The Pick-up — pleasing the most difficult customer there is

by Martin Hollinshead

It’s impossible to progress through falconry and not develop a mania for some particular aspect of the sport. It might be a type of hawk, flight, or quarry. It might be a type of rearing or training, but, while trying to gain as rounded an education as possible, the hapless falconer will inevitably find that undoer of so many a sane person, obsession, showing its head. My own weakness is the pick-up. I’m absolutely enslaved by this area of hawk management. I can have the most dramatic flight, see my bird master the most demanding quarry, but unless I operate the very smoothest pick-up, none of it will count for anything. If I get the slightest inkling that I may not have totally satisfied my companion, I’d rather not have killed the quarry. I train with precision and I fly my hawks hard but everything revolves around the pick-up. A visiting falconer recognised the extent of the problem: ‘Your life must be a nightmare!’ And the cause of all this misery is the Harris’ hawk, for no bird in falconry requires more skill.

The Harris’ views the pick-up through a magnifying glass — it doesn’t miss a thing. It’s no great task to forcibly rob a Harris’, to bully it into giving up its prize, but achieving a smooth pick-up requires a good deal of thought. The pondering starts with a common misunderstanding about this species. While often considered a pushover in all respects, the Harris’ is actually quite a complicated bird, and one that requires precise handling. It’s all that fabulous brain-power that makes this so. As one associate put it: ‘They’re a bit too clever for their own good.’ Closer to the truth is that they are a bit too clever for the good of most falconers!

The carefully executed Harris’ pick-up is about striking a deal. However, a big problem for the less experienced falconer, or indeed, the falconer used to dealing with easier to bargain with species, is that the parabuteo isn’t always easy to read; when things are going slightly wrong the bird’s displeasure is not always clear. The scrutinising and thinking-about is a quiet, difficult to detect thing. But rest assured, the mistakes are being logged and it doesn’t take long before the bird registers that things are not being run fairly. The result is that the once easy to pick-up bird not only starts to be possessive with its kills, but also begins to show its lack of interest in other ways.

Normally the Harris’ is a team player. It likes to hunt with its human partner. Group hunting is natural to it. But this is not a game it has to play, and, as kill-stealing creeps in, the bird decides it’s time for a solo act. Now the once willing to please Harris’, the friend, companion and free-following ally, needs to be constantly instructed and manipulated with food — told to do things it once did as a matter of course. The problem shows itself most strongly when things are at their most difficult. The bird that would battle over every hurdle, face the strongest winds, the most demanding terrain, just to work with its partner, now just can’t be bothered. There is absolutely no question, top-quality Harris’ falconry will only be experienced by the falconer who understands the importance of the pick-up.

Feeding From Kills

It is often argued that kill-feeding makes birds possessive over quarry and difficult to pick up. The procedure is often reserved for novice birds or as a reward for an exceptionally impressive deed. My own policy is to do a lot of kill-feeding. I don’t feed from every head of game caught, but I do feed the bird something from the last kill of the day or, if this kill doesn’t come, let it take a reward from one of its earlier victims. This kind of kill-feeding, coupled with a sensitive pick-up, will create a problem only for the quarry — the bird will pursue it as if its very life depended on it.

The Traditional Pick-up

The fundamentals of the pick-up are the same regardless of the species being worked with: the bird must willingly give the quarry up, and be kept from seeing it, and therefore trying to get back to it once the transfer has been made. A silky-smooth operation is what’s being aimed for. There are a couple of ways to achieve this. The traditional pick-up method in Europe is to offer the bird a glove-held reward, while concealing as much of the kill as possible with a hawking bag. As the bird comes onto the glove, the bag-covered quarry is moved over, or turned away from, and discretely moved by an associate or stowed away by the falconer. It’s with this method that most problems occur with the Harris’ — there are simply too many areas where things can go wrong. The falconer thinks he is being careful enough but the bird is noticing more than its partner is aware of, is still thinking about the kill, is giving that poorly concealed bit of leg or ear, corner-of-the-eye consideration. You can almost hear the bird thinking: This isn’t quite right but I’ll go along with it anyway.

Linked to the falconer’s lack of watchfulness is rushing. Moving away from the scene of the kill too quickly is a serious error with the Harris’ and gets it thinking again: There’s something definitely wrong here. Now the seeds are sown and the result is a bird that starts to become reluctant to accept the transfer, eventually keeping hold of the quarry with one foot and the glove with the other. It’s at this point that the less experienced falconer goes down the road of no return — he tries to force the issue. Now the bird knows it was right all along and is more determined than ever to hang on to its prize. The good Harris’ falconer sees potential problems before they arise, and should he make a mistake, his corrective action is so fast and fluid that the bird registers no chance to object. The Harris’ Master’s real secret is that he lets the bird think it’s running the show, while at the end of every performance he ends up with the quarry.

The Reward Itself

The biggest sin with the Harris’ pick-up is offering the bird too-small or too-unappealing a reward. Allowing the bird to calm down after its battle is perhaps an obvious action, but thinking about the reward, its size and type, is a less quickly grasped consideration. That said, it has to be recognised that the kill-fed bird, the bird that knows the joy of eating warm quarry, is obviously going to require more thought than a bird that is never fed from its kills. The carefully handled, kill-fed Harris’, flying at a high weight, makes its feelings about what it considers an acceptable reward very clear. Hunger isn’t making this bird respond for any old offering. Food-type is registered in a flash; from one offering it turns away, while for a similar-sized offering of a different type, it can’t respond quickly enough. This bird would rather have a chocolate than a slice of bread!

It’s surprising how the bird’s liking for a particular quarry will play a part in all of this; one quarry species might be left quite willingly for what the bird considers a more desirable alternative, another might require extreme thoughtfulness on the falconer’s part. Essential, however, is that one very important foundation stone is in place; the bird should never be allowed to gorge itself to a standstill on its prize. The bird must be programmed to expect to finish its meal away from the kill, and this can only be done by enticing it away while it is still keen to feed.

The Ground-reward — The Harris’ hawks’ favourite

With the traditional pick-up or glove-reward transfer noted, the alternative and very successful ground-reward approach needs to be discussed. With this option, the despatched quarry is held by the falconer and a reward is thrown down a little way off. To get the reward the bird must let go of its kill, which the falconer then quickly tucks away. Before praising this method, I must draw attention to its limitations. For example, when hunting over thick undergrowth, something the Harris’ excels at, a kill may be made in a patch where there is no room to use a thrown reward. Then what about kill-feeding? It’s obvious that this method works best with a bird that is sitting on top of an unopened kill; compared with a thickly furred or feathered carcass, a bloody and easily consumed reward looks very appealing. Thus, although it is possible to train in such a manner that an experienced Harris’ will leave an opened kill for a ground-reward (something I will be looking at shortly), this type of pick-up is at its strongest when being used with unopened quarry.

These limitations accepted, the ground-reward pick-up is without doubt the best routine for the Harris’; it provides the perfect market place for any bargaining that needs to take place. In possession of its quarry and not being glove-reward pressurised, it can sit and inspect the falconer’s ground-placed offering and move when it wants to. Or not move, if that horrible bread is on the menu! If treated fairly, offered a tasty reward of sufficient size, a Harris’ won’t be able to leave its kill fast enough. The bird that has been educated to expect only the best of trades will leave its kills or drag them towards its trainer. And this desire is put in place and nurtured by never deliberately allowing the bird to break into its kills; it is programmed to expect its trainer’s help, to see the furry or feathered bundle as almost useless without his help. For this bird, a trade makes perfect sense. If the quarry isn’t going to be opened it doesn’t want it. Much better is what its trainer’s got!

Another benefit of the ground-reward is that it guarantees things don’t move too quickly. As noted, the Harris’ hates being rushed from the scene of a kill. When hunting free-flight fashion, the ground-reward bird can be allowed to nose around and satisfy itself that all the food has gone — and check the quarry isn’t going to make some miraculous reappearance! Having gone into a tree, it can even come down for a last look before moving on.

The biggest challenge the ground-reward has to meet is luring a Harris’ from quarry that has been opened and partially consumed. How can any offering match what the bird has in its feet? As a dedicated rabbit and hare hunter, my own method is geared for dealing with these two types of quarry. All of my training is aimed at developing a bird that sees rabbits and hares as the most worthwhile prey available to it. And just as the quarry is specifically targeted, so too is the reward. Training and hunting orientates the bird to the quarry’s head (essential when pursuing ground game), but all feeding takes place at the chest. A small incision made behind the quarry’s shoulder will immediately grant the bird access to the vital organs of the upper body, a reward it will come to rank above all others. And with repetition, we soon have a Harris that is only interested in these bits of the quarry. What then could be a more suitable ground-reward?

So we have the what part organised, now to the how. Let me use a rabbit hawking session as an example. The bird has caught one rabbit and has come off this (unopened) for a chunk of rabbit meat on the ground. After further hunting a second rabbit is secured and, with the light fading, it is decided to call a halt. Now, I open the rabbit the bird is sitting on and leave her to make a start on her reward. While she is thus occupied, I remove the reward organs from rabbit number one and stash these away ready for the pick-up. I now return to the bird to offer help and, depending on the hawking schedule for the next few days, give her time to eat some of the surrounding carcass. The gloved hand is then placed over the feeding area to cover any exposed flesh, securing the rabbit at the same time, and the reward is put on the ground just out of reach. Off the bird goes for her dessert and into the hawking bag goes the rabbit.

Let me underline the value of the organ reward. While a well-trained Harris’ will leave an opened kill, even a very opened kill, for all manner of rewards, NOTHING encourages it to move faster than its favourite trade. With other rewards, even those that have been especially selected to mimic the vital organs, there is often a bit of hesitation while the bird weighs-up the deal, and weighing-up is something I would rather not have.

Obviously, with single-kill quarry-feeding sessions things need to be handled differently. The reasons for such outings are many and varied; challenging quarry, tough battles, the falconer has to consider the demands on the bird and act accordingly. But one thing is sure, with no previous kill to take the final exchange from, the operation is a real talent tester. There are a couple of options. A suitable reward, taken from the victim of some other outing and frozen separately, can be used, or the reward can be sneakily removed from the bird’s opened kill as it begins to feed. The latter is, of course, only be feasible with the experienced bird who sees its trainer’s bare hands as helpers, but it can be done.

A full account of rewarding Harris’ hawks from kills and removing them without incident is found in my book, The Complete Rabbit and Hare Hawk, but let me emphasise that attention paid to detail is an investment that returns unimaginable rewards. When Harris’ and human really pull together nothing is beyond them. It’s true that my approach is rather elaborate and I recall one chap arguing: ‘Don’t you make a fuss!’ Well, my advice is, when it comes to the Harris’, make a fuss, make a big fuss.

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