Sometimes Silent

You might say I’m a bit of a Rennaissance gal, I fence, I’ve done archery, and have had an interest in falconry. I blame the movie “LadyHawke” for that last bit as well as having seen a demonstration while at my sister’s Girl Scout troop’s Medieval Times Dinner outing.

Well today I got to go out with a new friend who trains hawks. Last night I attended a fantastic dinner party hosted by this friend and his fiance who is a trained chef. Another chef, leaving town to become the personal chef of the owner of the Venetian, also attended and cooked for us… terrific food and great conversation all around. Of course, we stayed up late so I almost begged off going hawking today.

I’m glad I didn’t. It was great. My friend has a red tailed hawk named Manuka which he has been training to hunt. My boyfriend, he and I went out with the hawk to a field and brush area near a river. For the most part my boyfriend and I acted like hunting dogs and tried to flush out rabbits so that Manuka could spot them. Part of her training was also to get her used to using a perch provided by my friend so that she would learn to stay near him.

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After much bushwacking, we flushed out a rabbit and Manuka almost caught it before it got to its warren. After some more explorations near an abandoned shack, another was discovered in a rusty appliance, it launched out of it and Manuka did catch that one. It was interesting to see that the rabbit itself was unharmed, Manuka’s talons had not punctured it but had just closed upon its neck, not tight enough to choke it. My friend distracted Manuka with food tidbits so he could get the rabbit away.

Unfortunately for the rabbit it was then to be used as training bait. We did that excercise so that Manuka would associate being on a perch with being able to spot a rabbit. The rabbit, oddly enough got away. We weren’t sure why and I didn’t have a clear view of it. It was decided that Manuka may have been disheartened by then and had gotten used to rabbits getting away from her while on the ground.

The whole experience was great fun though and made me appreciate hawks and that we still had wildlife in the world and that the predator / prey cycle was still very much alive and also, balancing.

We called it a day and went back to my friend’s house, where we had left overs from the night before… still quite delicious! Perhaps oddly enough, they also own a pet rabbit. This rabbit had been purchased by a friend of theirs to be hawk bait and possibly hawk food but ended up being adopted. It reminded me of the other bunny I saw today. Rabbits, pets or meat? One rabbit is one, one rabbit is potentially the other. For us humans we can make that decision. For Manuka, the choice is obvious.

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