Weight Control.

[DesO'Neile]

Things were nice and simple with my Harris Hawk. At 1.15 3/4 she flew hard to my fist. At 1.15 1/4 she would fly through brick walls. The tolerances were fine but the required weight was easily achieved.
I am intrigued by some posts concerning the required weight for the sort of bird I am getting a ¾ Gyr/Saker. The impression I get is that depending on the quarry there might be three or four weights at which you might fly a particular bird. If I read it correctly there was one post where the falconer said that the variance for his bird (female) depending on quarry could be three ounces.
Am I picking this up wrong?

[Matthew Patching]

what are you intending to fly this bird at, and what are your motives for doing so?

[DesO'Neile]

Pheasant. As for motives, why do you need to know that information to answer my question?

[Matthew Patching]

As for motives, why do you need to know that information to answer my question?

Because it tells me how passionate you may be about getting it right!

Are you intending to hunt from a waiting on possition with the bird, using pointers, or spotting, or are you intending attemting to hunt the pheasants off the fist.

There is alot more information, required before a balanced answer can be given to your question!

[Sprout]

Pheasant. As for motives, why do you need to know that information to answer my question?

Agree Des, your motives are yours, and yours only!! Whatever, you'll work it out and have fun in the end. Most things in this game are common sense - so you'll be fine.
Hopefully you'll get some useful answers to your question soon.

[Jack]

A gyr/Saker can be a very large bird if it is a female. Hawks will all have a window of weight where they will fly game well, and a hawk or falcon this large can easily have a 3 ounce window. That is, from the center of that window you will have a good ounce and a half up or down where you will see little difference in performance. Sometimes it does require manipulation of this window of weight when going from feather to fur. Or even back the other way. It will depend on how much the falcon might be intimidated by the quarry. Or it might also depend on just how much confidence the falcon has with flying winged quarry.
It is much easier and much safer to determine the birds upper end of flying weight. I like to play with the weight to determine this for myself. If you continue to let the falcons weight rise it will eventually start taking control away from you. The lure response is less than perfect. The lower end is more difficult to find because once the hawk is down enough to respond instantly, it will continue to respond that way until it just gets too weak to want to respond. So once I find that upper end, I like to come down to what I would consider to be a good center and hold there. For a large bird that will be more than for a real small one. So a gyr/saker female I would feel fairly safe in working it down an ounce and a half and hold there. That way if you make a slight mistake on feeding you can miss that weight up or down some and still be safe and still in the ball park. I have friends that prefer to fly their birds at the highest response weight, but this does not allow for any mistakes. If you over feed the bird a couple of days running it might just stop working for you and you are out of business until the hawk is back down to a safe weight again.

Jack