Eagle Journal

Hello everyone,

Even though Day 41 was the behind the scenes thing I still flew both birds. JH caught one jack in good form and Widow flew but showed little interest in going up very high. All in all, a pretty routine day.

Back to today:

JH:

I have noticed that jack rabbit slips are becoming harder and harder to come by out in the fields, to the point that on day 41 I only saw two jacks. Now, this is good for the farmer of course but, the plain truth is, I’d rather see jacks out in the fields that I can fly my eagles on. I left the house today at 6:30 am, just a little earlier than I have been arriving in the fields, to see if there would be more jacks out in the open. Now, understand that there are still many, and I mean many, jacks in the area, under bushes doing what rabbits do on the lawns around the warehouses. They just aren’t spending much time in the fields. I went to the middle hay field and walked it for about 30 minutes and did not see one jack. I could, however, see 15 or 20 sitting under a big tank out in the waste land.

The other two hay fields are too grown up and thick, so I went to the FFH (field from hell). The cleanest way to get to the FFH is to walk down a driveway, cross the train tracks, and enter that way. I unhooded JH right before the tracks and at the same time a jack flushed. JH had to fly in between all the railroad crossing poles and junk but handled it like a champ. He closed quickly, chasing the jack down the tracks and up the bank, out into the dry field. In the wind JH went way up in the air, wings spread wide like a big black kite, allowing his speed to carry him up. The whole time he was looking down trying to find the hiding jack. After a moment JH banked, dropped down, and landed on my fist. You might find this interesting. For most of JH’s hunting career I have called him in to the fist and given very little reward, something the size of a dime, which more times than not he’d drop. If you have our DVD notice that many times JH returns to the fist and there is nothing there, and he doesn’t look for anything either. (If you don’t have the DVD then go and buy a copy, there will be a test.) Sometimes I have to put food on the glove if, for example, there are guests in the field and he is being a little sticky about returning. But this season I have not given JH anything on his return, nothing, and he is not looking either. At the end of the day’s hunt, however, I had better dang well have some meat to give him or there will be hell to pay.

I made a huge circle in the FFH and walked down into a small depression that is some kind of drainage area — the jack rabbits like this area. I had gone only part way across the bottom of the thing when a jack was up and running cross-wind, heading for the cyclone fence off to the right. JH left quickly but not with any explosion, more measured than anything. It was a funny angle to see a slip from because I was eye level with the ground. The jack rabbit was getting dangerously close to the fence and I was beginning to think that JH would pull off. Nope, he put on a quick burst of speed and hooked the jack 10 feet from the fence.

From the FFH I went over to the tumbleweed field, which will soon be unflyable. The tumbleweed bushes are completely overtaking the field, leaving very little uncovered ground, but for now it is still flyable. As I entered the field JH was standing tall looking at something out in the middle of the field. He left the fist and powered over to the spot, did a wing-over, and went down out of sight! No sooner had he gone down than JH was up and flying back to me. I worked around the edges of the tumbleweeds hoping to flush a jack out into the open. I think I had covered the entire field and was thinking about going home when JH started to get interested in something back towards my truck. Just as JH left the fist I saw a jack rabbit run out in the open and stop under a clump of dry weeds. JH went straight in and caught his second jack of the day.

Widow:

The weather has been great, warm breezes with just a slight hint of fall in them. Widow has been doing a lot of flying but not much soaring. She is in very good shape. Today, as an example, she flew for more than an hour and a half, flying back and forth, ¼ of a mile one way, slope soaring and looking for me. I spent a great deal of time hiding from Widow which was forcing her to fly a great deal. At one point I went down on the valley floor and sat on a log that fell off a cottonwood tree that we call the ant tree and for good reason. I temporarily forgot why this tree was named the ant tree and within 2 minutes my pants were crawling with biting ants! So, with me jumping up and knocking ants off my clothes, Widow found me and came over the tree thinking that I was surely calling her in with all my gyrations. Then Widow went way back up on the hill and was out of sight for some time. I took that opportunity to sneak back to my truck looking for a cool drink of water. I was quite sneaky about it too, darting from cover to cover, never exposing myself for more than a brief second or two, then holding dead still, checking to see if Widow was back in sight, and then exploding from cover only to slide into another clump of cover like I was stealing home plate in a baseball game! I reached my truck, darted around the back side, and opened up the rear door. Finding a bottle of water, I sat on the step taking a long cool drink and. surprise, Widow landed on the open door of the truck shell looking at me! You know, it’s pretty hard to hide from an eagle they’ve got those eagle eyes and everything! I fed her up..  

Pic 1:    JH has a new very fancy hood!

Pic 2:    Widow found me. Its’ hard to hide from an eagle!

Pic 3:    JH and his jack rabbit, only feet from the fence!

Hope all is well,

Joe