hobbitboy said:
Awesome! Would love get into falconry but really don't know were to start! Help?
is it possible to hunt with Torin? Am I right in thinking Harris Hawks hunt in "packs" (family groups)?
oh, once again, awesome creature!
acquiring a hawk as not as difficult as I first imagined.
I went to my local hawking center and took lessons on handling and training hawks and found someone who would be happy to help me though the process and answer my endless questions.
I then built an enclosure based on the ones used at the center and put a deposit down on an egg.
the egg hatched and we waited for him to become developed enough to me moved to his new home and I paid 150 pound for him.
the training however is long, exhausting and easy to get wrong.
Harris hawks are indeed pack hunters which makes them considerably easier to train than most other hawks as they begin to see you as the head of the pack.
this pack mentality means that taking torin out is akin to walking a dog, torin simply flies free and follows me closely as I walk returning to the glove only when called.
more and more now he is making kills, so far only Pheasant and a wood pidgion his vision is quite amazing and the first you know of a potential prey is torin hurtling though the trees or across the fields.
When this happens you (as a member of the pack) are expected to keep up, because of the way he is trained and his pack mentality he will attack animals larger than he himself would be able to easily kill (like a fully grown male pheasant or rabbit) he will hold the struggling creature down with great effort waiting for you to arrive and dispatch it.
you also have to have the free time to fly him for 2-3 hours a day, some people claim once or twice a week is fine but I personally feel that this is intolerable, so torin flys every single day for 2-3 hours If you do not have the time to allow this then please do dont take on a hawk.
so its hard work to train them and takes up a lot of time to fly them, but as you can probably see from the photographs it is incredibly rewarding