Hawking with Lewis and Rhu

I first became fascinated by birds of prey when I was in my early teens. In my early twenties, I taught myself falconry with a book and a buzzard.

In the 30+ years that have passed since those early days, I have been lucky enough to have flown peregrines, merlins, a perlin, kestrels, a lanner and a saker; I have hunted with a sparrowhawk and several Harris hawks. But I don’t remember when I last enjoyed hawking as much as I do with the Gos I currently fly.

The Goshawk is called Lewis. I have had him for a few months now and been flying him daily, as weather has allowed, for the past 6 weeks or so. I am working him with my pointer puppy, Rhu, a Hungarian Vizsla. Rhu’s from fantastic stock and was bred in Wales just 9 months ago. He’s grown bigger than I expected but is more biddable than I am used to (having mostly trained English and German pointers), and I am delighted with his progress.

This is a photo-blog of a winter afternoon’s hunt in a local wood near to my base in Fife. It was an overcast, damp December day and there was - unusually - no quarry to be found. But it was still a good chance for me to strengthen the all-important working relationship between dog and hawk, and, despite there not being any prey for Lewis, it was a gripping walk watching Rhu work the banks and bushes as Lewis looked on, hoping and waiting...

Enjoy!

If you have any questions or comments about this post, I’m always happy to hear from you. If you’d like to experience hawking for yourself, I can take you out with a Harris hawk and show you how it all works. Find out more about my hawking experience here.