Stuff Falconers Like

Have you seen the recent spate of funny (and distinctly un-PC) blogs featuring "Stuff ____ People Like," where various races and ethnic groups fill in the blanks? 2Blowhards provides a short list here.


This got me thinking about a new meme: Stuff Falconers Like. You could tailor it to any pastime I suppose, although I bet you the most intensive hobbies will provide the best material.

Here are a couple things most falconers like. Can you think of others?

1) Days Off: Everyone likes a day off, but falconers can make one into a miniature safari. Tag it to the start or end of a weekend, and you've got a mini-vacation, worthy of a month's planning and blowing the remainder of the family budget. One day off equals at least two hunts, possibly miles apart and the chance to visit and hunt with friends. A long weekend stretches the possibilities into field-meet territory and pulls in potential hunting spots within a 150-mile radius of home. Which leads to...

2) Road Trips: Not every falconer likes to drive, but almost every one I know loves to leave town. Driving is generally the most practical means, given the gear and animals we bring with us. A "road trip" is usually more than a few hours' drive and for most means travelling out of state and into an entirely different biome. For me that means driving 12 hours from the coastal low country of Louisiana to the high plains of the Texas panhandle. Sharing that drive and cost and fun with a couple close friends (and their animals) is an essential part of the road-trip experience. What do we talk about for 12 hours...?

3) Talking Trash about Other Falconers: This is a favorite ritual between falconer friends. It cements the lifelong bonds between falconers that outlast marriages and dogs and birds and careers. No falconer is safe from this, and even friends with whom you talk trash about another falconer can be fodder for same when circumstances permit. Bad-mouthing the poor husbandry and skills of other falconers and the performance of their birds serves a dual purpose as an affirmation of our own superior practices and as instruction to any young falconers present. Of course, bad-mouthing young falconers is also a cherished pastime and leads the next thing.

4) The Glorious Past: Every falconer lives mostly in his or her head where a larger, wilder, freer land still exists. This is the land of the Past, and it's one of our favorite places. The state of falconry in The Past, which was usually before we had spouses and children and careers and mortgages, was truly exceptional. There was more game and more space and more time to explore it. The quality of the average young falconer (namely, ourselves) was much better than the present crop, which is one reason the present crop needs so much bad-mouthing. Driving around our hometowns and seeing all the places where we used to hunt in The Glorious Past brings to mind another thing falconers like.

5) Complaining About Sprawl: Falconers have a love/hate relationship with sprawl. We hate losing hawking places and green spaces but love exploring new ones cleared and made ready by the endless development. It's an ecological truth that small game thrives in the temporary edge environments that are created (and of course, destroyed) by the process of unplanned, suburban growth. The fact that we have to drive farther from home each season to reach the vanguard territory grates and gives rise to the repetitive complaints our friends and families hear on every trip around town: "I used to hunt there. And over there. Damn, that was a nice spot!" We lose a little bit of our souls when each one goes under the asphalt. But alas, most of us like living in houses.

6) Alcohol: Do I know any falconers who don't drink? I don't think so. We are not typically alcoholics and even more rarely are we addicted to recreational drugs. At some point we need to be able to get up again the next morning and fly the birds, which we need to have fed and cared for the day before. So wild party lifestyles are incompatible with good falconry (no anecdotes to the contrary, please. I'll just bad-mouth you.) The fact remains that falconers like to drink, and generally drink well in terms of quality beers and spirits. Maybe it helps to relive the good flights or maybe it helps us handle the sprawl.

7) Other People's Hawks: We all like to fly nice hawks and generally tend to like the hawk we're flying at present. But hawks we've had in the past and hawks flown now by other people are often the better birds. This is especially true of hawks flown by other people in other countries, hawks we've only seen in photos. Those exotic hawks all catch tons of game and give their falconers no trouble. I wish someone would import some of those.

If you can think up more Stuff, funny or otherwise, please post a comment.

*Photo: Bruce Haak's great home-bred peregrine, Jinx, on recent pheasant kill. Jinx is one of those covetted hawks flown by another person.