Pillars of Rome

A friend from my Railroad days came to visit and to attempt to take an Antelope when the season opens tomorrow. Jim Berg was an Electrician that made periodic visits to Klamath Falls where I worked. He  retired a few years ago as I did, and now lives a life of leisure, when he isn't doing "Honey Do's".

We have been hunting with Sue for the last two days, and yesterday I despaired of her making a catch on one of the full grown Jacks where we have been hunting, so I wounded one for her, and stuffed her full of Jack so that we can concentrate on Antelope for the next few days. She is now more interested in winged quarry and while she still tries for Rabbits, she really pushes for the Pheasant that we sometimes stumble on. The hay hasn't been cut as yet, so I am saved the concern of her catching Upland game out of season.  ( It doesn't open until the first of Sept. )

Both of us bore easily, so I took him to Rome to see the sights.

This area is called the Pillars of Rome. I can only surmise that since the early education was of the more classic orientation, the settlers thought the formations looked like what they thought the classic columns of Rome should look like. The make up of the bluffs is of Rhyolite with the cap rock made of sterner stuff. Water and wind have shaped them over the years.

Jim Berg

Notice all the different rocks embedded in the Rhyolite

Apparently there are "Mud Peckers" in the area?

An old Horse drawn Sickle Bar Mower, its useful days over, rests in the Grease Wood.

There was little wood available for corral building so the Willow shoot that are plentiful along the river were used to make corrals.

The old line shack is now the residence of the many Pack Rats in the area.

#2 and 3

I did get Sue B back down to weight after the fishing trip, but I have been a bit remiss in posting. I guess I had better catch you up on Sue's progress.

We went out two days ago to see if we could get her feet on a Jack and get on to the next stage where I will not need to improve her chances with the pistol. She was a bit higher in weight than I would have preferred, but close enough to warrant taking the time to go hunting with her. Since she has flown free, every hunting trip has ended with a kill, and a gorge whether she actually caught it on her own or not. Positive reinforcement is my preferred method of training, and sooner or later she will believe that she can, and insist on catching her own game.

I am walking a fine line with her weight. Too heavy and she will not feel the driving intensity needed to expend the extraordinary effort needed to actually catch a rabbit that is scared out of its mind. It requires more than you would think. Nature has equipped those that truly have the drive and the heart to survive with the tools to insure the survival of the species. Think about it. I am asking a bird that weighs about 4 ounces less than two pounds to catch a Jack Rabbit that can twist and turn faster than you can blink, and have that rabbit out weigh that bird by anywhere up to 5 pounds.

If I get her too light, then the tendency to scream for food is developed and generally will not go away until the next year after she has molted. I prefer to take my time and encourage her with a bit of help every now and then.

Now since I posted last, I have introduced the Tee Perch to our hunts. This takes a bit of weight off my left arm and gives her a better chance to see something to chase. I was a bit hesitant to take it out with me, but she understood the advantage much quicker than I thought she would. I put a tidbit on the perch and she accepted it with no hesitation. It also allows me to cut back on the tidbits to her as well. She naturally has learned that things happen where I am, and comes to the perch without me even asking. I am still feeding her a tidbit every time I whistle, but the frequency of that necessity is greatly reduced.

I hunted a different area of the field, and we had several chances at Bunnies with still no success. Even though the Bunnies are only half grown, they still possess the wit and agility to get away from her. About the only way that we are going to make any inroads on the Bunny population will be when I start bringing Peg with me. The two of them will make short work of their stop and hide technique. I will accept a Bunny as quarry, but I would prefer a Jack for the bag.

We had several slips at both Jacks and Bunnies with no success, and I was beginning to think that I was going to have to help again. By this time we had been in the field for about 3 hours, and we were both getting hot and tired. Sue was having to breathe with her beak open, and I was getting a bit stinky my self. She had given chase to a Bunny, and diverted to land on a large Sage bush, and was looking at the base of it. Thinking that the bunny was hiding under it, I made my way there and out came two half grown Pheasants. Sue gave vigorous chase to it and was gaining. The Pheasant dumped into the Sage and managed to give her the slip. Now since Pheasant season doesn't open until Sept 1, I called her to a tidbit and we moved on to the other side of the field. We were crossing an area of tall Sage and those peculiar brittle yellow dead weeds that were just short of shoulder high. Sue was playing hide and seek with a couple of Bunnies that didn't have any problems ducking and dodging around and through. I had had enough, and was trying to get out, when she flashed off my fist and down into the junk, slamming into the ground with every indication that she indeed had a prize. I kept waiting for the scream that would signal the capture of a Bunny. Nothing but silence, but she was still acting like she had captured a prize. I walked around to see what she had and here it is.

 

You may have to enlarge the picture a bit, but her prize was a Kangaroo Rat. Just look at her, I didn't have the heart to tell her that wasn't what we were there for. Since the Rats are by nature nocturnal, no one was more surprised than I at his demise. What ever, a kill is a kill, and they all count as one, so I was happy to supplement her kill with some of the last Bunny that I carried with me to feed her.

I was prepared to take her out again yesterday, but her weight was a bit higher than I wanted so I elected to wait another day and pull her down a bit lower than what we had been flying. I feel that she hasn't been feeling the proper amount of desperation that she needs to really commit to the chase.

We had gone to a Birthday dinner supplied by Rosy Stoddart next door, and didn't get back until after dark, so I left all the birds out in the weathering area all night. When I went to pick her up, she was definitely hungry and cranky as well. Sigh! I have three hunting hawks and two of them want to kick my butt. Peg is the only bird that I have that truly understands me. :-) I found that Sue had managed to pull the clip on her tail off yesterday in her boredom, so Karen held her on the fist while I reinstalled the clip and transmitter on her tail.

Sue was quite a bit more interested today ( 895 Grams, down one oz. )  and had slammed through a Sage after a Jack, but missed. I decided to work the edges of the Sage by the Alfalfa fields, since the Jacks will hide in areas that look like they don't have enough cover for anything, when they have been hassled in the heavy cover. On my way there, she again took off on a long flight down to the edge of the Sage, but landed on a rock outcropping. I worked my way there, and she flew to the Tee Perch. We were skirting the edge of the Sage, when she again took off again, and disappeared over the crest of a small hill towards the Alfalfa. A furious commotion and quacking soon made me aware that she had stepped up from Rats. I hurried up and could see her lying on her side in about three inches of water holding on to a furiously flapping Mallard Duck. The duck might have been more surprised than I was, but I for sure was a close second. They flood irrigate the fields, making it hazardous to enter without Mosquito repellent, but I sure didn't expect ducks in the field.

Since she cannot read, there was no way to explain to her that she was committing a federal offense, but I did manage to get it away from her by substituting her final meal of Bunny for the Duck. I think the duck has learned her lesson, but the important part is that Sue now thinks that she can catch anything. One of my goals has always been to hunt Chukar and Pheasant with the Harris Hawks. In flight the Harris is handicapped, but intelligence can make the difference. So today we made a giant step towards the final goal of an all around hunting hawk. Unlike most species of raptors, the Harris Hawk is an equal opportunity hunting bird, from the lowly mouse to Pheasant and anything in between. Fortunately I had managed to leave the camera at home today, so I was not tempted to record her first attempt at a life of crime, but catch and release should count for something.

Actually we do have a somewhat provision to exempt us from our Hawks catching game that is out of season, but I prefer to release the game back into the wild when possible. Sometimes it is not possible to do so, but she traded off with no problem for the Bunny that I had.

Subsistence Fishing

Randy and I loaded up the Quad and the quad trailer that I got last year just for this purpose, with a bit more than it could hold, for our fishing trip. As you can see it also included a picnic table to assist with the fish cleaning.

Since we intended to spend a couple of nights, and I don't suffer well, we loaded the trailer with almost every thing we would need. I did forget worms, but they were really not needed at all. We catch Bass on small Panther Martin lures, and Catfish on trash fish. For our food, we took 2 cans of stew, 2 cans of beans, 2 cans of peaches, 5 polish sausages, oil, flour, spices, and two frying pans. We only used one of them. I forgot some potatoes as well. We dined well, with fish for the main course, and homemade canned peaches from Pat Brewster served as a great desert. We took only water (frozen) and coffee to drink, and a water filter pump to purify river water for coffee and to drink. We brought the beans back.

Its a fair trek to get to this spot, so the only possible visitor down there was a possible BLM employee to spray noxious weeds. The last mile or so requires either a quad or walking to get there.

Randy is helping to gather bait and keeping some of the big Bass that he catches to fill his limit of Bass. The limit is 5, which seems a bit silly, since the river is plagued with truly small, Small mouth. Its not hard to catch a limit in nothing flat. I managed to catch a 11 inch or so trout that apparently had not heard that the river is too warm for trout.

Soon we were into the Catfish and this size seemed to be the upper end of the average, although we did catch a few bigger. Randy had one that he wanted a picture of, that managed to get off the stringer before that happened. The cats spin and constantly twist anything that you put them on, and this one managed to untie a granny knot. He took three others with him when he made his break. We also lost a few others that broke a "chain stringer".

The little plastic table set in the river provided about as comfortable a spot to clean fish as I have ever experienced. Normally cleaning a catch of fish has my fun meter pretty well pegged, but this worked out really well. We did set up a production line however, I skinned and Randy filleted them.

Our first day was pretty hot, ( high 90's ) and we drank a lot of water, and used a lot of sunscreen. That evening, after cleaning the last of the fish for the day, we gratefully went into the river to wash some of the grime and sunscreen off our bodies. There is a nice sandy bottom that goes out to about shoulder high in the water.

The next morning we discovered that a visitor had crawled up on our beach to die. A baby Muskrat, wet from the river and with sand in his fur had crawled up behind my tent. Not sure what happened to him, he was just barely alive, but showed no visible marks. We surmised that he might have been a victim of a Rattle snake bite, but being an unknown rodent with an unknown problem we did handle it at all.

The morning was cloudy, and since the weather forecast had called for 30 percent chance of thunder storms, we were prepared for some bad weather. We were not disappointed when thunder and lightning started popping above our heads. When the flash and sound are simultaneous you know you are right in the middle of the storm. We took refuge in our tents to wait out the storm.

Enlarge this picture and you can see the rain just pouring down. It rained hard for about 15 minutes and then the storm moved on to cover another 30 percent of the landscape.

It didn't seem to hurt the fishing at all, and we cleaned a lot of fish that day. In the afternoon we walked upriver to try for some bass. The Bass were biting on almost every cast and we caught and released fish for at least a couple of hours, keeping only the bigger ones.

We finished cleaning our Bass as dusk settled into the Canyon. We took our baths and again retired after the evening show of Night Hawks, Swallows, Vaux Swifts, and Bats hawking bugs. The only man made sounds we heard were two planes.  The rest were sounds of the bird that inhabit the river, as well as Quail, Pheasants and Chukar.

The next morning we packed before the heat got too bad, and made our way out of the canyon. Along the way we ran across this denizen of the Oregon Desert. The ones here are really quite large compared to other populations in the Great Basin.

 As you can tell they have great camouflage. Click on the picture and enlarge it enough so that you can see him.

They say that they bleed from the eyes when distressed. Apparently he wasn't that concerned about being handled.

Randy did quite well as far as winter food was concerned. He left this morning with 26 pounds of Catfish fillets, and enough memories of the High Desert to perhaps last him another year.

Pack Rats as a coat?

Thankfully the Pack Rat invasion is starting to taper off a bit. They are still there, one woke Curly and I up this morning at 3:30 AM clanking around on the back porch. Unfortunately he didn't make it to the "Electronic Rat Zapper" that I had waiting for him and his ilk.

http://www.amazon.com/Agri-Zap-RZUIR1-Zapper-Ultra/dp/B000BWFESU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=home-garden&qid=1280502999&sr=8-1

Randy Carnahan, a friend for many years, came over for a fishing trip on the Owyhee. We had planned to work our way to the river and camp for a couple of days, to see if he could put together a supply of Catfish for the winter. As I was doing the chores before we departed I found that another one of the big ones had met his demise in the attic of the Tack (cat house) room. He wasn't quite as big as the 12 inch one earlier, but he was no slouch either. Randy had earlier wise cracked that I should make a coat, so I presented him with the rat. Randy has tanned hides since he was a kid, so we proceeded to the shop.

The interesting part of the entire exercise is that each and every whisker can be moved independently. Each is connected to a tendon. They do have a serious "pot belly", but they are muscular little critters, perfectly designed to be a serious pain in the butt.

The darker pattern in their back are apparently extra blood vessels to dissipate heat? 

 The hide is then salted and rolled up to cool in my outside refrigerator for later tanning.

July 25th

This was last nights sunset. There are Night Hawks flying all over catching bugs and Mosquito's in the fading light. Swallows were also plentiful, doing their fair share of Mosquito control. Even though the creek is just below the house, we have very few Mosquito's up at the house. What does come up here
are handled by the birds.

Today was Sue's hunting day, so made our way to the hunting field as soon as I finished the morning chores. Her weight was up a bit more than usual because I have been tidbitting her heavily when I pick her up to go in the shop or the weathering area. Still trying to figure out what triggers the aggressive behavior, but it is something to do with those areas. I suspect that I have been a little too abrupt and expecting too much from her in these areas. She is such a quick study, that I suspect that I have missed a step that was obviously important to her. I normally do not tidbit a bird that I am picking up to go hunting, but that also comes later in the training cycle, and I should have been doing so with her. No two birds react the same, and the falconer needs to be smart enough to remember that.

When we started down the road to where I expected to hunt, Sue flew off the fist in pursuit of a half grown Bunny running in the Sage. It hid before she could get that close to it, and she landed in the Sage. I called her to the fist, and we began bumping Bunnies right and left. There must have been about 4 of them ducking and dodging through the Sage. She kept trying, but obviously not hard enough as she kept coming up empty footed. I crossed from a rocky ridge through a large patch of Med. Thistle, and there must have been at least five Jacks hiding in that. She gave chase to two of them with no luck. I was a bit surprised that she was also considering Jacks as prey, but very pleased. The rabbits were every where this morning and we suffered no shortage of running targets, just cooperating ones.

We got over into the Hoodoo's and she was upping her game a bit with each miss, and again made a pretty good try at a Jack. I really wanted her to get her feet into another Jack, as they are easier to catch, since they don't escape down the little cracks and holes in the Lava. Besides they are the end quarry that we will be going after. As we were skirting one of the Lava Hoodoo's I looked up to see a Jack sitting on the rocks watching us at about 25 yards. Knowing that she would not have a clue or a chance at catching this guy, I decided to try to wing him with the pistol that I carry with me. It is a Ruger Auto with a Red Dot scope, just the thing for old codgers with failing eyesight. I got the pistol out, held it between my knees to turn on the sight, (There is a battery that lights up the dot.) then had to flip up the scope covers.  I failed to take the safety off, and the Jack decided to go somewhere else. I'm not sure if you have ever tried to do all that, with a hawk on the fist, and without shooting yourself in the foot, or worse, but the resemblance to a Bear Cub with mittens came to mind. I holstered the pistol and started that way hoping that I would get another chance. I guess the Jack was curious as he jumped back up on the rock again. I popped him with the pistol.  Sue was off, slamming into his head. He was still jumping, so as far as she is concerned, she caught and killed him.

I gave her a front leg after she calmed down, and we made our way back to the car. She finished the front leg and one from the small Jack that she killed her last trip. She hopped into her box for the trip home when she finished.

This will be the last time I can fly her until late next week as I have a friend coming over and we are going camping and fishing for the first part of the week. I really wanted and needed her to be successful today. Nothing succeeds like positive reinforcement, and kicking screaming rabbits supply that like nothing else can. Karen will be handling and feeding her while I am gone. It will give her a chance to show Sue that she is part of the team as well.

I describe some of the things that are necessary for a falconer to do rather reluctantly, for in this day and age of such extreme political correctness, most people never have to get their hands bloody to survive. While we as a race can leave our dirty work to others, nature and the creatures of nature do not have that luxury. Falconry by its very definition is a blood sport, any thing less is nothing more than a pet keeper. This period of training and discovery for Sue is thankfully a short one, but necessary for her to reach her potential as a hunting hawk. Soon my role as a teacher will evolve to nothing more than transportation and a flushing tool to give her an opportunity at them. She will not need my help to catch her food. I eagerly await that day and the contest for survival between two evenly matched opponent's, that is what falconry is about.

Sue's first kill!

We got a fairly good start today. Karen took pity on me and put the mosquito spray in the car. I'm not saying that I would have left it behind, but I'm not betting against it either. Apparently she had her doubts as well.

Sue's weight was in an acceptable range, and once we started walking, she was all eyes. With one exception, Jack Rabbits. Several flushed out in front of us, and while she saw them, they didn't merit pursuit. I found when starting Peg, that a Jack flushing at our feet would trigger a chase, but more than 20 yards away was ignored.

There is a lot of water there, as flood irrigation is used to water the Wheat fields that border the Sage. This is the reason that there are so many mosquito's in the area. This time with the exception of a few spots between my eyes that I missed with the spray, I was immune to the hordes of the little buggers.

Sue made a couple of good serious chases for Bunnies that flushed in front of us. For the most part she rode the fist quite well, and only made forays for tidbits a couple of times. In the picture above, Sue remembered the spot that she caught the Bunny that I shot for her, and flew down to check and make sure that there wasn't something left there for her to eat.

After cruising through the sage, she came for a tidbit, and we walked through the rest of the little strip hoping to find another one. She decided to go exploring again and hopped into the sage for another look. A hen pheasant took that opportunity to make her escape. I called Sue back to the fist just in case there were more. She sat for a bit and went back to exploring. As soon as she hit the ground a poult Pheasant about the size of a large Quail flushed out of the weeds. She of course didn't see it. I called her back and walked all through the swamp, finding nothing but water and Mosquitos. I decided to traverse the other side just in case there were some there. A small rabbit bolted right at our feet and Sue was off in a flash, slashing through the heavy Sage after it. The screams of the rabbit gave testimoney to her resolve and success. I stood for a bit amazed at our luck. That kind of stuff never happens. Most generally it is like pulling teeth to get a young hawk started. Poor old Peg never got any sort of break like that. What ever, I'll take it.

After I crawled around the other side, I could see that it wasn't a Bunny as I had thought but a small half grown Jack. Sue handled him quite easily and killed him without my help.

I let her come back to reality, they zone out for a while after grabbing game, then tossed her a hind leg from the last Bunny and removed the Jack while she ate the leg.

Once she finished the leg, I offered her the other one to eat while we made our way back to the car. I will grant you that the poor little critter was not in the trophy class, but its sacrifice and the resulting influence on Sue and her hunting is much larger than I can explain in print. Thankful, and humbled at the experience we made our way back home.

You may wonder that I didn't let her eat the Jack that she caught. The reason is parasites. Almost all the older Rabbits will have tape worms and other parasites in their stomach and guts. At a certain point leaving them with the game is necessary especially on the first few, but I try to limit that as much as I can depending on the raptor, and the food type.

Again I was struck with the amount of road kills while traveling to the hunting area. There is at least one dead rabbit every mile, sometime many more. The Ravens and Eagles had all filled their crops on fresh rabbit. I checked the two Eagles that I saw sitting on poles along the road and all were bulging with food. Even the Vultures were eating fresh meat in Arock. The predators will prosper this year.

Sue B, field trip!

It was tough, but I forced myself to get enough ambition to get the chores done, pick up Sue and head for the rabbit fields. I say forced, because I seem to really like laying around the house drinking coffee and cussing at the politicians on TV. However I did manage, and even took every thing with me that I would need with one exception. Mosquito Spray. I went back to the house to get it and Karen told me that it was on the passenger side of the truck. I heard car, and since I was taking the car, no problem.

Sue, followed her usual routine of several aggressive moves at my face and a few screams, with which I responded with a loud WHAAAAAT? that seemed to blow her off the fist. After my usual vigorous petting for such behavior, I set her on the scales. Her weight was just right, and she climbed into her travel crate with no problems, and we set off.

The morning was just right, and game seemed to be every where. Pheasants and deer were in the fields at Arock , dead rabbits littered the hwy about every hundred feet. It looks to be a good year. When I parked the car, I could see three Jacks at various distances in the Alfalfa fields. I considered trying to hit one of them with the pistol, but decided to give her some time to see what her reactions were going to be. She was still in the crate, and I was afraid that I was only going to have another "road kill" for her. Since I am not training a Vulture, I really wanted a bit more action.

I did at least three searches of the car and could turn up nothing that looked like Mosquito repellent. They were happy, and Sue got quite a lot of manning and training in ignoring arm flapping and cussing. If I die of West Nile, I will blame Karen, whose only defense is that as usual, I didn't listen to her.

She came out of the crate with no problem, and we started our trek. Up until this time, I had not walked with her in the sage and called her to the fist, so I was watching her reactions pretty closely. We had not gone far when a bunny scooted out underfoot through the sage. She flashed after it, but it of course got into a burrow and she turned around to come back to me. I was lost in the moment, kicking brush and whooping and damn near scared her to death. She didn't go far however and came back to the fist for a tidbit. After that we didn't see much in the way of Rabbits for a while, at least not close ones. Sue was very interested in every thing around her, and I was very pleased. She would jump off the fist to a bush every now and then to get a tidbit, and I didn't discourage her at all. She never allowed me to get more than 25 feet away from her at any time. Later she will learn that if I whistle, she gets a tidbit, if not, nothing. That will stop her flying off just to get food, but that comes later.

After quite a bit of walking and swatting, I began to believe that I might have erred in not shooting the gimmie at the beginning of the field. I did try several times to hit Jacks with the pistol, and of course missed as they were quite a ways off. The report would spook her a bit at first, but she would return with no problem. I decided to change fields to one that has a lot of lava "hoodoo's" that harbour a lot of Bunnies, since the Jacks size seemed to be putting her off. They were flood irrigating the alfalfa fields that dot the area, and it was pure torture to get any where near the water that seemed to be every where. We had walked to the area of the Hoodoo's and were seeing several bunnies, but no chases as yet. At the edge of a wet, mosquito infested patch of grass, I saw a rabbit run through the brush. I followed slowly hoping to get a shot at it. Finally I saw a rabbit stop in the brush in front of me. I fired and a bunny started jumping up and down. That was enough for Sue and she dived into the sage after it.

I gave thanks to the Bunny for its sacrifice and to the falconry Gods for their help.

She of course was very excited. This was the first one that she had her feet on that was still moving. I allowed her time to get used to the idea, and eventually moved to where I could see her, and gave her a few tidbits to get her juices flowing enough for her to move to the next step. I allowed her to eat quite a lot of Bunny before dragging her and the rabbit out of the bush. After a while, I gave her the rabbit leg that I had taken along with me, and got her on the fist and secured. We made it back to the car with minimal loss of blood on my part, and she went into her box with no fuss at all.