Shock
02-02-2011, 03:49 AM
alright, might as well start this thing off since if i am going to stop lurking and start posting.
my middle name is Stephen (and I'm not moving beyond that simple due to well-justified paranoia of going around saying full real name on forums and on the internet in general), current live in the state of Texas, and currently working towards either a degree in Information Systems or a simple IT degree with end goal being getting a masters in Library Science and/or Data Management should it get that far. current age is 21 which is going to change in a few months.
currently, I've had a long conflicted history with falconry. what got me into the sport you ask? the best way to describe it was a delayed reaction due to some childhood memory surfacing of a hawk and her trainer when i was in the middle of high school. no trigger or call but the thought popped up and i might as well start doing research. that was the beginning.
next up, i made some contacts, got in touch with the THA, and manage to go on two hunts. the first was a pigeon hunt in a mall lot, the second was a jack hunt on train tracks. both hunts sealed the idea that i wanted to pursue this sport (especially the mall hunt.. i still can't get the image of a cooper's hawk managed to yank a couple of tail feathers from a pigeon in mid flight, catch it, having both take a tumble, crash with the cooper hawk landing a bit away from the kill, the cooper's getting up, running over there squawking like an angry chicken, and mantling over the kill.)
however, things soon fell apart after that. my contact was...flaky and that trait revealed after being going up to a field and staying there for three hours before calling him to find out he went to a party.. frus)
not that it was all his fault. i was.. overeager and after a while, realized that i pestered him a little too much (which compounded the said flakyness frus)) after that self-reflection, i said screw it and aside from visiting a few choice forums from time to time, make no effort on my part to get back into falconry.
however, as the meme goes, in the real world, you may choose falconry but in Soviet Russia, Falconry choose you!
to clarify better: once a person's eyes have been opened, he can not return to the blissful ignorance that he once had before. new knowledge changes his perception and things of which he would have never noticed become noticed in this change.
within the few months that i stop making an "effort", i have spotted 5 native RTs around my intermediate area (one of which has made it's favorite perch on a traffic light which i travel to and back from the college where i am at. i believe there was more than one instance that someone honked at me to move when he was there), several more birds around the more outlying areas, and actually saw a RT take a tree rat in the middle of the day and carry it off...
nothing jerks the memory back like watching a wild bird of prey take a kill in front of you...
at the same time, i started to see falconry related stuff that really had no business being there.. chiefly in my games. here's an example:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v419/shock223/PSScreenShot0021.jpg?t=1296630979
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v419/shock223/PSScreenShot0023.jpg?t=1296631036
now either these game devs thought it was funny to slip a Turkish word for a certain part of the male body or to use it as it's falconry definition (which is the state of the hawk when it is it's best to hunt). I'm hopefully assuming the latter.
last part of this "vacation" from falconry came when i was working in a store. during the summer, a pudgy old fat white guy with a mustache (i can already see how many times that statement is going to be quoted) walked in with a THA shirt on, i said hi and i knew a few things about the sport and we talked. i gave him my number and was assured that he would call should a hunt come up. i'm assuming that the number was lost in the trash.
but still, progress was made. a few connections were made and i managed to get in good terms with a falconer who last summer who was out trying to get a Harris hawk and i managed to follow him on this endeavor. he didn't get one that at that time but i had fun watching how the process worked.
but now im back and now trying to see about looking into the sport a bit more closely around my intermediate area for fellow falconers (the guy that was trapping HHs was in south Texas, i live in the northern part) to shadow a bit to gain a better understanding of the sport.
as of now, i know enough that i am not ready to take the exam, i can not afford the setup cost of mew construction (even if i could, i have no land where to stick it), and given my past history, sponsorship seems unlikely in the interment future.
however, i do keep a keen instrest in the sport and do know enough to see that falconers are the most... how do you put it politely... opinionated people on the planet. from your dirt hawkers who have a "burn and pillage" mentality when it comes to jacks and decide to migrate to other falconer's territory should their supply get too low, to club members who fight and complain like little school girls who snub at each other just for the hell of it (and then proceed to come on the forums to farther the complaints), to the awkward conversations of talking to people who see you hunt.
all of it part of the falconry experience, and hopefully i'll see be apart of that soon enough.
but in the meantime, might as well start posting.
my middle name is Stephen (and I'm not moving beyond that simple due to well-justified paranoia of going around saying full real name on forums and on the internet in general), current live in the state of Texas, and currently working towards either a degree in Information Systems or a simple IT degree with end goal being getting a masters in Library Science and/or Data Management should it get that far. current age is 21 which is going to change in a few months.
currently, I've had a long conflicted history with falconry. what got me into the sport you ask? the best way to describe it was a delayed reaction due to some childhood memory surfacing of a hawk and her trainer when i was in the middle of high school. no trigger or call but the thought popped up and i might as well start doing research. that was the beginning.
next up, i made some contacts, got in touch with the THA, and manage to go on two hunts. the first was a pigeon hunt in a mall lot, the second was a jack hunt on train tracks. both hunts sealed the idea that i wanted to pursue this sport (especially the mall hunt.. i still can't get the image of a cooper's hawk managed to yank a couple of tail feathers from a pigeon in mid flight, catch it, having both take a tumble, crash with the cooper hawk landing a bit away from the kill, the cooper's getting up, running over there squawking like an angry chicken, and mantling over the kill.)
however, things soon fell apart after that. my contact was...flaky and that trait revealed after being going up to a field and staying there for three hours before calling him to find out he went to a party.. frus)
not that it was all his fault. i was.. overeager and after a while, realized that i pestered him a little too much (which compounded the said flakyness frus)) after that self-reflection, i said screw it and aside from visiting a few choice forums from time to time, make no effort on my part to get back into falconry.
however, as the meme goes, in the real world, you may choose falconry but in Soviet Russia, Falconry choose you!
to clarify better: once a person's eyes have been opened, he can not return to the blissful ignorance that he once had before. new knowledge changes his perception and things of which he would have never noticed become noticed in this change.
within the few months that i stop making an "effort", i have spotted 5 native RTs around my intermediate area (one of which has made it's favorite perch on a traffic light which i travel to and back from the college where i am at. i believe there was more than one instance that someone honked at me to move when he was there), several more birds around the more outlying areas, and actually saw a RT take a tree rat in the middle of the day and carry it off...
nothing jerks the memory back like watching a wild bird of prey take a kill in front of you...
at the same time, i started to see falconry related stuff that really had no business being there.. chiefly in my games. here's an example:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v419/shock223/PSScreenShot0021.jpg?t=1296630979
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v419/shock223/PSScreenShot0023.jpg?t=1296631036
now either these game devs thought it was funny to slip a Turkish word for a certain part of the male body or to use it as it's falconry definition (which is the state of the hawk when it is it's best to hunt). I'm hopefully assuming the latter.
last part of this "vacation" from falconry came when i was working in a store. during the summer, a pudgy old fat white guy with a mustache (i can already see how many times that statement is going to be quoted) walked in with a THA shirt on, i said hi and i knew a few things about the sport and we talked. i gave him my number and was assured that he would call should a hunt come up. i'm assuming that the number was lost in the trash.
but still, progress was made. a few connections were made and i managed to get in good terms with a falconer who last summer who was out trying to get a Harris hawk and i managed to follow him on this endeavor. he didn't get one that at that time but i had fun watching how the process worked.
but now im back and now trying to see about looking into the sport a bit more closely around my intermediate area for fellow falconers (the guy that was trapping HHs was in south Texas, i live in the northern part) to shadow a bit to gain a better understanding of the sport.
as of now, i know enough that i am not ready to take the exam, i can not afford the setup cost of mew construction (even if i could, i have no land where to stick it), and given my past history, sponsorship seems unlikely in the interment future.
however, i do keep a keen instrest in the sport and do know enough to see that falconers are the most... how do you put it politely... opinionated people on the planet. from your dirt hawkers who have a "burn and pillage" mentality when it comes to jacks and decide to migrate to other falconer's territory should their supply get too low, to club members who fight and complain like little school girls who snub at each other just for the hell of it (and then proceed to come on the forums to farther the complaints), to the awkward conversations of talking to people who see you hunt.
all of it part of the falconry experience, and hopefully i'll see be apart of that soon enough.
but in the meantime, might as well start posting.