August 16th, 2015, right at dusk, an incredibly large, very young passage female redtail hit my bal-chatri trap and forever changed the course of my falconry journey. When I met Thistle, she was inexperienced, green and goofy, but at that stage in falconry, so was I. I am convinced she was a late hatched bird and had never really caught anything when I snagged her. She was sharp and ravenous off the trap. At that point in my falconry journey, I too was hungry. Hungry for success, for recognition and to prove to my peers I was serious about the sport. She and I were a match made in heaven.
Thistle and I spent the first few months of our first season together snagging crawfish, snakes and other small things. It took me until Thanksgiving to finally get her connected on her first squirrel. The hours I spent dragging frozen dead squirrels up trees teaching her to look UP. The countless missed slips. The endless days I spent with her in the woods. But after that first kill, it flipped a switch in her brain and from that moment she was focused almost solely on bushy tails. And from then, I too was focused on keeping her flying and giving her a successful season. All we both wanted was days flying and to stack game in the bag.
The first year I flew her, I won’t even lie…I totally was in love with her. Her size, her silly nature, her willingness to pursue. As the years passed, her hunting abilities only improved. That infatuation for her grew into respect and admiration. She learned to lead squirrels and she became more proficient at catching, both in the trees and on the ground. Her hunting weight seemed to increase every year, allowing me to hunt her at higher weights without worrying she would take off or be sluggish on chases. She was well mannered for the most part, or as well-mannered as you could expect for a moody, pterodactyl sized redtail that had an attitude the size of a golden eagle. The more we hunted together, the more bottomless she became, routinely taking doubles and triples on our hunting trips. We learned to understand each other in the woods…I knew what her posture meant, what her bells meant. She learned what me beating on trees and digging through wood piles meant. She made catches look effortless. And she made me effortlessly look like a proficient and capability falconer, when in reality, every flight with her taught me something new about the sport.
As age crept up on her, the spring took its toll, and the hormones would kick in earlier and earlier each year. We’d end up chasing residents more than squirrels or she would just become disinterested in hunting, no matter her weight. The price you pay for flying an intermewed female bird. I’d always just take my ques from her as to when to close our season – you can’t fight mother nature on that one. Which taught me so much about what other battles in my life were worth fighting and what fights that I should just let go.
With experience and age, her hunting style also changed. In seasons 7 and 8, gone were the ping pong ball style chases and frantic passes through the trees at game. Her moves were precise, calculated and usually deadly to her targets. More often than not, if I flushed something, it was dead before I even saw what happened. Her approach to the goal became laser focused, something I learned was also useful in my own day to day. Pick a target, make a plan, execute. Only accept success. Good words to live by.
She also learned through the years that, while I was generous with the trades, a whole squirrel was a lot more than anything she would be getting on the lure. She never missed an opportunity to carry off her meal (and she could literally fly a good half mile or more with a dead squirrel) and attempt to hide under a wood pile or a log… or, she would just strategically kill the squirrel in a pine tree, if possible, to sit in the top of the tree and eat the whole carcass. She would, eventually, come down for more snacks on the lure, but that didn’t help us if I wanted to try for multiples or wanted to go hunting the next day. The last few years were spent less working with her as a partner and more about search and recovery. She learned she had the advantage if she stayed in the trees and up there, she could call the shots, not me. She taught me that you can spend a lot of time (waiting under trees, begging her to come down after she’d eaten a whole squirrel) and throw a lot of money at something (telemetry, GPS, etc.) to try to overcome a problem, but sometimes you just must accept facts for what they are…relationships, over time, change. And no matter how hard you try, you should accept the truths for what they are.
I have always said I would fly her until she didn’t want to play the falconry game anymore. In my mind, that meant she wouldn’t follow or would try to take off and be unrecoverable. But these past few years, it didn’t dawn on me that dealing with her always carrying game and always killing things in trees or her growing independence as a hunter and lack of need of my assistance on kills was her quietly telling me that it was time for her to move on.
She still followed like a pro. She still came to the glove and the lure like it was second nature. She still had perfect manners on a kill, when I got the rare opportunity to be a part of the dispatch. But, if I’m completely honest with myself, the partnership between us had faded. Lately, I had felt more like the chauffeur and snack mom than an active participant in the hunts. Thistle had outgrown me. She let me tag along, sure. And I am sure she would let me tag along for another decade if I had the patience to do so. But I wanted to be more than that in this falconry hunting equation.
Most passage redtails don’t make it to see their first birthday. Thistle very well could have been one of those birds that didn’t beat the odds and didn’t survive her first season. But she excelled as a falconry bird and emerged as one of the best and most resourceful squirrel hunting hawks in the sky. Through our eight seasons together, we’ve literally killed HUNDREDS of squirrels. She is a strong, robust, healthy and more than capable hunter that will hopefully be bullet-proof and live a long fruitful life in the wild. She’s got time this spring (if she can stop being a witch long enough to get a boyfriend) to take a mate and raise some incredible chicks with superior genetics. She gave me the last eight years. It’s her time now.
I don’t mean this in a boastful or egotistical way, but I built that squirrel hawk from the ground up with my blood, sweat, time and tears. But, in turn, she built me as a falconer. Today, she’s one damn fine bird. And I am a much better falconer for flying her.
I would be lying if I said that the month or so leading up to her release, I didn’t fret over it. That I didn’t shed a tear or two thinking about it. The idea of letting her go was so troubling that I didn’t even tell anyone my plans to release her, except my husband and my best friend, because I knew, once I told the world, it would become real. Something I had to do.
And the day of the release, I was a blubbering mess as I made my way, alone, up a mountain path…just Thistle and I, to a perfect little overlook by a stream. As I unhooded her and offered her a rabbit leg for her last meal as a kept bird, I carefully cut away each anklet while she cropped up. As the jesses fell back and the leather peeled away from each tarsus, I realized two things. 1. I hadn’t seen this bird without equipment on in literally eight years. And 2. As soon as the falconry equipment came off, the spell broke. At that moment, she wasn’t mine anymore. Like magic, she became a different bird, almost unrecognizable. The both literal and figurative tether that held us together for the last eight years was severed right there by that mountain stream. I was ready. She was ready. It was over.
She finished most of her meal and spread her wings for that last flight from the glove. I watched her fly about 20 yards, land and feak, then disappear into an old growth forest. Eight seasons together. Now, just a collection of pictures and memories.
You have to do the right thing, even when it’s hard, but no one says you have to like it. I don’t love the idea of not being able to know she’s ok. She’s been my responsibility now for so long. I hate I won’t be able to walk downstairs and know that she’s perfectly fine. To check on her and tend to her every little whim. To know she’s fat and healthy and happy. But she was never really mine to begin with. When I trapped her, I always knew, one way or another, Thistle was just on loan to me from Mother Nature.
Falconry isn’t for the faint of heart. It will literally gut you, crush you and make you wish you’d never held a bird on the fist. But releasing Thistle isn’t one of those days to feel sad or defeated. I am going to choose to look at that day as a win. It hurt, more than I want to admit, to watch her fly away from me for the last time, but it’s bittersweet. I will cherish all the memories of our hunts. I will miss her. But I’m excited for both of us for our new chapters.
I’m so very grateful I had all these years with her as a hunting partner and now I returned her back to the open sky better than I found her. A strong, perfect killing machine. Godspeed, old friend. I will miss you. Make good choices.
Thistle – Trapped: August 16th, 2015 at 1200 grams, sharp. Released: March 23, 2023 at 1809 grams, cropped and fat as tick.