Falconry.htm

As stated below, the goshawks are all now sold except one which I have retained for myself.

For want of a name, he is "KKII" or "Son of KK" until I can think up something better! He weighed 1lb 14oz when he came out of the aviary but I could not get him to eat. After four days, he was down to 1lb 9oz. I believe it is possible for animals to get a mental block and to persist in trying to train one in this condition is a waste of time. Battles of wills usually end up with a dead bird. So, KKII was put back into the aviary and fed ad lib for a few days. On the second day, I noticed he was standing on one leg and had had a bath, so that allayed my worst fears.

Within a few days, he was flying down to eat almost before I had closed the hatch. So, he got the boney part of a pigeon's wing one day, nothing the next day, and I pulled him on the third day. He weighed 1lb 13.25oz. After two hours sitting hooded so he could regain his composure, I took him into the house and tried to get him to eat. This time he ate after 1.5 hours. The next night, with no weight reduction, he started to eat after seven minutes. Progress has been slow and steady but after just a few days he is eating outside, unhooded, with pups playing in a kennel a few yards away. So much for the pundits who go on about weight control. Falconry is mostly about psychology, not weighing machines. But more about that later.

As you can see from the picture, I have begun hooding this bird from the start. A properly fitting hood is absolutely essential and I am grateful to Paul Domski for making this hood up for me. It fitted KK perfectly and now does his son. I would not fly a short wing without a hood as if they are any good they will bate when they see a pheasant, even it is 200 yards or more away.

The modern trend is to buy your falconry furniture. Not only is that expensive but it is often badly designed. Here is how to make a traditional bow perch that will cost you nothing and be far safer and comfortable to the bird than 99% of the rubbish you can buy. Hawks are traditionally weathered on a bow perch, falcons on a block.

(1) Cut a staff out of the wood as long and as thick as you decide it needs to be. For a goshawk, I'd choose a straight stem about 7ft - 8ft long and 1.5 inches to 2.5 inches in diameter. Choose a young straight hardwood branch or tree. In Britain, I'd choose oak, hazel, or elm in that order. Ash is also good but the wood doesn't last. Anyway, you can make another in half an hour so that is not really a problem. Don't bother about padding the wood as it is not needed and dangerous as it will stop the ring sliding freely from one end to the other.

(2) You will not be able to bend a 2 inch thick oak staff over your knee. I use a ratchet strap. But before you start, slide a steel ring over the branch. (Note ring resting on my hand in the picture). These can often be obtained from ship's chandlers or sadlers. DON'T be tempted to use any type of plastic material! You will be tieing the hawk's leash to this ring and if it breaks the hawk will go off with both the leash and the ring attached. You need to attach the ratchet strap securely so it won't slip -- if in doubt, do some research on suitable knots to use. I'd use a clove hitch. Every countryman should know about knots! Here is an excellent site: http://www.tollesburysc.co.uk/Knots/Knots_gallery.htm

(3) Next, tightly tie a piece of fencing wire about 12 inches from one end of your staff. Wrap the wire around your staff twice and then twist it back on itself as shown in the picture, finally securing it with a couple of small staples.
Then use the ratchet strap to bend your staff to the desired shape. You may find you do not get an even curve in which case jam the staff into something solid and slightly over bend the parts where the curve is not sharp enough. Aim for a gentle curve, not the abrupt steep angle they put on those disastrous steel perches. You will have to over bend the bow a good bit to tie the fencing wire about 12 inches from the other end so when you release the strap the wire will retain the bow at the correct curve. Now you should have a bow with a steel wire bow string and a large steel ring running freely on the bow.

(4) You will not be able to simply push this perch into the ground. You will have to dig a hole for each of the legs, then back fill and ram the soil down hard. To fix the perch securely, make some large staples out of thick fencing wire and staple the two ends of the bow into the ground and put a couple more staples over the wire "string" which should now be at ground level.

(5) Finished! Your perch is now complete. The ring, seen on the left hand end of the perch in the picture, should run freely from one end of the bow to the other whichever way the hawk bates and it is almost potentially tangle proof. Don't be tempted to make the curve too steep. The distance between the top of the perch and the ground should obviously give clearance for the bird's tail. If you are going to use these perches with the trolley system, don't forget to blank off the space under the perch in case the hawk goes in under and snags the leash.

During 2006, my two goshawks laid three eggs, but they were unfortunately infertile. This year they laid five eggs. The results, four healthy eyasses, as can be seen by clicking the following links. Sorry for the colour cast on the video!

And you can now see another video shot when the eyasses were nearly 10 days old: At about 3.5 minutes into this video, you can see the female feeding eyasses. Then the male arrives on the nest with more meat in his foot. He joins the female in feeding the eyasses. I am told this is unusual to say the least! This tiercel shared both the incubation and the feeding.

As can see seen from the pictures, 2007 was a successful breeding season after the three infertile eggs in 2006. This time the birds were monitored carefully and as soon as the male was seen to bring food to the feeding ledge in response to the female's calling, the partition was opened. KK stepped off his meat and the GB stepped onto it. KK then went over to the female's nest and made an inspection. Clearly, this was satisfactory as he returned to the feeding ledge and copulated with the female. Unfortunately, all this happened so quickly that I did not manage to get it on film.

The result of that was five eggs. KK and the GB shared incubation and it was quite amusing to see one or the other almost push its mate off the eggs so that he/she could take over!

In due course, four eggs hatched. The fifth egg disappeared one day. In spite of her name, the GB made an excellent and careful mother. If a chick could not swallow a piece of meat, she would take it from it and either break it up further or eat it herself. KK also took a hand in the feeding. He occasionally brought meat to the nest while the female was feeding eyasses and joined in to feed them himself. Sometimes he would pull meat from the piece the GB held in her talons.

NEW FEMALE GOSHAWK
The female gos, soon named The Grumpy Bitch because of her behaviour, arrived here aged three years old with no tail to speak of. She was immediately put on the tensioned wire or trolley system described below.

That season she moulted out (see pictures) and has remained feather perfect ever since.

Picture (right) shows KK displaying, either to myself or to the female on my fist.

Spring 2006: KK and the new female gos were put into a dual chambered breeding aviary and both started to build nests. In truth, KK, the tiercel, had already started building a nest in his shelter beside the trolley. He was the first to be moved into his new quarters and the female started calling immediately he was taken from the weathering ground. She moved in next. As a first time breeder, I was cautious about allowing them in together and the three eggs they laid were infertile. I probably opened the partition too late. Never mind, I gather this is not unusual and I have better hopes for 2007. Here are a few shots of the pair in their aviary:

Pictures: (Left) The female on eggs. (Right) The male takes over incubation from the female.

A New Book!! Published and transcribed by Derry Argue

COPIES AVAILABLE FROM Coch-y-Bonddhu Books (http://www.anglebooks.com).
(If

turbervile jacket picture (mock).jpg (42005 bytes)

you can't find one on Ebay, contact me and I will put one up)

First published in 1611, this book is now out. This is another classic written during the same era as Bert's and there are some great hints in it. The original type-setting and style were even harder to translate than Bert's -- all 375 pages! This is strictly a limited edition so it is sure to become another collectable.

FALCONRY OR HAWKING
A transcription by DERRY ARGUE of George Turbervile’s book,

The Booke of Falconrie or Hawking

Reviewed by John Loft

            "The Book of Falconry or Hawking" was first published in 1575, more than thirty years before Latham, Bert, d’Arcussia, and Ferreira, but it was successor to a string of books on falconry that derived most of their information from "The Book of St Albans". Turbervile however struck out on a new line: he meant to gather and re-publish the accumulated wisdom of the admired French and Italian experts whose books he had discovered during his extensive travels in Europe. (He even went as far as Moscow and noted with surprise that the Muscovites carried their hawks on their right hands). It was an admirable scheme. He made no secret of his borrowings, naming his eight authors (whose treatises still exist in various libraries, according to Harting), and constructed his book out of selections from them, with very few explanations of his own. But the mixture of texts requires him to dart back and forth from author to author, hawk to hawk, and quarry to quarry. Information on, say, the sparrowhawk is not confined to a single section but has to be garnered from different places, and may be contradictory. The method, though awkward, was an advance on earlier texts, but those two great voices of experience, Latham and Bert, were shortly to eclipse him, and in our times it has been usual to dismiss Turbervile’s book as being only a collection from other authors instead of hailing it as a useful distillation of their collective advice and a treasure-trove for anyone with a feeling for history.

            The First Part sees the authors, chiefly Tardisse and Vicentino, trying to sort out the different kinds of hawk, to give a picture of their natural history, and to assess their usefulness in the field..... I pause to look out some of their opinions that should interest you, and instead I interest myself so much that it costs me half an hour and leaves me too much to choose from. I can, for instance, mention that, regarding eagles, we are told that to stop them going on the soar you should pluck the feathers from round their tewel or fundament and the sensation of cold in those parts will keep them flying low. Typical medieval nonsense you say. But next comes a report that eagles have been used to take wolves, and that is something the author finds too far-fetched to believe. A mysterious hawk called the Mylyon is mentioned once among the eagles and once with the gyrfalcon, but with no other clues at all to what it did or was. The other main species are recognisable, even familiar, to our contemporaries, and their plumages are better described than in any other old text I have read (What a pity they did not so describe, or mention, the Alethe!) but they did get terribly mixed up over the various plumages and places of origin of the species that we call "peregrine" and they called "falcon". No-one, they said, had ever seen the eyrie of the "pelerin" or passage-hawk– Not surprising when it was only a Falcon in juvenile plumage. These random remarks present a poor sample of the wealth of interest in this Part, but I have a fear that many people will read it only once.

            The Second Part is pure hawk-management and covers every imaginable aspect. It is worth studying. There is much advice on "flying to the river" which here refers to hawking waterfowl of all sorts, and ducks in particular. These days, judging by the accounts of duck-hawking appearing in "The Falconer", it appears to be growing more popular, but to do it their way our duck-hawkers would have to persuade their falcons to fly in company, not just in a cast but in a flight or squadron; and to fly from and return to a falconer on a horse. But do not think that the advice given is irrelevant to us. They know well enough the difference between "little brooks and gullets" with cover nearby and those "broad waters and open rivers". Recognise your own experience in the passage telling the reader how to get a falcon into her first bath and admire the passage describing how the mews should be arranged, including the precise details of the ingenious hack-board on which each moulting hawk was fed. Discover how closely their instructions "How to keep a hawk high flying" echo our own practices. After all, our contemporary high-fliers learnt their skill by overleaping later centuries and studying the methods used in Turbervile’s times.

            You ought to be suspicious of many of their recommendations, such as plucking out a spar’s entire train to hasten her moult, but you can profit from some of them and it will do you no harm to notice how much effort and time they spent in keeping their hawks "in tune", as one of them puts it, by applying themselves so carefully and thoughtfully to their management. We should look sideways at anyone who these days was as fussy over the particulars of weathering, giving natural and artificial castings, studying mutes and castings, bathing, drying off, giving tirings, and the quality, quantity, and timing of a hawk’s meals, since we put more faith in maintaining a good routine than in continually ringing the changes on it. For all that, no-one could, I expect, read the Second Part without sometimes thinking, "That’s a good idea. I’ll give it a try", or even, "That’s just what I think".

            Contrariwise, no-one would think of trying the treatments prescribed in Part Three: The Diseases and Cures of Hawks. They might attempt, often successfully, to identify the illnesses and infections that beset our hawks today with the quaintly-named maladies there described. Beyond that I shall say nothing except to observe that Part Two is half as long again as Part One, and Part Three is half as long again as Part Two.

            The different species depicted in the few plates are, I fear, scarcely recognisable, which may be why they have no captions. They are disappointing by any standard, and much worse than those in d’Arcussia. The Monseigneur’s engravers had live models and even copied the patterns of the feather-tracts on back and wings. Curiously, Turbervile’s merlin, Page 63, and the lanner, Page 58, closely resemble the plates of merlin and alethe in d’Arcussia. Since Turbervile’s book came first, I imagined d’Arcussia’s illustrators had copied them from Turbervile, but later concluded that Turbervile’s men had taken their "likenesses" from his Italian and French sources, and that d’Arcussia’s men, having no models for merlin and alethe, were driven to go to the same sources.

            If only there were more of the wood-engravings showing the falconers themselves! There are only three and they are so good that they have appeared in several other books: an austringer helping his gos to feak on her leash; an austringer and two companions in doublets and trunk hose (the same man as appears above the famous prayer, "Let me not in vanity delight, O Lord!"); and James I with his entourage beneath a sky filled with heron-hawks. In the earlier editions it was Elizabeth I on the horse but with the change in monarch, she was skilfully replaced by James, although the retainers were still left with the Tudor rose on their doublets.

            Finally, there are a few pages on the cures to be used on spaniels that suffer from such ailments as mange, canker, worms, and even rabies. Vicentino, who provided this information, was obviously very fond of his spaniels and preferred to see them with their tails tipped rather than fully docked.

            After rambling on for this long I have not begun to do justice to my subject but I hope that I have aroused your curiosity about what else may be gleaned from this famous book. The true significance and merit of Derry’s transcription is that from now on there is no need to visit a university library or ask a favour of some dedicated book-collector. Turbervile has been rendered accessible to all.

            He was, by the way, an accomplished poet, and, as was customary in such books, opened and closed it with his verses that dwell on the trials and triumphs of authorship. These lines of his might just as well have been uttered by Derry, his transcriber:

I count my toil and travail but a game,

I deem the days not long or spent amiss,

If so unto thy fancy I may frame

This book of mine which all of hawking is.

Another New Book!!

Published and transcribed by Derry Argue

COPIES AVAILABLE from Coch-y-bonddhu-books (http://www.anglebooks.com/).
(If you can't find one on Ebay, contact me and I will put one up)

"Training the Short Winged Hawk - An Elizabethan Perspective" - published 2005, transcribed and edited by Derry Argue.

The fastest way to get this book is off Ebay with payment by PayPal. Also, see the Firth Productions page to order here with payment by PayPal.

This new book includes a modern transcription of Edmund Bert's book, "An Approved Treatise of Hawks and Hawking", and another by an anonymous author, "The Perfect Booke for Keeping Sparrowhawkes and Goshawkes" (two books bound together under the one title). Bert's book has been recognized as the authoritative work on the training and management of the passage goshawk since it was first published in 1616. The Perfect Book, published in 1575, is an excellent book mostly aimed at the sparrowhawk written with similar authority. You may discover where Jack Mavrogordato got some of his ideas from! Now you can buy and read both in one cover!

A lot of my blog about hunting during 2006/2007 has been lost during the move from the buyadvie.htm page to here. I will re-write this as soon as I have time.

Hawking 2005/2006: Up-date February 2006.
KK had some tremendous flights at pheasants last season. He is now flying at 1lb 12oz. I aim for long flights and there have been several at pheasants of over 1/2 a mile. I manage these to a certain extent by working at the point to get between the quarry and the nearest cover so forcing the birds to fly across open ground. These pheasants are all wild birds and they can fly! I have also continued to pursue woodcock and, finally, succeeded in catching one.

In level flight off the fist, woodcock will out-fly most hawks. KK (tiercel gos) has got very fast off the fist and he bated at the sound of a woodcock flushing and caught it as it emerged from the top of a gorse bush. I had several flights at woodcock in orthodox style but the result was always the same with the woodcock cruising in level flight for 100 - 200 yards, then putting on the after burners and going up at 45 degrees to leave the hawk standing. I am still seeking ground which has both woodcock and some large trees as I feel the only way to get successful flights at this difficult quarry is "from stand" in a tall tree. I am still trying to catch ducks off the duck pond. The problem is that the pond is 80 yards in diameter and by the time the gos has caught up with the duck they are either going at full speed or have returned to the pond and dived. Then, as soon as things start to get interesting, the duck leave en masse and only return at night.

New Goshawk: In February 2005 I purchased a three year old parent reared goshawk with the intention of breeding her with my tiercel. She arrived with a totally broken tail. The first picture shows her heavily in moult with at least four tail feathers coming down and one already down. The second picture shows her after the moult. She was moulted on the trolley. Although KK was willing, the female was still too upset to show any signs of displaying. However, she has now been on a trolley system parallel with KK's for a year so I have high hopes. KK was displaying both to me and to the female last year and even started to build a nest on the trolley so at least he is willing.

Although both are Finn-German hybrids, the progeny should be interesting as these hawks fly at 1lb 12oz and 2lb 11oz respectively. The female caught several rabbits during 2005/2006 but I confess to spending more time flying the tiercel as I prefer bird hawking.

Hawking: December 2004/January 2005
I have been having too much fun to update this page recently! KK's successful flight at pheasants are now routine. Frankly, I haven't bothered to keep the score but I do remember the better flights. I fly him over two English pointers, "Whitey" and "Piper", and an English springer spaniel called "Willy".

This year the woodcock arrived and for a few days they were everywhere. Two memorable flights. A woodcock was flushed from some bushes on the edge of the moor. KK flew it about 300 yards when it took to the sky. I blew the whistle and KK turned in the air and returned direct to the fist! Shortly after this, the dog got another point. I threw KK up into a tree to give him the advantage of height. Then the dog started moving as the bird ran in front of it. Suddenly, I saw KK coming out of his tree. A woodcock rose in front of the dog and squawked in terror as KK took after him! Both birds disappeared behind bushes and I had to take a detour to catch up. When I had gone round the hill, I could only get a very faint trace on the telemetry. Thinking the woodcock had either put in or again escaped, I blew the whistle. In a few minutes, to my surprise and relief, KK appeared from several hundred yards away and swung up into a tree above my head. As he was in a good position, I sent the dogs to work out some bushes -- and we got yet another flight! Sadly, I am convinced that even a very fit goshawk cannot catch a woodcock in level flight -- but I shall continue to try. I think the answer may be to put the hawk up in a tree so that it has height. El Cid, the peregrine tiercel, knocked down a woodcock in a beautiful vertical stoop but did not kill it. I called him off the tail chase that followed as these can go for miles!

The pond is working well and has been shot several times. Earlier in the season, KK got several flights (and duckings!) at duck from the pond but no kills -- yet!! Hopefully, he will learn discretion with time and stop trying to catch ducks on the water. As he is discovering, they are better swimmers than he is. If he can learn to hold off, Willy will get them out for him as he is an excellent swimmer!

Hawking - November: Sport is hotting up! KK, the male gos, is now very fit and I am flying him at top weight. A few days ago he took a mature cock (or rooster) pheasant on the wing at 100 yards after a very nice point and road by Piper. Then he lost him, then struck again, only to lose him again on the ground! When I got up to him there was one very irate goshawk. As I took him on my fist the the pheasant immediately flushed behind me. The gos had him in a dozen yards. I am now waiting eagerly for the woodcock to arrive! To date he has had at least seven pheasants. (Sorry but I don't keep a game book or count kills. The good flights I remember!). Cid, the peregrine tiercel, is going up nicely and putting in some beautiful stoops but my ground is not ideal for long-wings.

Duck Pond -- the pond is now full to the brim and I am feeding it regularly. The most duck I have seen was about 50 during the day. I don't know how many will be coming in at night but my guess is not many as there are still unploughed stubbles and corn lieing out too. Things should get better when the stubbles are ploughed up and the weather gets colder.

Pheasant hawking -- As I've stated elsewhere, I am following Edmund Bert's methods and the gos is either following on or coming to the fist, instantly, from over 300 yards. I have had several afternoon's hunting pheasants with one of the pointers and the spaniel. Some tremendous flights in the gales with gos and pheasants screaming away downwind for nearly half a mile! Very scary! So far, seven (?) kills but I will be happier when the birds are stronger as at this time of the year there are too many young birds which are not yet hard penned. Mounting the telemetry is always a sore point with me and I convinced myself that the back pack was the way to go. However, if the back pack is easy to fit to a falcon it certainly is NOT easy to fit to a gos! Even using elastic, I found I couldn't get the platen to stay in the correct position if the ribbon was at all loose and if it was in any way tight, the gos would go berserk. So I am going back to tail mounts, much as I hate them.

Training -- The Highland Scots have a saying, "The better the day, the better the deed". At this stage of my career, I do not knock myself out tramping the hills looking for grouse to train my pups on because I know it is a waste of time and will only teach my dog bad habits. I have six pups to train this autumn and had the first out to teach him to point today. He already knows to come to call but that's all. I released about a dozen quail onto some rough grass and let the pup hunt them up. Within half an hour he was hunting and pointing well. What could be easier?

Grouse Hawking 2004 -- I had one day's hawking with Geoff Pollard this season. 2004 will be remembered because of the atrocious weather in Scotland. Grouse stocks were better than previous years though some moors fared badly due to the rain during the breeding season. August was a washout and early September not much better. In 2003, I saw Geoff's gyr-peregrine go up out of sight on a clear cloudless day. This season the same bird went up, but then headed for home, apparently in disgust, when the grouse rose wild in front of the dogs several hundred yards up wind. My own intentions were to fly KK at red grouse. The season opens on the 12th August so that meant taking him up before he had completed the moult. But a shortwing needs to be got fit and given some manning so, what with the bad weather, everything fell apart. I begin to think that red grouse are impossible with a goshawk, not because they are too fast but because of the problems of starting early enough to build up fitness and confidence before the grouse get too strong and wild.

The Trolley System -- I am indebted to Henri Desmont for describing the trolley system for keeping hawks. Basically, this involves tethering the hawk to a running wire. The hawk has the choice of two "houses" at either end of the wire, plus perches and a bath in between. Of course, everything has to be constructed and arranged so there is no chance of the hawk becoming hung up or snagged. The area is protected from vermin with electric sheep netting. I have kept my goshawk on this system for over two years without a single bent feather and I am thoroughly converted. I can even call my hawk to the fist for feeding along the length of the wire during the moult and there is no risk of panic attacks when I enter an aviary. It also seems to keep the hawk relatively fit as KK took two pheasants on the wing (one at 100 yards, the other at 200 yards) in three days in February after sitting idle for eight weeks while I was off following prostate surgery. Further details on this system at http://www.themodernapprentice.com. KK has now been on the trolley for four years, 24/7, out in all weathers. He is moulted on the trolley and has never broken a single feather. The new female has also moulted out on the trolley and is feather perfect. Both birds are fed on the fist most days and will be bating towards me at feeding time even though pig fat! Thank you Henri, for introducing me to the perfect way to keep accipiters.

Details: Click to enlarge the pictures as usual. See pictures below for construction details. The hawk's leash is attached to a steel ring which runs on a length of galvanized 2.5mm or 3.5mm high tensile fencing wire. The ends of the wire are run right through the huts and tied to a steel stake at each end. There is a wire tensioner on the line outside beyond the hut to keep the wire tight. The wire is an inch or two above ground level so the leash drags on the grass and (I think) makes the hawk work and keeps him fit. A stop clamped onto the wire stops the ring so the leash is left just long enough for the hawk to sit on the perch. The perch is 2 inch diameter hard wood (hazel). I cut a flat on the underside with the bandsaw and bolted this to 1 inch box section which in turn is welded to a bracket, then bolted to the 1 inch X 3 inch upright at the back of the hut. I put the windbreak under the perch after the gos got a jess either side of the perch and got caught up. I also pushed a piece of wire into the ground, bent the top 2 inches at right angles, and drove it into the end of the perch as an added precaution. The windbreak under the bow perch is there for the same reason -- to prevent the possibility of the hawk going under the perch and getting the leash tangled. The bow perch is a hazel staff cut out of the wood, then steam bent and held in shape with a "bow string" of galvanized steel wire. The huts are each made from two sheets of secondhand corrugated iron on timber frames. I secured the frames by driving lengths of steel angle iron into the ground, then bolting to the wooden frame -- we get wind here in the north of Scotland! The whole set up cost me under 5GBP (about 7USD) as nearly all the materials were secondhand. I have since set up a second trolley parallel to the first for a female goshawk acquired February 2005. These goshawks will be moved to a new breeding aviary in 2006.

Left: Trolley system in use during the winter. The female goshawk can be seen sitting on the ground next to the left hand hut.

Details (below) of the construction of the trolley system. Click on thumb nails to enlarge them!

The Pond -- A new duck pond has been dug on the shoot. The picture shows the pond immediately after it was dug and before it filled with water. Both the large stones are now completely submerged and the water level is up to the dark layer of peat. The duck have found it already. Sixteen mallard at the best count.

The Gos --"KK"
I got myself a male goshawk in August 2002 from Bob Michel. He was hand reared to 10 days, then reared by an imprint female. His training was straight forward and I followed the method explained in The Perfect Booke as I have yet to learn of a better one. As soon as he was reasonably well manned, he was put on the trolley system (running wire) explained to me by Henri Desmonts who features in my Grouse Hawking video. In his first season, flying at 1lb 9oz, he caught 18 rabbits (average weight 3lbs 8oz) and several pheasants and partridges. Last season we concentrated in bird hawking over my pointers with a new spaniel, "Willy", for flushing. The gos caught about a dozen pheasants over the season taking his last two in the air in February at 100 yards and 200 yards respectively.

The Shoot
A couple of years ago I took over about 800 acres recently planted with forestry next to Miller's Place. Left is a photo taken from one of the high seats we use for deer control. I had tremendous fun building up the game population by feeding and predator management. Having this land which I could access by quad from my own back door allowed me to make a good job of the first goshawk I have trained for many years. In his first season, he caught several pheasants and about 18 rabbits. The next season (2003 - 2004) my sporting activities were curtailed because I had to go into hospital for a prostate operation. Using the latest laser technology, the operation was a complete success. But it did spoil my hunting for that season! The gos caught several pheasants but no woodcock -- which is my ambition. I was lucky to have some of the best dogs in my kennel to fly my gos over, plus a young Springer spaniel which is a very useful member of the team. I kept the gos on the trolley system (running wire) and finished the season with him taking two January pheasants on the wing after a month without flying. The first of these was taken in the air to a point by Piper at 200 metres. The second, two days later, was taken from another of Piper's points after a put in at 100 metres, then again in the air after a re-flush at 100 metres.

Advie Gundogs
Miller's Place, Fendom
Tain, Easter Ross IV19 1PE
Scotland UK

A New Book!! Published and transcribed by Derry Argue

Another New Book!!

Published and transcribed by Derry Argue

"Training the Short Winged Hawk - An Elizabethan Perspective" - published 2005, transcribed and edited by Derry Argue.