Crow hawking with imprints

[AnotherGos]

is there anyone on here that hunts rooks with an imprint falcon .ihave a gyr /barb that has been at tame hack for nearly five weeks it seems as if he has a mile seclusion zone around the hack site he will stay on the wing for over an hour chasing any thing that flys but he detests crows and rooks he will fly them into the ground and do about twenty stoops at them but will not bind he has been fed on carcases. any advice:?:

[Mark Collins]

Hi Dave , cut out his morning feed, mark.

[AnotherGos]

hi mark stopped his early snack this morn. he dropped 8 grams stayed alot closer. cant believe how long he stays up for one hour eighteen mins today called into lure started plumming. then a crow flew past 400 yards away he left lure and chased it into hawthorn then came back his weight is around the 1lb 6 1/2 to 1lb 7oz

[StoopDoggyDogg]

get a parent reared bird, they are much easier !

my imprint is doing my head right in !


is there anyone on here that hunts rooks with an imprint falcon .ihave a gyr /barb that has been at tame hack for nearly five weeks it seems as if he has a mile seclusion zone around the hack site he will stay on the wing for over an hour chasing any thing that flys but he detests crows and rooks he will fly them into the ground and do about twenty stoops at them but will not bind he has been fed on carcases. any advice:?:

[scorpiooo]

The gyr-barbary should be a great bird to hunt. So you fed your bird on a corvid carcas,....some falcons don't like the taste! My gry-peregrine likes the flavor of corvids, however, if your bird doesn't especially like the taste, then immediately after the kill, give your bird pigeon meat as a substitute.
But this didn't answer your original question. The fact that your bird is chasing with vigor the corvids with repeated stoops is a great start with your bird,...now the final kill needs to take place,....I think that will come with time and a little more flying experience with more encounters with the corvids should accomplish the kill soon enough.
When your bird fed on the corvid carcas did it look like she enjoyed the taste? Sometimes the corvid pack of several birds is a threat to the falcon, expecially when the corvids come in to mob the falcon on the ground or distract the falcon on the ground. Has this ever happened before. Or, sometimes when the falcon binds to the corvid, they fight back by pecking at the falcons head, resulting in little droplets of blood on the head of the falcon. If your bird has experienced this, it could be a small drawback. Lowering the weight of the falcon should also increase the falcon's desire to bind to the corvid. The hour + time spent in the air is a plus, to be proud. That's great. So you are lure flying the falcon in the field, then the falcon breaks off and chases the corvid. This tells me your lure flying and perhaps the small feedings of small scraps of food between lure flights could be the problem. I would suggest if your bird already will fly for an hour, your falcon is probably already lure trained already,...so I would eliminate the lure exercise all together because the falcon is logging in "air time" for exercise and mustle build-up. But the thought I had in mind was this: Just launch your falcon in the field with the corvids, and assume you are going to have only one flight, which will last for what ever length of time, don't use the lure for exercise, but just let your falcon loose in the corvid area and wait for your bird to get a kill. So what we have here is no more tigbits of food given,....just one long extented period where the bird is in kind of tame hack, but ready to make a kill, because you are not providing any small foods to keep him in close to you and forcing the issue of the falcon to make a kill in order to eat for that day. This approach works better, because you are forcing the falcon to be more independent of you the trainer with the easy food. Later if he stoops many times but doesn't make a kill, just end the day with the lure and a small tidbit of food only. Take the bird home, still hungry, and let the falcon think about it for several hours, then late in the evening feed the falcon the normal daily rations. So in conclusion since the falcon flies for an hour, that's his exercise, so don't use the lure anymore, except to bring him down,....and the rest of the long time spent in the field, the falcon will have to be more independent to make a kill, because you are no longer the easy food source.

roger g

[Jack]

Dave, the fact that he left the carcus or lure to chase the crow tells me that it is not a hunting move but more like a territorial thing. The crows and other members of the family like to harrass the falcons, and this can make them dislike them a great deal. Also, leaving the lure tells me that the weight is not quite right yet. It probably will not take a great deal of adjustment, but I bet it will take some. I have to tell you. I find the imprints hell to read sometimes. They are not much different in their nature from PR or passage birds, but they lie a lot.

Jack

[Game & Pursuit Falcon UK]

The gyr-barbary should be a great bird to hunt. So you fed your bird on a corvid carcas,....some falcons don't like the taste! My gry-peregrine likes the flavor of corvids, however, if your bird doesn't especially like the taste, then immediately after the kill, give your bird pigeon meat as a substitute.
But this didn't answer your original question. The fact that your bird is chasing with vigor the corvids with repeated stoops is a great start with your bird,...now the final kill needs to take place,....I think that will come with time and a little more flying experience with more encounters with the corvids should accomplish the kill soon enough.
When your bird fed on the corvid carcas did it look like she enjoyed the taste? Sometimes the corvid pack of several birds is a threat to the falcon, expecially when the corvids come in to mob the falcon on the ground or distract the falcon on the ground. Has this ever happened before. Or, sometimes when the falcon binds to the corvid, they fight back by pecking at the falcons head, resulting in little droplets of blood on the head of the falcon. If your bird has experienced this, it could be a small drawback. Lowering the weight of the falcon should also increase the falcon's desire to bind to the corvid. The hour + time spent in the air is a plus, to be proud. That's great. So you are lure flying the falcon in the field, then the falcon breaks off and chases the corvid. This tells me your lure flying and perhaps the small feedings of small scraps of food between lure flights could be the problem. I would suggest if your bird already will fly for an hour, your falcon is probably already lure trained already,...so I would eliminate the lure exercise all together because the falcon is logging in "air time" for exercise and mustle build-up. But the thought I had in mind was this: Just launch your falcon in the field with the corvids, and assume you are going to have only one flight, which will last for what ever length of time, don't use the lure for exercise, but just let your falcon loose in the corvid area and wait for your bird to get a kill. So what we have here is no more tigbits of food given,....just one long extented period where the bird is in kind of tame hack, but ready to make a kill, because you are not providing any small foods to keep him in close to you and forcing the issue of the falcon to make a kill in order to eat for that day. This approach works better, because you are forcing the falcon to be more independent of you the trainer with the easy food. Later if he stoops many times but doesn't make a kill, just end the day with the lure and a small tidbit of food only. Take the bird home, still hungry, and let the falcon think about it for several hours, then late in the evening feed the falcon the normal daily rations. So in conclusion since the falcon flies for an hour, that's his exercise, so don't use the lure anymore, except to bring him down,....and the rest of the long time spent in the field, the falcon will have to be more independent to make a kill, because you are no longer the easy food source.

roger g


Top post! But use quail instead of pigeon, seen too much frounce this year in birds.

[AnotherGos]

thanx scorpiooo., the falcon is only recalled to lure to get fed at end of hack he cannot stand the taste of corvids i pull the breast of the rook and replace with a quail put skin and feathers back so he thinks that it tastes good.. the hour and a half flying is just one continous flying time in his four to five hour tame hack but have now been informed that you cant call this hack by pm. have also been told that you cant drop their weights and have to wait till they grow up and this could take a season

[MattSpar]

If your falcon knows it doesn't like the taste of crows, there's no incentive for it to catch them is there?

You seem to be in a catch 22 situation. You need to reduce its weight to make it appreciate crows as a meal and yet that will initiate screaming.

It seems a great waste of time to have to wait a whole year for it to grow up.

[HorseBox]

An interesting thread i also have a ger/saker i am hoping to fly corvid and there is usually plenty around unfortunately when this big sod gets up the oasis becomes a desert

[Mark Collins]

Dave another idea would be to long lure him to a swung dead crow , as he approaches it stoop him a couple of times and let him have it, you could even cut most of it out [the crow flesh ] and give him fresh quail as a bigger incentive, perhaps binding the quail onto the carcase,mark.

[ValleyFalcons]

is there anyone on here that hunts rooks with an imprint falcon .ihave a gyr /barb that has been at tame hack for nearly five weeks it seems as if he has a mile seclusion zone around the hack site he will stay on the wing for over an hour chasing any thing that flys but he detests crows and rooks he will fly them into the ground and do about twenty stoops at them but will not bind he has been fed on carcases. any advice:?:
the bird is defineatly fit enough to start to enter just a matter time,the only thing that i am worried about is the choice of falcon that you have . in my experiance hes a bit small to do it on a reguler basis, these crows come in gangs and they are getting bigger over the years .the average weight for a crow that i weighed was 1.9oz!

[Mark Collins]

Birds had a couple of owners since this post,and yes some gyr/barb tiercels are a bit on the small size for corvids,mark.

[MattSpar]

So, is there anyone in the UK flying an imprint at rooks regularly, day in, day out, throughout the season, killing most days, with a falcon which does not scream and mantle?

[AyrshireTaxidermy]

KenG has one. A black 1/4 GS. A right pain to get entered but once he got the idea he was ruthless.