Jessie's Early start.

Those of you that followed Jessie's progress last year know that she can be a bit of a challenge. Last year I molted her in the mews, loose. I had to really take her weight down a lot more than I was comfortable with, and it seemed to take forever to get her conditioned. It took almost 20 days to get any strength built up. This year I didn't take her down past her flying weight and only flew her to the balloon twice before she was wanting to fly longer and ignore the balloon. Our last free flight to the balloon resulted in her flying for upwards of 45 minutes before she came back to the house, totally ignoring the balloon. Normally I don't fly my birds on opening day, to avoid the gun hunters. The Chukars are still really low, so the hunters are scarce as well. Saturday I rolled out the airplane to check cows and took a turn by Appendix Point to see if there was any evidence of hunters. There was none and there were Ducks on it. Wanting to keep the birds flying on alternate days I decided to wait for today to see how she was going to do with a chance at wild game.

We went over to the ranch to pick up Tami and the kids for Jessie's first hunting flight of the year. I very foolishly decided to use her old hood ( I have a new one courtesy of Ron Richter) as I felt that it might be more comfortable. I have not yet pulled the braces on her hood, although I have been putting her hood on her, just not tightening the braces. I was pretty sure that she was going to throw a fit when I did, and I wanted to make sure that it wasn't going to rub her any where. That turned out to be a mistake. She managed to throw her hood while we were driving the rough road to the pond and by the time we got there she was hot, frazzled and upset. I turned her loose anyway and she made a short circle around and landed on the rock cliff.

 We all walked up to be in position should she decide to take a pitch over the pond.

 You can see from her wing position that she is hot and tired from the trip. We all stood around waiting for her to get her breath back. She just sat as though she was very happy to be sitting on a rock cliff and there was no hurry to do anything. I am trying to develop patience. It is a trait that I have never been much good at, but this time I out did myself. This was Curly's first trip hunting and he was beside himself with excitement. That of course resulted in an over active set of bowels and he bracketed our little space with very smelly piles of the results of his stomach upset. There was no wind to speak of so we were surrounded by Eau de Dog. So after about 15 minutes of that, I decided to walk to the other side of the pond to where I went to flush Ducks last year, hoping that she would fly off the cliff and start hunting. No dice!

 So I went back and did the one thing guaranteed to make her fly. I called her to me. She is smart enough to know that if she succumbs to the temptation of the food in my hand, it is all over for the day. She considered trying to snatch it out of my hand, but the odds of that are slim, so she took to the air. 

 After a few turns she had enough height that I thought a flush was in order, so we rousted the ducks off the water and she cut through the flock and snatched one out of the air.She was a long way off when she went down, and all the ambulatory personnel started off to see if we could find her. I of course left my Telemetry receiver in the truck, so it was in essence an Easter Egg hunt. The Rabbit brush was just too high to see anything. I finally gave up and yelled to John to bring the truck as he and Karen were still back where we started.

 By the time that he got there, Isabel found her at the edge of the road that skirts the pond.

 I let her pluck and eat on the duck for a while and then offered her a Pigeon breast in exchange for the duck.

By this point she had plucked enough of it to feel satisfied and stepped to the pigeon willingly. She ate almost all the Pigeon so she was very happy and willingly jumped to her perch in the truck for the trip home. I will feed her the duck when she kills again. When we arrived she jumped to the edge of the truck side window to be picked up. A new and welcome trick that she has never shown before. Karen had gone in the house so I tried to take Jess's transmitter off her leg by myself. That brought out the old Jessie that I know so well. She tried to grab me so that she could bite me better. I sighed and took her to Karen, whom she allows such familiarities.

I am quite frankly very pleased and amazed at her improved behaviour this year. The molt on the block has kept her used to handling that she is much more pleasant to handle. She is no further behind on her molt that she would have had she been loose all year.