Letter to authoriteis concerning use of eagles

[RedNoseK9]

Hi all this is a letter i plan to foward to all authorites envolved in field sports however i would firstly like your support as i will be representing your sport please be honest thankyou





To Whom It may concern,

I am writing you this letter as a concerned experienced falconer, I have been practicing the oldest form of field sport ( the sport of kings) for 7 years and have flown a variety of birds at a variety of quarry and i am a member of a falconry clubs during which period I have crossed paths with a variety of people from all aspects of field sports after a short period in the sport it became obvious that the noble tradition of our sport is very much acknowledged and preserved by the majority of falconers, however like most other sports falconry has its pretenders people who are not in the sport for the love of the birds or to preserve our history but just to possess the ego that is granted by owning one of these magnificent birds. Mike tyson guilty of rape but notall boxers are rapist, rio ferdinand with drugs but not all footballers take drugs flo jo with steriods but not all athletes take steriods every sport has been badly represented but by a very small minority and at the distgust of all true members of the sport.
During the last week the highlights of every news channel and sporting paper has been the subject of falconry been used as away to overturn the ban on hunting foxes, after speaking with multiple falconers about this situation it has become apparent that my concerns are duly shared by the majority and the feeling has been that this blatant disregard for law, Animal welfare and respect has been presented as the general demeanour of all falconers however this is not the case there is absolutely no living soul more disgusted and concerned with these actions than those who truly love and represent our noble art.
The people who are involved in this are not falconers nor are they representing the sport the are merely blood thirsty pro hunt activist who have shown no respect or honour for the sport.
With the rising concern of bird flu falconers have already been dealt a big blow and are not allowed field meets of more than 1 bird and with the mention of banning all field sports we are all devastated our sport is an ancient and noble sport and with true falconers it is represented as it is THE SPORT OF KINGS
Kind regards
Wesley murch

Concerned for the sport

[Horus]

Hi your letter is a good idea. I think, however, that as it is intended for official bodies it could be couched in different terms and the grammar and spelling improved. Sorry to sound like an arrogant ****:):oops: But if you want to make an impact it does need improvement.

[Flying High]

nice letter. i have also wrote a letter along the same lines to a few of the news paper regarding there articles. asking them if it is not about time they got a real falconers view on all of this.

[Graham Stuart]

i agree but get spell check on mate, we should cut the toffs ball's off and feed them to the EEO's:supz: they use

[MattSpar]

As Horus states, the basic idea is good, but the letter as it stands, is syntactically and grammatically clumsy, and the spelling is poor. I suggest some improvement if you wish anyone to take it seriously. I don't mean to patronise here, it's a good idea.

[Graham Stuart]

stop bieng so patronising matt:wink:

[RedNoseK9]

Very valid points this was just a draft obviou grammar and spelling editorial will be taken care of thankyou

[MattSpar]

Better that, than have someone send a letter which merely raises a wry smile before ending up in the bin. As I say, it's a sound idea.

[FlameHairedFalconer]

Here is a copy of a letter that I sent to the CE of the Countryside Alliance.

Dear Sir,

Hunting with Hounds and Falconry

I have read with sadness and dismay the recent media reports regarding some hunts using large owls and eagles in the guise of falconry to facilitate hunting with hounds.

As a falconer of 13 years, and a supporter of the Countryside Alliance, I am thoroughly disgusted as this behaviour. Falconers have supported and marched alongside hunt supporters to try and stop the ridiculous Hunting Act 2004 becoming law, only to have you bring our noble and ancient sport into considerable disrepute through these hunts thoughtless actions.

I can understand the need to find so called ‘loopholes’ in the law in order to show the unworkability of the Act, but to do so by perverting another field sport and placing other hunting animals at considerable risk of death or serious injury, I find utterly despicable.

I now genuinely believe that if the shoe had been on the other foot, and it was falconry at risk of being banned, you and your members would have shuffled quickly off into the shadows in order to make sure the spotlight was not shone on your sport. Please note that falconers did not do this. We stood up for you and shouted out support from the rooftops, despite any perceived threat to our own sport.

In return you and your members’ decide to attempt to ensure that our 3000 year old, but minority sport, is placed in the worst possible light in front of the national media. I urge you to ensure that the hunts who are undertaking this course of action cease and desist immediately and hand over any eagles, hawks or owls purchased for this pursuit to people who can care for them properly.

However, until this action is taken I will be ensuring that my family revoke their membership of your organisation and will be recommending to anyone else that I know to do the same. I enclose my wristband, until so recently worn with pride, and will be removing my car sticker proclaiming that I was one of the 470,000 people who marched on London in 2003, again something that until recently I was so proud of doing.

I truly hope that you and your members are ashamed of their conduct. Should I see a published apology to all falconers, in a national newspaper, by your organisation and all the hunts who have been party to this disgraceful behaviour, you can be assured of my future support in your fight to overturn the Act.

Yours sincerely,

FHF

[Horus]

Good Letter FHF. Hope it shakes them up:supz:

[MattSpar]

An excellent protest FHF. I have sent one in a very similar vein to CA, and also to my MP. Let it be said that anyone subscribing to this forum who does not protest in this way should be ashamed. The price is only that of a little time and a first class stamp. What price our sport?

[Hawkmaster]

Surley we can email this around to them just as easily? Anyone want to see if they can guide us on how to do it?

[Hawkmaster]

No also a good idea! We need someone to take control now and make it work.

[GiantsEye]

Excellent letter mate.

Personally I would prefer to string them up by their short and curlies for bringing our sport into disripute.:-x

Every news station and all the papers should be told about these idiots, and to see us with our birds.

I think we should all start voicing our opinions......and they might start taking notice.

[ScotsFalconer]

i personally think that everyone should get of there high horse, stop pretending that you are all experts in your fields, leave the letter writing to proper professional falconers who have the knowledge and experience to write convincing letters to important people. Although you may think that what you are doing is helping the sport it is infact making people more aware of the fact that there are idiots out there hence giving a side to the sport an extremely bad name.

[FlameHairedFalconer]

i personally think that everyone should get of there high horse, stop pretending that you are all experts in your fields, leave the letter writing to proper professional falconers who have the knowledge and experience to write convincing letters to important people. Although you may think that what you are doing is helping the sport it is infact making people more aware of the fact that there are idiots out there hence giving a side to the sport an extremely bad name.

In real life I am a professional person, albeit not a 'professional' falconer whatever the hell that is. I am qualified to postgraduate level and am currently undertaking a Masters degree. So in what way is a professional falconer going to write a better letter than me? How is his letter likely to be more convincing?

I am more than qualified to make a protest to whomever I like on this subject being a british citizen and therefore a member of this democracy, as is any other british member of this forum.

So perhaps you should get off your high horse and realise that unless we all stand together 'professional' and 'unprofessional' alike we are likely to lose our sport altogether.

FHF

[As The Falcon Her Bells]

as the subject is brought up, I think please we should do remember something very, very important. If we can not stick together the antis has already won. The one thing all antis and "do gooders, bunny huggers" orginasations have in comon is that they stick together for a comon goal. if we now separate in to groups, falconers, hare corsers, fox hunters etc. it gives the antis a better chanse to win. In the end of the day, even stuck together we still are a minioroty (god my spelling is appaling, Im obvioulsly not english, sorry). As a minioroty you always have to fight 10 times harder to get heard. Also, antis actually get money by propaganda (how many of us have not seen a "save the fox, donate money against fox hunting" advert?) So they will not stop something that gives them money. What I am bladdering on about is that not all fox hunters use bop's to get around the bann, not all fox hunters are positive towards this loop hole, so do not do the misstake done so many times before, judging everyone by the few people who behave badly, lets still support their agenda and their sport, lets support the hunters that do not use bop's. I do strongly belive that only if we are united can we survive in the long term
Dont forget a lot of falconers are also foxhunters, but do not mix the sports.

[As The Falcon Her Bells]

Sorry fhf did not read your reply there, did not mean to enterupt you, sorry. If I knew how to do a blushing smile there I would

[Barbary Boy]

my friends and next door neighbours were out with the morpeth hunt today, no antis or police in sight no bird of prey present either, two foxes caught?

[FlameHairedFalconer]

s'alright ATFHB :)

I know where you are coming from

FHF

[As The Falcon Her Bells]

we had the hunts here the other week training in young hounds, no antis, no coppers, they are coming back in Dec. Do not carry bop's but the huntsman keeps a gun on him, that he has a licence for.

[FlameHairedFalconer]

my friends and next door neighbours were out with the morpeth hunt today, no antis or police in sight no bird of prey present either, two foxes caught?

A massive dog fox ran across infront of me on the A697 southbound just before Longhorsley yesterday. ****** was too fast to hit tho!

FHF

[ScotsFalconer]

all i am trying to say is to leave the letter writing to when it is desperately needed, stop drawing attention to the sport by making local mps think that we r a bunch of ******s pleeding for there pity.

[As The Falcon Her Bells]

Last year we had a fox come in to kill our falcons on blocks, straight in front of us!! Had to run after it, and it came straight back after about 5 minutes!! Got our mate down (hes got a shoot gun licence) and he basiclly walked straight up to it and shot it??!! We took the body to the vet and scanned it for microship thinking it was a relised pet fox ore ex rehab fox, but nothing. Vet said it was in top condition as well!!!
Anyone ever heard of a healthy fox as tame as that?

[Shaun Byrne]

Last year we had a fox come in to kill our falcons on blocks, straight in front of us!! Had to run after it, and it came straight back after about 5 minutes!! Got our mate down (hes got a shoot gun licence) and he basiclly walked straight up to it and shot it??!! We took the body to the vet and scanned it for microship thinking it was a relised pet fox ore ex rehab fox, but nothing. Vet said it was in top condition as well!!!
Anyone ever heard of a healthy fox as tame as that?

Is that a Gyr in your hand ATFHB??

[As The Falcon Her Bells]

No its a perlin actually! qute isnt it??

[Barbary Boy]

perhaps MATT might like to write an eloquent piece on our behalf? that would be nice?

[Game & Pursuit Falcon UK]

Please when writing these letters be carefull how they are worded as this can lead to missunderstanding. For instance the thread here has eagles in the title, then no mention. As an eagle falconer myself, Im concerned that the actions of these selfish hunts will have effects on our sport. How easy would it be for some Labour back bencher to ban taking of foxes with eagles completely? Hunts are taking out all sorts of raptors, some incapable of taking this prey. Please make this clear.

[StormRider]

I think weve gone off the thread a bit here. The concern I think that most genuine falconers would have, would be that some Hunts have taken it upon themselves to be clever and use another sport and tradition to favour and strengthen the pursuit of their own. Bearing in mind that the majority of falconers (even if they dont agree with fox hunting with pack hounds) supported the Hunt cause when they were pushed up against a wall. I am sure that the Hunts bods would not appreciate us using their activity in a way that would bring it into disripute. No: they have dropped us like a tonne of bricks and **** all over everything that we love and strive to protect. Even more: they have gone out of their way to do all of this in the press and on TV. This says something for the hunts who have not subscribed to using birds. Have they publicly gone out of their way in the press and TV to denounce the hunts who are training the birds? I think not.
I supported the call to protect the Hunts purely from a right to practice Age Old Traditions. I do not like how they do it, just like some may not agree with us guys owning and traing birds of prey in captivity, but I still stood by them.
I am sorry, but no more will I look to protect any other cause other than our own. We turned our backs for one second and they shat on all of us, beginners, novices, professionals alike.
i totally agree with the previous posts in this thread that we need to form our own alliance and fight only our corner. If we dont do this now then we may be looking at our own armageddon, which was assisted by our neighbouring huntsmen on horses.
There are a number of main differences between us and them. We do what we do looking like **** most of the time for the purpose of allowing our birds to do what they would normally do in the wild. We do what we do purely out of the love of allowing the bird to be free for that specific moment in time. Huntsmen dress up like tarts and prance about on horses. Then they go about in the belief that they are allowed in most areas as long as they are on the chase and damaging anything that gets in their way.
I was nearly killed a number of years ago by a hunt who chased their pack over a main road directly infront of my car. My car was written off. Not one person stopped to check on me. And for some daft reason I stood by them when the chips were down.
Lets get our petition together, and lets do it for the right reasons:to protect our right to practice falconry.
One other thing: Do any of us know of any falconer who is supplying them with birds or teaching them our practices? If any of us do, then we should be making efforts to send these guys to Australia on wooden ships with no food. they should be banned by our organisations from memberships.

[Hells99]

I can't help thinking that this ban on hunting with hounds is far more a 'class' issue than an altruistic one.
IMHO the ban wouldn't have happened under a tory government but Tony Bliar is appealing to 'working class' people for support - many of us would not have access to the amount of money required to participate regularly in hunts.
Problem is, falconry is probably (wrongly) associated with the monied classes as well and will potentially be the next one on the list for this government.
The lack of knowledge surrounding falconry and the 'chippiness' of the Labour government could well be it's undoing.
I don't really know what I'm getting at here - do we keep our heads below the parapet and hope not to get them shot off or would it be better to educate Joe Public and enrol him/her on our side?

[StormRider]

I do agree. Thats why myself and a few others up near me have formed our group. We do an awful amount of voluntary work trying to educate kids and their parents in schools and shopping centres. As a group we receive quite alot of wild raptors injured through RTA's, shootings etc. We also receive just as many from the Police, RSPCA, etc as a result of seizures from idiot so called unknowlegable breeders. Even more so when Harry potter comes back around.
Obviously, what we do mainly is based around the care and conservation of such species, but this also allowes us to get our foot in the door with regards to explaining the traditional aspects of falconry as a way of life. A lot of parents cant beleive how much time and effort is actually required to own and train just one bird. Of course we always get asked the inevitable 'Do you need a licence to have one of them?' I always respond by giving a vague answer so as to make them feel that yes you do need a licence. My belief in doing this is that I feel it weeds out those who would want to get a bird but dont have the real commitment that should go with it.
As such we have managed to recruit some very young volunteers/apprentices who have really shown a great hunger to learn and help. I see this as a way forward for the future protection of our traditions

[Hardcore Hawker]

Its definately a tricky one this as i dont think the goverment realise how many people are actually out there killing quarry with birds of prey since the majority of falconers fly non indiginous species with no kind of registration now a days, when i purchased my first hawk 20 years ago my BOP Keepers no was something like 1475 i dont even know how many people actively hunt with BOP now, Has anyone a rough estimate based on information received? I personnaly think all field sports will eventually be banned sad i know but thier are more townee twats in london alone than thier are field sportsman in the civilised world and thier opinion will be listened to for the "VOTE".

[Hells99]

Stormrider.

I also do voluntary work at a BOP rescue centre (www.raptorfoundation.org.uk) and spend quite a fair bit of time in shopping centres, marketplaces etc spreading the word. What is your centre called and where is it? I'd like to pay a visit at sometime and see how your setup works.

Helen

[StormRider]

We dont have a centre. We are all practicing falconers who hold jobs as well. Our group was formed due to a number of us regularly receiving calls to take in injured birds. After a while it got to be a bit much financially (transport,etc) so we formed this official community group and are recognised directly by various organisations up here. We are in the process of building a fairly comprehensive avian hospital with various aviaries for rehabilitation. This avian hospital has onsite access to a free vet who has vast experience with raptors. We have a donated purpose built raptor ambulance.
Eventually we will have a purpose built centre which will bring in a revenue to support the other work.