A hallux talon sheath injury ended Ally’s season this weekend. I can take these things a little easier when they happen in the field. That’s falconry. It’s even easier to come to terms with when the bird has had a great season, and there is some promise of recovery. Years ago, I would not have handled it so well, but if you’re in falconry long enough, you’ll find out, things can be so much worse than losing a talon sheath. The slips are still good here, and that sucks, but I’m hopeful Ally will recover if not well enough to remain a falconry bird next season, at least well enough to be released. I’ve been in falconry long enough to experience the alternative more than once, and that puts this year's season-ender into perspective. I’m so thankful for Ally’s season. It was a season built on the seasons and birds before it. It was a season built with the help of other great falconers. It was a season in which goals my hawking partner and I had set for ourselves were finally met. Goals that we'd worked towards for years. I also had the opportunity to share a day hawking with one of my best friends who had never been. It was special for me to show her firsthand something I’m constantly talking about. We had several other friends tag along, too, and I loved experiencing hawking through their eyes. While being a falconer is heavily technical and goal-oriented for me, the laughs and memories made are what I ultimately remember in the years following. In a place where the season is short and prey base for an American Kestrel is plentiful enough to take game consistently, but not as abundant as many other places in the U.S., I consider Ally’s season a major success. Her numbers broke down for the diehard hawkers like myself: ALLY PASSAGE FEMALE AMKE (1st Season) Trap Weight: 122.4g, Empty Crop, 3.5 Keel Average Flight Weight: 87.8g Days Hawked: 41 (March 25 - May 26) IQPH (Intended Quarry Per Hunt): 2.3 Took Multiples: 27x Best Day: 8 Starlings Season Head Count: 103 Starlings

In a world where customization and real human communication is becoming rare, one-on-one communication with our customers has never been more important to me. Not only are we real people you can reach out to at Mountain State Falconry Supply, but we’re hawkers, too. If you come to us with a falconry need, we’re going to do our best to meet that need, even if it’s in an unconventional way. Helping other falconers step up their hawking game makes me happy. So, when a customer reached out requesting an extension for our micro hawking bag, I was up for the challenge. Last week, I ordered a roll of webbing strap and some new buckles, and this morning after hawking Ally and nabbing three starlings, I dusted off my old sewing machine my mother-in-law got for me as a Christmas gift almost 20 years ago. Can I sew? Nope. Sure can’t. Do we have a sewing contractor? Nope. Sure don’t. Do I want our customers to love their experience and products? Absolutely. And that customer is paying it forward because now you can get a waist extension for your micro hawking bag, too! Available today as an add-on to our micro hawking waist bag. Check it out at www.mountainstatefalconrysupply.com and be sure to follow us on Facebook and Instagram, too.

Leash setups and equipment vary widely among falconers, and there are many systems that work. Remember that ultimately, it's up to you to find the right setup for your particular bird. Today, I want to show you my red-tail tethering system for my mews. In this blog post:

If you really want to do something, you'll find the time. I've been busier than usual lately, but my falconry hasn't taken a back seat. We've put a lot of work into the kestrels we're flying this year, and it's almost time to reap the rewards of our efforts. We're slowly starting to hawk them as the slips get good, and by prime hawking time, I'm confident they'll be dialed in if they don't get eaten by a bigger fish first. My routine? It surprises non-falconers when I explain to them how small of a piece of the pie hawking in the field actually is. Their reaction is usually one of confusion and questioning. You make it look so easy. Like you just go out and hunt and have fun all the time. You're saying that's not the case? Why? Why do it when it's so much work for so little time in the field? It's admittedly a fair question. Not only does successful falconry require more time working at home than time hunting in the field, but the hardships and tragedies that befall every falconer who stays in the sport for long can seem insurmountable at times. As the falconry saying goes, "The highs are high, and the lows are low." The only answer I have to give: Those highs are still worth the effort to me, and I can't be knocked down easily. There's something about falconry when it comes together in a successful hunt that's incomparable to anything I've ever experienced. I think that feeling is highly attributable to the amount of effort and obstacles that must be overcome to make it work, and that is why I love falconry. So here's what a hawking day during micro season looks like for me. So much work. So little time in the field. So worth it for that itty bitty black bird in the game bag at the end of the day. Featured in this post:

SEPTEMBER 1, 2022 Books are a peculiar thing. In the hands of collectors, they can hold both monetary and sentimental value. I find this particularly so among collectors of falconry books. I consider myself among those ranks, if only in the beginner’s realm. The most valuable books in my collection won’t fetch the most dollars. The first: “In Season,” by Matthew Mullenix, in all its paperback, Western Sporting glory. The book is tattered, highlighted, underlined and stained (with blood, dirt, coffee and some admittedly unidentifiable spots). If that weren’t enough, it also contains no less than four readings worth of margin notes. I was more than embarrassed when I sent it to Matt for an inscription a couple years ago, but to my surprise, he met the task not only with grace, but curiosity and awe. I’ve read “In Season” every year since becoming a falconer, and each year it hits different. The power of this book lies in its ability to teach, entertain, be relatable to my own experiences and take me back to personal times and places long since passed. That’s an incredible ability for words on a page, but that’s the skill of a writer like Matt. The second most valuable book in my collection, the journal from my most successful hawking season to-date: “Squirrel Hawker,” only two copies in existence. It’s filled with my favorite moments from the season along with plenty of hardships and tragedies to even it out. It’s particularly special to me because I know my time with the bird it’s about is limited, and I wager she’s the best squirrel bird I’ll ever fly. I’ve wanted to honor these books in a unique way for some time. I’ve also wanted a piece of Scott McNeff’s work for nearly as long. I remember an encouraging phone conversation Scott and I had when I published my first book. We talked about writing and hawking and found much common ground. In the end, I could think of no better way to honor my two most valued tomes than reach out to the ultimate book defacer himself and have him make his mark. The impression when I opened the books to see the result was laughter, heartache, longing and downright pure happiness. I gave Scott free reign, and I couldn’t be more pleased with his interpretations of the parts of these books that meant the most to me. My favorite line of “In Season,” is, “Cotton rats are important to my falconry,” because of the line that precedes it. Scott delivered perfectly, and bonus: some new margin notes from the artist. Scott also took the time to read my journal which was very humbling to me. In the process, we exchanged messages about ridge trapping, hawking, our favorite red-tails and tailgate beers. The connection has been just as important to me as the artwork that now graces the pages of my books. Thank you my dear friend! I’ll cherish these books forever. APRIL 1, 2024 If you'd have asked me in 2022 what I'd be doing today, I'd have undoubtedly said "hawking." What I wouldn't have said was, "Starting a falconry supply business with a focus on helping people solve some of the problems I've personally faced in the sport." Today is pretty special. Today, I'm launching the sale of one of Matt Mullenix's books on my online falconry supply shop. I'm very proud to be sharing "Four Falconry Fundamentals," with others, and I thought it would be a good opportunity to take a trip down memory lane by looking through my two favorite books I just mentioned above. In doing so, a flood of memories hit me. I was reminded on multiple occasions why I love books, and why I'm still so very thankful Scott "defaced" my books for me. The bird he painted in my "Squirrel Hawker" book is now gone. It still rips my heart out just to type it. I had to have her put down after a terrible injury last year. She was without a doubt the best bird I've ever flown. I cried when I opened the book and looked at the painting this evening. Every hunt I had with her flashed before my eyes simply looking at her likeness. Scott outdid himself on that little piece of my heart. "In Season: A Louisiana Falconer's Journal," has since gone through another reading and round of annotations. It's been read and marked up so much now, the whole darn book is practically highlighted. The interesting part about this year's annotations is that many of them refer to prior year's readings and what I was feeling each time I read it. It hits different each year. This year's reading also resulted in an indexed system so I could go back and find my favorite parts easily. Even Scott's margin notes got a special indexing (zoom in on the drawing of Charlie to see my indexing system for a laugh). Bottom line: Things change. People change. I'm glad for books. Not only do they teach us and entertain us, but they have a very special way of hiding memories between the lines. Featured in this post:

Her chart read “Baby.” I never called her that, but I was watching “Dirty Dancing" excessively around the time we trapped her. Baby was my first micro. She was a January-trapped haggasaurus rex. 143g with an empty crop and a five on the keel. I can’t remember if her system was empty or not, and I didn’t record it on my log. I was quite green. Though based on her flight weight when I look back at my logs now, I’d say she was shitting bigger than dime-size when I brought her home. Yak yak yak yak yak. I didn’t know any better. Hell, Ray didn’t either, and he’d flown two kestrels before me. I didn’t even read Matt’s American Kestrels in Modern Falconry until a week before we planned on trapping. I’d just come off my first successful squirrel hawking season, and all I had on my mind was a big female kestrel. In my tiny, little, inexperienced brain, I chose size over age. “Haggard and eyas kestrels are uniquely challenging. Many adult birds remain nervous and difficult to manage in captivity.” -Matt Mullenix, American Kestrels in Modern Falconry I admire Matt’s ability to downplay the constant yakking and wildness of the hag kestrel and turn the description of the experience into something almost poetic. “Uniquely challenging.” No shit! I always laugh when I read that line now. Baby remained wild, noisy and hesitant to pounce starlings despite her size. She was 102g of feathers and stubbornness. A true asshole. Baby didn’t teach me much, but what she did teach me laid the foundation for every other kestrel I’ve flown since. Because of Baby, I learned while I never say never, I don’t plan on flying a haggard kestrel again. What makes the lesson even more important, is that it led Ray and me to learn how to identify passage birds better. I didn’t take a single head of game with Baby. I hawked her a couple times, and she refused even good starling slips. While she could have had an extremely narrow weight window I never dialed in properly, her wildness and loudness made her an unsuitable falconry bird for me. I was constantly annoyed, and that’s no way to do falconry justice. More importantly, I worried about her hurting herself at home. I fed Baby up, and Ray released her while I was away on summer vacation. He did, of course ask, but I think he’d have released her anyway, even if I protested. That bird belonged in the wild. Neither of us have thought much about her since, but she still managed to teach a couple newbies a valuable lesson. Barring extenuating circumstances, we’ll stick with passage kestrels from here on out.

It's easy to look at photos and videos of falconers with game and think how fun it is or would be to be a falconer. Of course there are fun parts of falconry. That's why those of us crazy enough to push through the lows keep doing it. For us, the reward is still greater than the cost. Falconry is a lifestyle though. Whether you have one bird or multiple birds, falconry is a part of daily life. I enjoy getting a glimpse into the daily lives of other falconers, so I thought I'd share one of mine. Micro season is just getting started here in West Virginia, and the weather was crummy today, so we didn't hawk. Falconry takes up a good chunk of my morning even on days we don't hawk. Here's what a non-hawking day during micro season looks like here at my house. How about yours? Featured in this video: