Wow! What a day! I don’t know if anything else could have possibly happened today. Something amazing happened every five minutes it seemed!
The day was nothing short of epic for falconry, brisk but comfortable, nice breeze, bright sunshine and excellent company. Rebel and I got to fly today with my sponsor and his new PFRT, Jade. We headed out to Wee Tee, a farm owned by one of my friends outside of Georgetown. It is a gorgeous place with lakes, cropland and tons of hardwood forest. There are turkeys and deer everywhere. You almost step on the dove if you walk in the cornfields. About every tree has a squirrel nest in it and the rabbitat is amazing.
As we pulled in, we saw a big passage RT sitting in a snag on the side of the road. We had my trap with us so we turned around and tossed it out underneath him. He was on the trap immediately and was snagged! We ran up but he managed to get free and flew up into a nearby tree. We decided to throw the trap back out and watch and see. Sure enough he came down again and hit the trap hard. He footed it several times but it took forever for him to get caught. Again, we raced up only to see him get free. This is the luckiest bird ever… Once again, he flew up into a nearby tree but did not leave. We left the trap and rode away. Gave the bird fifteen minutes and came back to find him on the trap for the THIRD time! Now by now, most of the nooses needed to be reset, so it was not a surprise that he did not get trapped. He flared as we rolled up and we let him be.
We pulled in to the farm and started to cruise around to find our first hunting spot. There were many hags spotted around the place, one soaring at about 800 feet in lazy circles around the open fields. As we pulled up on the lake, we saw several wood ducks on the water. Fortunately they had not bumped from the truck, so we backed out and got Rebel ready to go. Rebel set up too far from the water’s edge and the ducks got up too far away. I was surprised that he didn’t give chase, but then I noticed the ginormous Fox Squirrel he was intently staring down.
We started yelling and banging the tree and the Fox Squirrel began to run with Rebel in hot pursuit. He dove twice just missing the behemoth. As the Fox squirrel ran out on a small branch right above me, Rebel swooped in. I could see his talons closing down right when the branch snapped and down came the fox squirrel from about forty feet. I watched his underbelly as the squirrel spread his arms and legs to increase his resistance and I realized that he was going to fall directly on my head. Hmmm. This was a simple fly ball catch with my left hand, falconry glove already in place. I reached up to catch the big squirrel when strangely I pulled back. Rebel was feet away from the squirrel and I thought for sure he was going to catch this thing right at my feet and I didn’t particularly relish the idea of him crashing into my squirrel filled glove. We already have some issues with possessiveness and I was pretty sure that if he saw me snagging his meal out of the air, he was going to hire a hit man.
The squirrel landed inches from my feet and I could feel the impact through the soles of my boots. He hit the ground running, scrambling towards a nearby pine. Rebel crashed behind him right as he hit the base of the tree and unbelievably, he missed. Bummer. I thought for sure we had our first Fox Squirrel in the bag. The squirrel disappeared in a knothole at the top of the tree and Rebel gave up. We headed back around the lake and Rebel had a stoop on a wood duck that I got up on the far side of the lake, but he missed. He also missed a smaller grey squirrel after chasing him through about a dozen trees through the swamp.
On the far side of the lake, Rebel took off to a stand of trees so we followed convinced she had seen something. We beat on trees and yelled, but nothing was moving. When I was finally ready to call her down and move, on, she dove getting another big Fox Squirrel running. She stooped on it twice and almost had it but once it was into the top of a pine, she gave him up. It is weird. In retrospect, all three Fox Squirrels she has had experience with, she has abandoned when it got into a pine. We decided it was Jade’s turn and we would give Rebel a rest so we headed back to the truck. On the way, we saw the three geese from the other day. Rebel wisely wanted nothing to do with them this time.
Jade looked good out of the box but was a little skittish of Addie running around under her. She got used to the dog quickly though. She treed a grey squirrel and laddered him up the tree like a pro. I was shaking vines like a madman when the squirrel made his break. He raced down the truck with Jade and her T-Rex sized talons right behind him. She was closing the gap when the squirrel decided to bail. He leapt out of the tree and fell, once again, right on top of me. This time I did reach out, but the squirrel was an inch out of reach. Again, the bird barely missed the beast on the ground.
After covering that territory well and not finding much game, we decided to head back towards the cabin where we had seen a ton of nests. We put Jade up and she seemed to love the 70-foot tall pines. She chased a couple of squirrels but ended up frustrated. Back in the box for her and it was time for Rebel to try again. Rebel came out of the box amped up like a crack head on check day. She set the pace and we blazed through the woods. She finally treed one squirrel in a maple abutting a holly tree. She was so smart in the way she herded the squirrel up and latched on when he broke out on a limb. It was a beautiful chase but she carried the blasted thing about three hundred yards. Sigh. Excellent trainer…
The trade off was actually very smooth and I put her back up in the air to make our way back to the truck for Jade to have another turn. On the way out, I shook a vine near a nest and a smallish grey jumped out and started fussing at me. Rebel took note and swooped in. She chased that squirrel into one of the tallest pines I have ever seen. Again, the bird showed real experience, laddering the squirrel higher and higher until it panicked and tried to race down the trunk. She was of course waiting for just this eventuality and she neatly plucked him right off of the tree. Another carrying session, this one nearly five hundred yards, and Rebel had her second double! Easy trade off with a rat and a fuzzie and I took her to the truck for a DOC as a reward.
We were running out of daylight when we put Jade back up looking for those Fox Squirrels. I was pretty sure she would not hesitate if she saw one, but they were still holed up in the lairs I guess. Jade unfortunately did not get any game on this outing, but I am sure that will be corrected next time we venture back here. We looked to see if we would have another shot at that passage bird on the way back, but he must have gotten other game and was perched for the night. We headed home as the sun was setting, very thankful for a spectacular day.
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