Partridges, pheasants, and other game birds may be killed with several kinds of hawks. In ancient times it seems that the former were taken in England with the jerkin, or male ger, and occasionally with the gerfalcon,—though this was mostly reserved for much bigger quarry,—with the peregrine falcon and tiercel, the lanner and lanneret, the barbary falcon and tiercel, the male goshawk, the female sparrow-hawk, and sometimes even the tiny merlin and almost equally diminutive hobby. In our times most of these varieties have been almost disused for the flight at game birds, for various reasons, the chief of which is that peregrines are found to be more useful at it than the other sorts. It is true that goshawks have been flown quite lately both at partridges and pheasants, and with some success; and it will be seen in treating of the sparrow-hawk that she has also done some execution amongst the denizens of the swedes and stubbles. Even merlins have been found occasionally to take a young partridge in September. But goshawks and sparrow-hawks are seldom speedy enough to catch many full-grown partridges, unless they can be approached nearer than is usually the case nowadays. Probably not more than one merlin in fifty could be induced to fly partridges with any zest; and not one in a hundred could hold a full-grown one on the ground without great difficulty and risk to the tail feathers. And, as merlins will not wait on, the flight with them at partridges, if it were to be accomplished, would lack the chief attraction of game-hawking, and not be much worth seeing. The lanner and the barbary, as well as the ger-tiercel, would still certainly show good sport with game; so would the two kinds of shaheen, and very possibly the saker. But the supply of these hawks is extremely limited; and the climate of England does not suit them so well as the peregrine. Moreover, the ? 116 ? mode of training and flying them does not materially differ from that of the commoner and hardier bird. It may be assumed, therefore, for the purposes of the chapter, that game-hawking means, what falconers generally understand by it, the flight with peregrines at grouse, black-game, or partridges. Pheasants, snipe, hares, and woodcocks will be dealt with in another chapter.

Grouse and black-game hawking differ in no important particular from partridge-hawking; and, generally speaking, what is to be said about the latter may be said with equal truth of the other two. It should be mentioned, however, that falcons, from their superior strength, are much to be preferred for the flight at the bigger quarry. Although there have been cases where tiercels have done well at grouse, these are exceptional. Usually they are averse to tackling so heavy a quarry, and, of course, still more reluctant to take the field against blackcock. They are, however, perfectly equal to the flight at partridges. Some falconers have even professed to prefer them for this flight to their sisters. This, however, was not the view taken in the classic age of falconry; and if a fair comparison is made the falcon will be found to be at least as good for the stubble-fields, while vastly superior on the moors. Here again the method of training and working, whether the one sex or the other is used, is identically the same.

In game-hawking, the eyess is much more on even terms with the passager than in the flight out of the hood at rooks and larger quarry. In fact, some of the very best and deadliest grouse-hawks in modern times have come from the nest to the falconer’s hands. The records of the Old Hawking Club show a quite exceptionally brilliant score made by one of their eyesses, Parachute, who took no less than fifty-seven grouse in one season, heading the list of that year’s performances on the Club moor. In the same year, 1882, Vesta, an eyess of her first season, killed as many as forty-three grouse. Yet it must not be inferred from this that every nestling is as likely to kill grouse or partridges as well as a passage hawk. It is rarely that the latter does not fly at least creditably, when trained, whereas with eyesses the general rule is rather the other way. A really first-rate performer is amongst eyesses the exception, however well they have been hacked and trained. On the other hand, the making of the eyess to this flight is beset by few of the difficulties which trouble him who would train a wild-caught hawk to it. It has been said already that a passage hawk, waiting on at any height, must naturally be more apt to check at passing ? 117 ? birds than an eyess. The latter has been, or ought to have been, reserved, from her youth up, for the one flight for which she was specially destined by her owner; whereas the other, from her youth up, until captured, has been accustomed to fly at whatever happened to be most ready to hand. There is, too, generally a special reason why the passage hawk should be apt, when expected to wait on for game, to check at any rook which may be in sight. As a rule she has come into the trainer’s hands in the late autumn, has been deliberately entered by him at rooks in early spring, and has flown them with his entire approbation for some weeks. No wonder, then, that if on the twelfth of August a rook comes past she should think it her duty to go for him.

Let us, however, speak of the eyess first, and we can see afterwards what modifications are to be made in the case of the older hawk. When your pupil will come well to the lure do not keep her long, if at all, at work in stooping at it. On the contrary, let the interval between the time when she is thrown off and the time when she is invited to come down on the lure be as long as possible. Keep her on the wing as long as you dare. But you must not at first go too far in this direction. If you wear out her patience she may go to perch, either on the ground or perhaps in a tree half a mile away. Take her down, therefore, if you can, before she is too much tired. But if you should make a mistake, and the inapt pupil goes to perch, do not hurry after her, unless there is any special reason for doing so. Stay where you are if she is well in sight; or, if not, move to a spot where she can easily see you, and do not have the air of pursuing her. Make her understand that, in this case, it is she who must come to you, and not you to her. When she finds after a long sojourn in the tree or on the ground, that after all, she has either to trouble herself to come or else go without her food, she will be less likely to be troublesome next time. She will think to herself, “What was the use of all that delay? I might as well have kept on the wing and had my dinner sooner.” Such reflections are very salutary. You do not want to be beat by your pupil, but your pupil to be beat by you, and to learn that your way of doing things is the best both for her and for you. She will learn it, too, if you go the right way to work and persevere. With an eyess you have the whip hand. She cannot easily feed herself without you; and she knows it. For weeks she has been indebted to you, directly or indirectly, for her daily rations. Even in her wildest days at the end of hack, when she would let no one come near her, she was often watching ? 118 ? you with eager eyes as you put out her meat on the hack board, and since that, have you not always either given her her food on the lure, or at all events taken her to a place where she could fly and kill a quarry which you had put up for her?

Have patience with her, therefore, and induce her by slow degrees to go up higher and higher. You must use all imaginable devices to accomplish this main object. Try to make her understand that the higher she goes the more chance there is of your producing the lure. Thus, suppose she has made three or four circles without going more than forty feet high, and in the next goes to fifty or sixty feet, bring out the lure and let her have it. Here is another device. Two men go out, each having a lure. One stands on higher ground than the other. Then call off the hawk alternately, each man showing his lure in turn, and hiding it as the hawk comes up. But let the man on the upper ground never indulge her with any success. When she is gratified let it be when she comes from above. She is not unlikely to associate the idea of success with that of toiling upwards and then coming more swiftly down. This is, moreover, a view of the matter to which the minds of all hawks are naturally prone. The flesh is weak, particularly in eyesses, but the spirit knows that the proper way to earn a living is to mount and then stoop down.

It is not good to defer needlessly the moment when you give your hawk a flight. Flights at quarry, even if it is bagged quarry only, almost always improve the mounting of a hawk. Why? Because first nature and then experience teaches her that from a height she has more chance of catching a live bird. It is not a bad plan, if your hawk mounts badly, to start for her (from a place of concealment, of course) a fast house-pigeon at a distance of five or six hundred yards up-wind from a thick covert. She will have plenty of time to make a stoop or two in the open. But she will almost certainly fail, and the pigeon will get off easily into shelter. Then if your hawk comes back to you at a good height, give her a much worse pigeon, which she will have a good chance of taking. If she comes back low, take her down to the lure, and save the second pigeon. The next day you may take out two pigeons—a good and a bad. If your hawk mounts better give the bad pigeon; and if not, give her again the one which she will not be able to catch. These are not infallible methods; but they may succeed, and they are worth trying, when a hawk is averse to mounting naturally. In the lone hours of darkness, when her hood is on, such a hawk may fight her battles over again, ? 119 ? and inquire seriously of herself what was the cause of her ill-success. And, reflecting on the experiences of hack, she may very likely conclude that she could have done better if she had started in pursuit from higher in the air.

The old falconers had a device which is not often adopted now, but which seems to have been effectual, at least, in some cases. They “seeled” (see Chap. V.) the bagged quarry,—usually a duck or a pigeon,—and the effect was that, when so blindfolded and let loose, it flew upwards, like a towering partridge, avoiding the risk of striking against obstacles which it could not see. The hawk flown at such quarry was naturally induced to keep high when waiting on. The objection to any such flight is that the quarry has not a fair chance of shifting from the stoop when it comes.

The giving of bagged quarry is not a thing to be encouraged or continued for any length of time. Bagged game never fly well, seldom passably even; and they demoralise a hawk. Bagged house-pigeons fly admirably; but then they are not the quarry you want your hawk to pursue. On the contrary, you are particularly anxious that as your hawk is waiting on for a covey to be put up she shall not start off in pursuit of a chance pigeon. Be very stingy, therefore, with your bagged pigeons; and if you give any at all, leave off directly your hawk has begun to mount at all decently.

Eyesses of all kinds are often given to raking away, i.e. wandering away from the falconer to inordinate distances, when they ought to be waiting on nearly over his head. And these aberrations are generally in a down-wind direction. It is fortunate, therefore, that in game-hawking the quarry is usually put up by walking down-wind. Otherwise many young hawks would have little chance of coming up with them. For it is a curious thing that, as compared with game birds, the speed of a peregrine is greater when going down-wind, whereas in rook-hawking she gains more rapidly when both are flying up-wind. On the troublesome habit of raking away, some observations will be found in the chapter on “Vices.” Practice is usually the best remedy. A hawk generally has gumption enough to see that by constantly waiting on down-wind she puts herself at a great disadvantage for killing her bird if it goes up-wind; and when she has come to understand that the bird is going to be put up by you, and not accidentally, she will begin to place herself willingly in such a position over you as to be ready for the stoop when the birds are flushed. “Why-loe!”—a cry with a rather Chinese sound about it—was the shout used for calling ? 120 ? in a raking hawk. Of course, while flying her at the lure you may do something towards habituating your eyess to keep up-wind, by rewarding her when she stoops from there, and not from the other side. So also, in actual flying, keep still, and let the game lie, while she is wide; and move on when she is in her proper place. If she can get a kill or two from a pitch over the falconer’s head it will be better for her than any number of kills made when she was waiting on wide.

The glory of a falconer who goes in for game-hawking is “a falcon towering in her pride of place”; and her “place” is some hundreds of yards above her master’s head. A high pitch is the beauty of a game-hawk. It is what enables her to kill, and to kill well. The best game-hawks go up until they look quite small in the sky. A thousand feet is often attained. When a peregrine is as high as this, it matters comparatively little whereabouts the game gets up. She can come down upon them nearly as easily at an angle of 70° or 80°, as at an angle of 90°. Sometimes even more easily. The time occupied in coming down is a mere nothing compared with the time which would be occupied in flying along the level to the same spot. When once, therefore, you see your hawk at a good pitch, use every effort to get up the game. When she sees the men running she will very likely be all the more ready to keep in a good place. After a week or two’s practice she will know well enough what the whole show means, and will play her part in it con amore.

If your hawk will not mount properly, but potters about in a useless way at a mean height, you may try other plans. You may call her off half a mile or so from the lee side of an open moor, and, as she comes across it up-wind, let beaters from each side try to drive grouse inwards towards her line of flight. If you can once enable her to take a grouse there are hopes of her yet. You may even fly her from the fist at a grouse if you can get near enough to one to make it at all likely that she will catch it. I have seen this done with a backward young falcon, which would not wait on. There ensued a stern chase all along the ground for at least half a mile, both birds flying at almost exactly the same pace. The sight was ridiculous enough; but in the end the falcon managed to catch the grouse, and was allowed to take her pleasure on it. The success, small as it was, saved the hawk at anyrate from being disgusted with grouse-hawking, as she would otherwise very soon have been. It is wonderful what good is done to a young hawk by catching a difficult quarry by her own unaided efforts. The ? 121 ? encouragement she derives from it is occasionally so great that she seems suddenly to develop her latent powers beyond all expectation.

You must not, however, expect that every young falcon will be a good grouse-hawk. Indeed, you must not expect many to be so. The quarry is a difficult one, and until you have trained a good many partridge-hawks you are not likely to make one for grouse. In partridge-hawking no very great speed is wanted, if only the hawk will mount well and throw up well. Partridges can be flushed much nearer, as a rule, to the hawk than grouse. Although they are fast, especially up-wind, they are not as fast as grouse, nor as wild. Nor perhaps, I may add, as perverse in getting up at the place and time you like least, though both are clever enough at choosing their time for making off. In an enclosed country, if you do not kill your partridge at the first shot, he will often put in at the next hedge, and there you may mark him and get him out. But on an open moor the grouse generally go so far before putting in that you cannot mark the place near enough to get them out quickly. Thus out of a hundred eyess peregrines, probably more than 70 per cent. will, in good hands, fly partridges very fairly, whereas out of a hundred eyess falcons—leaving tiercels out of the account—you will not find anything like fifty which are really good at the bigger quarry. Of tiercels it would be rash to say that even 1 per cent. would fly well at grouse. Of the falcons which fail some appear to be too lazy, and others too slow. A good deal depends on the first few flights. If a hawk has good luck on two or three occasions when she is first taken out, and a young grouse gets up well within reach, the young hawk will take heart, and, feeling assured that she can take the quarry, will try hard and will improve. Choose, therefore, for a hawk that is of doubtful courage the flights which seem likely to be the easiest. Remember that an immense deal depends upon the conditions under which you call upon your hawk to make her first flight at a grouse.

There are still some places where you can shoot grouse over dogs. If it be your good fortune to have access with your hawks to a moor where this can be done, you are in luck. As soon as there is a steady point (you are, of course, on open ground), unhood and throw off your hawk, which has already learnt to wait on. As long as she is moving upwards, making each circle a little higher than the last, stand still and let her go on, or, if the point is far off, walk steadily towards it. The grouse will have seen the hawk, and be in no hurry to move while she is ? 122 ? mounting; but presently they will be aware also of your approach. Then there will be a small debate in their minds—or rather in that of their papa—whether it is best to keep still and eventually be shot at, or to start off at once and at once be stooped at. The nearer you approach, and the farther the hawk rakes away, the more does the decision incline towards making a bolt of it; but papa grouse is not going to make a fool of himself by bolting at the moment which you would prefer. Your programme, of course, is to wait till your falcon is heading in towards the dog, and then rush in upon the hesitating assembly. Unfortunately, this plan does not fit in with the views of the worthies in question. They have also been waiting till the hawk’s head was turned away, and now, as she is near the outer part of her circle which is farthest from the quarry, up they get, and off they go, whizzing along the top of the heather.

At this stage of the proceedings the modern falconer does, for once, find the use of his voice. He shouts loudly to call the hawk’s attention and to cheer her on. “Hey, gar, gar, gar!” or “Hoo, ha, ha!” are old-fashioned cries for encouraging a falcon to stoop from her pitch, and are still often used. There can be no doubt that a shout of some kind, or a blast on the horn, if you prefer it, has an inspiriting effect on hawks, and that not only when they start for their first descent, but at each successive stoop. I almost fancy that I have actually seen them cheer up as they heard a loud “Bravo” come from the field far beneath after a brilliant stoop or a masterly throw-up! It is with grouse and black-game, more than with any other quarry, that you see at once when they get up the immense advantage of a high pitch. When the falcon is some hundreds of feet high she commands a wide area below. At the height of a quarter of a mile it matters little whether the range of her circling flight takes her a hundred yards to one side or the other. She can come down with equal ease upon any one spot in an area of thirty acres.

No one knows how the speed and force of a falcon’s stoop are gained. All we can say is that it is the fastest movement made by any living thing in the world. It is not flying, and it is not falling, but a combination of the two, with some other impulse which we do not understand. Mere weight must be at least a most important element, for a heavy hawk seems always to come dow............