The art and practice of hawking - Modern Prepper

116 ART AND PRACTICE OF HAAVKING
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 gamehawking
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 pass-