmy

[MattSpar]

The idea of pigeons is the falcon DOESn'T catch them, ie put out when out of position. This hopefully teaches them they can't catch pigeon

My own view is that flushing anything, pigeons or otherwise with your hawk out of position will only encourage it to tail chase, and she will learn nothing of value. Far better to present her with legitimate quarry, properly flushed, and allow success to wed her to it. It's a mistake, in my opinion, to intentionally allow a falcon to have anything to do with pigeons.

[Sprout]

Thats my theory too, I don't use pigeon, just concentrate on the quarry that I want to fly (partridge). I just posted that for those asking about bagged pigeons.

[MattSpar]

Thats my theory too, I don't use pigeon, just concentrate on the quarry that I want to fly (partridge). I just posted that for those asking about bagged pigeons.

Ah, misunderstood your meaning there.

[James_Falconry1]

The idea of pigeons is the falcon DOESn'T catch them, ie put out when out of position. This hopefully teaches them they can't catch pigeon


If you dont introduce the pigeon it wunt try and catch it in the first place.
If the hawk can c the pigeon is comin frm u like it links the game bird with u or dog, it will always associate u wid food and pigeon wid u nd it food.
If tht makes any sense.
thts wot i think anyway


jimmy

[Falconry Equipment International]

Hi james et al
I was inticed to respond earlier but am pleased to wait until now to respond as the thread has developed.
Please bear in mind James ( I thinkk:wink: has only had gamehawking experience with me , my friends including Mr RW TURNER) so this may be an abridged insight into this discipline) but my personal thoughts are: why fly a gamehawk at a check species , be it , pidgeon, corvids or Gulls if you want to maintan some sort of conmtrol over the hawk?
I know the idea is for the hawk to miss the the 'baggie' / check species, but IME i have seen the oposite ,ie ie potential star killing a homer etc:evil: surely this cannot be eficatious or pertinent to the lositive motivationb nof a gamehawk??? HTH J

[Hawkmaster]

I have also experienced birds going on pigeons and they have never seen them before other than in the field, so check on them will happen in some cases, not saying use them, unless you want to catch them that is?

So what steps would you use SJ?

[Merger]

ps,I have another secret for you, when bringing on a new falcon I attach THREE bells one on the tail, my falcons sound like a morris dancer ,airbourne, but they cant get whithin thousand yards of any flying bird, except the gamebird lying tight in front of you, you have taken away its stealth!!!

[James_Falconry1]

Hi james et al
I was inticed to respond earlier but am pleased to wait until now to respond as the thread has developed.
Please bear in mind James ( I thinkk:wink: has only had gamehawking experience with me , my friends including Mr RW TURNER) so this may be an abridged insight into this discipline) but my personal thoughts are: why fly a gamehawk at a check species , be it , pidgeon, corvids or Gulls if you want to maintan some sort of conmtrol over the hawk?
I know the idea is for the hawk to miss the the 'baggie' / check species, but IME i have seen the oposite ,ie ie potential star killing a homer etc:evil: surely this cannot be eficatious or pertinent to the lositive motivationb nof a gamehawk??? HTH J

Thas what I meant to say in a round about way. If I understood what eficatious, pertinent and lositive meant i would probably agree and say yes to that too.
Im going to find a dictionary website for those words.
Jimmy

[Hawkmaster]

Good tip Merger!

Jimmy can you type that in English please?:lol:

[Sprout]

What about wind and poisition? I've been out with a few people this year who have oppisite ideas of when to flush - one walks around the dog to head the point and flushes downwind over the dogs head, the other uses the dog to flush hence an into wind flight - both seemed to ahve good success but what do most people prefer/get most success from??

[MattSpar]

ps,I have another secret for you, when bringing on a new falcon I attach THREE bells one on the tail, my falcons sound like a morris dancer ,airbourne, but they cant get whithin thousand yards of any flying bird, except the gamebird lying tight in front of you, you have taken away its stealth!!!

That's odd. I've never found the sound of bells frightens anything, since the quarry doesn't connect the sound of bells with the presence of a predator. The sight of a falcon in the air yes, but the sound of bells, no, at least in my experience.

[Falconry Equipment International]

I have also experienced birds going on pigeons and they have never seen them before other than in the field, so check on them will happen in some cases, not saying use them, unless you want to catch them that is?

So what steps would you use SJ?
I to a certain extent I have seen thisn happen with hybred, however this a,lso happens with pure peregrinus. IMHO why train a falcon to be super fit, ewhena ll you nwant it to do is 1,000' + :LOL: & then stoop on demand, if it was that easy ( & after all this is the easy part, the prob is keeping pitch:shock: :roll: ) HTH & makes sense any more advice on this either get a coy of r
RWT's Book or mine !
ATB J

[Hawkmaster]

I have always only done it with the bird up wind and flush from behind the dog in theory.

[Barbary Boy]

thats odd? ive seen many many morris dancers and never seen a game bird any where near them?well ive seen "game birds" but no pheasants or partridge?

[Hawkmaster]

You have a book?

[Hacker]

jolly good job we are not trying to teach them grammar , what!:supz: :supz: :supz:

[Falconry Equipment International]

jolly good job we are not trying to teach them grammar , what!:supz: :supz: :supz:
sorry Hacker, I should have posted, although most folk know I am profoundly dislexyc HTH J

[Hacker]

not you m8 some of the other posts!

[Falconry Equipment International]

You have a book? Oh yes ATM just over 400,000 words, not a lot but almost as much as Glasiers 'Bible' ( will prob be trimmed before fimnal cut' :lol:

[Falconry Equipment International]

not you m8 some of the other posts! Ok M8 no probs, conatct me monday am uhav econtact details

[Hacker]

gave your missus details friday julian.

[Berkut]

The idea of pigeons is the falcon DOESn'T catch them, ie put out when out of position. This hopefully teaches them they can't catch pigeon
SPOT ON !!! It also teaches them to concentrate on the stoop and that to a degree a tail chase is fruitless.

[Hacker]

Have you noticed that people are coming on thread and starting to use the same shorthand that they would use for texting on their mobile phone.
Well, time on here is free so why do they not use the english language as taught by their schools, if they went!
Save mobile texting for their pay as you go`s.:evil:

[Hawkmaster]

The only floor in that train of thought is that falcons don't equate logic the way we do?

[Falconry Equipment International]

gave your missus details friday julian.
:roll: :shock: she is in Cornwall till tuesday! callme b4 10 on moonday m8 ATB J

[Hacker]

Sorry about hijacking the thread.

[Falconry Equipment International]

:rolleyes: :roll: :lol: :lol: The only floor in that train of thought is that falcons don't equate logic the way we do?

[Falconry Equipment International]

Have you noticed that people are coming on thread and starting to use the same shorthand that they would use for texting on their mobile phone.
Well, time on here is free so why do they not use the english language as taught by their schools, if they went!
Save mobile texting for their pay as you go`s.:evil:
D
Quite agree Richard although as yoiu know I struggle with typing look foirward to hearing from yoiu momf=day ( did wait around till middAY THE OTYHER DAY ATB J

[Red-Devil]

What would you normally do to train up a HIGH flying gamehawk?

Lets keep this thread 100% ontrack and simply use the following:

Style
or
format
to
get
the
message
across?:D
keep on track

[Hacker]

:D :D Sorry about hijacking the thread.

[Falconry Equipment International]

:D :D ME TOO :OOPS:

[Tim Laycock]

The idea of pigeons is the falcon DOESn'T catch them, ie put out when out of position. This hopefully teaches them they can't catch pigeon

yes and no, I had always thought that an intact pigeon was deployed as a punishment and a pigeon turned into a "Hun" :twisted: was a prize.
(Best not to expand on this:twisted: :lol: )

[Falconry Equipment International]

yes and no, I had always thought that an intact pigeon was deployed as a punishment and a pigeon turned into a "Hun" :twisted: was a prize.
(Best not to expand on this:twisted: :lol: )
Yeah Bb , but in my moderate experience ( ie 2 times I have witnessed tis over 15 yrs , both times the hawk has killed the pidgeon int the stoop :shock: not a good lesson anyway it looks IMHO ATB J

[Accipitra]

a pigeon turned into a "Hun"

You bad boy:twisted: 8-)

[Merger]

first noticed the difference bells made about 15 years ago, flicking goshawks out of the car window at crows, about fifty, fifty sucsess rate till we put cellotape over the bell slits!! caught the next seven crows on the trot!! someone mentioned that birds dont relate bells with predators, course they dont, they dont recognise starting pistols eithier, but they still take off! prey will react to noise of any sort, just how acute it is has to worked on, hope this thread on gamehawks continues as a lot could be aired, as to different tactics!

[Sprout]

Hope it continues too - hardly anyone has posted their techniques at all. I think timing of the flush is one of the most important aspects of developing pitch hence my question of when/what position do people flush in.

[Merger]

agreed, sadly this is so critical that I have found it takes bloody years of practise to get it right, I have found hieght irelivant, but birds position of upmost importance, remember you are trying to teach thro sucsess and failure, I belive the only two things a predator will understand in his world not ours!!

[Merger]

I thought we were going to see some good game hawking recipes on this thread, looks like theres not so many game hawkers in the uk as I thought, or perhaps you just downt want to disclose them!!!

[Hacker]

I`ll let you know when i find out what works, for now just keep on plugging away!
Flying on more enclosed downland so i do not think height attained will be as high in feet as on more open ground.
More of a mix between pursuit and waiting on, we will see?

[Bird_Dog]

A falconer out of Boise Idaho recently wrote an article titled "How to Train a Sky Buster" or something like that published in American Falconry. His technique for training really really high flying falcons involved pigeons and soaring. Some have said that is bad to throw out a pigeon or to ever a falcon catch a pigeon. Perhaps they are short cuts to training. The worst thing is to flag a pigeon to get your falcon to wait-on, but tossing out a pigeon to chase seems less agregious to me. How do solve the problem of sitting then? None of my birds are sky busters, but I had a couple that do well flying ducks on "big water". Many duck hawkers, it seems perfer to find the easiest i.e. smallest pond to fly. Although easy slips are more productive in number of kills the "style" seem less impressive. Now my birds aren't robots they adust their pitch according to the size of the pond. I've kite trained to 1000 ft the last 3 falcons I've trained, but none of them take the 1000 ft pitch when I hunt them on ducks. Perhaps a time tested one-way of training a high pitch is to not flush quarry unless it acheive the desired height. This might require calling the falcon down and flying it a second time. I've done this occasionally, but always worried about frustating the bird to the point that it won't wait-on.

-- BIRD_DOG

[Hawkmaster]

I found it hard to get any kind of height now with the last bird and the pervious one only did about 500 foot and he would happily fly 2000 to the kite.

It can be done as Dave Scott has proved down here in Devon!

Maybe I should ask him his secret?

[Jack Merlin]

I don't consider myself a long-winger but I have been lucky enough to witness some of the best. I do believe I've worked my dogs for THE best game hawker in the country. Someone probably unknown to this generation but who has been flying peregrines at red grouse for the last 36 seasons without a miss. I saw one of this man's falcons go up out of sight in a cloudless sky a couple of seasons ago. Now that is impressive!

The advice I've had is (a) to flush while the falcon is still mounting, i.e. before it sets its wings, and (b) flush with the falcon "out of position", i.e. out to one side.

Both will tend to encourage a falcon to go higher. The first because it still has energy left to mount, and the second because it will realize that it needs to be high because that b*st*rd down there is probably going to flush at the wrong moment! The higher the pitch, the wider the area covered.

If you flush when the falcon has set its wings, it will learn that that is what brings success and set when IT is ready (falcon trains falconer). If it is still mounting, the falconer can wait a little longer each day and the falcon will continue to go up higher and higher (falconer trains falcon).

But what do I know? I'm a goshawker!<g>

[Puzo]

Iv'e never quite understood the obsession with height. Surely there is an optimum pitch maybe around 500/600ft. In a downwind stoop from this height the bird has enough weight to bowl over a cock pheasant & mannages to get down to it before the pheasant gets into cover.

[Hawkmaster]

:heart: BUT, there is nothing like a spot coming down to explode into a ball of frantic feathers from an awesome height with a wind tearing scream!:heart:

[BestBeagler]

This is true a young falcon even if it is up a 1000ft will stoop slower then an experienced bird an the same height. A young falcon will open up its wings to slow itself down. In other words a young bird will stoop at the speed it is most comfortable with. In time and many stoops later the bird will feel comfortable and stoop at a faster speed. I have never flown a longwing and everything I know about them is thru the many books and articles I have read. I just thought I would throw this thought into the thread. To answer Puzo's question, there is just something longwingers love about watching a falcon whistle down from a thousand feet rather then 500/600ft. Isaac

Iv'e never quite understood the obsession with height. Surely there is an optimum pitch maybe around 500/600ft. In a downwind stoop from this height the bird has enough weight to bowl over a cock pheasant & mannages to get down to it before the pheasant gets into cover.

[Jack Merlin]

Iv'e never quite understood the obsession with height. Surely there is an optimum pitch maybe around 500/600ft. In a downwind stoop from this height the bird has enough weight to bowl over a cock pheasant & mannages to get down to it before the pheasant gets into cover.

Depends whether you are interested in showing sport or just killing things.

"It is not the frequency of the occurrence but the quality of the performance".

Don't worry about it.

[Jack Merlin]

I found it hard to get any kind of height now with the last bird and the pervious one only did about 500 foot and he would happily fly 2000 to the kite.

It can be done as Dave Scott has proved down here in Devon!

Maybe I should ask him his secret?

From what I've been told, a bird of prey gets satisfaction from the mere act of flying quarry. Better, of course, if it gets a kill.

So, if it learns that it will get to fly game at 500 feet (i.e. the falconer flushes game for it at this height) and make the occasional kill from that height, why bother going higher?

That, at any rate, is the theory! Unfortunately, it sometimes takes a while for the penny to drop. So we devise ways to put the bird into a position so it can learn that height gives it an advantage, and a low pitch denies it these pleasures.

So some use the kite, others fly where there is an up-draft, others are selective about the flush, etc., etc.

At least, that's what they tell me.<vbg>

[Merger]

Sounds like pretty simaliar storys here, as experience takes over, and your tricks run out! the falcon will find its killing cone depending on the ground it is flown on,! have a well renowned tircel pere/lanner here called blaine, earned his name after his first season, of 65 partridge, has taken in excess of 450 head over six seasons, his pitch on my own ground about 400 ft, on more open ground, double that, on open ground thats hilly, awsome! however more unique than this, he has never not mounted, and has never, ever, checked!!! this to me means more than any hieght! I am thinking of taking on another tircel this season, and training the same way as blaine, but in reality I think I flown the best gamehawk that I will ever fly, but Ill, keep trying!! Have other gamehawkers found that their birds will find their own pitch, depending on ground.