BLAZE Magazine Special Edition 2006-2016 | Page 46

Outdoors &
Education
Falconry
B
oy, did I go on a fantastic squirrel
hunt last weekend in the Grampian
Hills outside Camden, Ala. Our
hunting party bagged a grand total
of two squirrels.
Say what? Two squirrels are barely enough to
make a small pot of squirrel and dumplings.
What made it such an enjoyable, eye-opening
hunt was the method by which the squirrels
were taken – red-tailed hawks.
That’s right, the Alabama Hawking
Association (AHA) held its annual meet last
weekend, and its members brought a variety
of hawks to the event with red-tailed hawks
the most common bird of prey.
The meet attracted falconers (the generic
term for those who hunt with raptors) not only
from Alabama but all around the Southeast.
One participant escaped the Michigan snow
to travel to Alabama.
The 70-plus participants in the meet were
divided into manageable groups and turned
loose on property donated for the hunts.
I accompanied a group of falconers
from around the Southeast from Georgia
to Mississippi to Tennessee, although the
Tennessean (Jeff Fincher) had roots in
Eutaw, Ala.
The hunting method involved heading into
the woods and shaking vines and saplings
to get a squirrel to reveal its location. At that
point, the handler for the bird designated for
that hunt released the raptor.
46 |
| SPECIAL EDITION 2006-2016
Larry Mullis’ red-tailed hawk,
named Dixie, soars through
the treetops to find a perch
suitable for attacking a gray
squirrel’s hideout.
By David Rainer
Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources
On the first hunt of the morning, Larry Mullis
of Eastman, Ga., released Dixie, his year-old
female red-tailed hawk after a squirrel was
seen scurrying up a tall oak.
With eyesight so acute that the most common
analogy used is it could read newspaper
headlines at a quarter of a mile, the bird
started a methodical stalk of the gray
squirrel. Dixie flew from limb to limb in
the surrounding tree until she was in an
advantageous attack position. The falconers
call it “laddering.”
With a leap from her perch, Dixie sailed
toward the squirrel’s hideout, but was unable
to connect with needle-sharp talons. Again,
she laddered into position for another
attempt. The squirrel made a break for it
when Dixie’s wingtips slapped nearby limbs.
With the patience of Job, she made another
stalk and then another.
A full hour after Dixie left her handler’s
gloved hand, the squirrel took refuge in
natural cover. It scurried under a patch of
Spanish moss, but it could not hide. The
hawk attacked and easily pierced the moss
with her talons to pin the squirrel to the
tree. After a few minutes to dispatch the
squirrel, Dixie sailed to the ground to begin
consuming the catch.
However, Mullis managed to pull a bait-and-
switch by offering the bird chunks of meat
from a previous kill, and the squirrel was
slipped away from the bird’s grasp to be used
at a later date.
“That was worth the trip to Alabama,” said
Gary Brewer, an internationally known
master falconer and author of “Buteos and
Bushytails,” a book about the art of squirrel
hunting in dense woods with red-tailed and
Harris hawks. Brewer, who hails from the east
Texas town of Tyler, is recognized as one of
the foremost authorities on training red-tailed
hawks.
What Brewer didn’t realize was the next
“cast” would almost match the first.
Symeon Robins, a choral teacher and choir
director from Jackson, Miss., took his red-
tailed hawk, named Gizmo, off its perch and
headed back into the target-rich environment
of a creek bottom. When a squirrel was
spotted, Robins literally launched his two-
year-old male bird into the air, and the hawk
began the laddering process that is apparently
innate in the birds of prey accustomed to
hunting in forested areas.
After achieving a vantage point, Gizmo sailed
toward the squirrel’s hideout. It was a near-
miss, and the squirrel took advantage to
quickly change trees before the bird could
regroup. One attack resulted in the squirrel
doing a u-turn on one of the larger limbs, only
to have Gizmo follow suit. With only fractions
of inches to spare, the squirrel managed to
escape. Gizmo made several more attempts
before the prey made a fatal mistake. The
squirrel bailed out of a tree and hit the
ground, attempting to make it to the den
tree. In a blurring flash of wings and talons,
Gizmo pounced on the squirrel and the hunt
was over.
Accept No Limits | outdoorwomenunlimited.org