melancholic
02-26-2011, 12:38 AM
Hello everyone--
I'm been lurching on the site for a couple of months now, and have just started to ask questions, so I thought that I'd introduce myself.
I'm at the pre-apprentice stage, without a sponsor, hawk, or mews, and have not passed the licensing exam. At this point, I'm about six or seven books into the California Hawking Club's recommended books list, and have another six on the way.
What probably puts me in the category of every potential apprentice out there is that I find falconry impossibly compelling, and at times am certainly more than a little obsessed with learning everything I can about it.
I come to the art as a complete novice--I've never been around raptors, and haven't ever been hunting. I don't have anything against hunting with guns, nor do I have any political objections to them, or object to people who use them--but it's just something that I've never really been attracted to.
Falconry, on the other hand, seems to represent a kind of ethical ideal to me where you are the secondary hunting partner of a raptor who has allowed you to (slightly, carefully) manage their hunting so that you can be a witness to the elegance, beauty, and . . . transcendence? of their behavior as predators. The fact that the raptor is the master, in many ways, and the falconer the servant, is a dynamic that somehow speaks to the purity of the art. I also think that the ethic of *service* to your bird is something rare and beautiful.
At least, this is what I've gleaned from the comments and interplay on this site, and from the standard falconry books. I understand that I'm writing largely from a position of real ignorance to those who have decades of learning behind them. . . but this is my starting point, at least.
Thanks for reading.
I'm been lurching on the site for a couple of months now, and have just started to ask questions, so I thought that I'd introduce myself.
I'm at the pre-apprentice stage, without a sponsor, hawk, or mews, and have not passed the licensing exam. At this point, I'm about six or seven books into the California Hawking Club's recommended books list, and have another six on the way.
What probably puts me in the category of every potential apprentice out there is that I find falconry impossibly compelling, and at times am certainly more than a little obsessed with learning everything I can about it.
I come to the art as a complete novice--I've never been around raptors, and haven't ever been hunting. I don't have anything against hunting with guns, nor do I have any political objections to them, or object to people who use them--but it's just something that I've never really been attracted to.
Falconry, on the other hand, seems to represent a kind of ethical ideal to me where you are the secondary hunting partner of a raptor who has allowed you to (slightly, carefully) manage their hunting so that you can be a witness to the elegance, beauty, and . . . transcendence? of their behavior as predators. The fact that the raptor is the master, in many ways, and the falconer the servant, is a dynamic that somehow speaks to the purity of the art. I also think that the ethic of *service* to your bird is something rare and beautiful.
At least, this is what I've gleaned from the comments and interplay on this site, and from the standard falconry books. I understand that I'm writing largely from a position of real ignorance to those who have decades of learning behind them. . . but this is my starting point, at least.
Thanks for reading.