Recall falling appart, non weight related. Help1

I figured I would ask for some help with this little problem that is getting to be quite frustrating...

Long story short: for 4 seasons I flew my MHH following on, at weight going from 600 to 700gr. His best hunting weight was around 620-630gr, but he always responded very well (meaning 100% response if not eating or looking at a potential prey) to the whistle, and 80-90% response to his name. I never lost him once, he was the type of hawk who came before being called, and I never resorted to bribing him with visible food. If I offer food, it's hidden in the glove while he doesn't look. When he doesn't eat all his ration while hunting, I give him the rest either while doing recalls on a heavy rope (rope training) or jump-ups.

This year I didn't go into the woods not even once, I'm tired of having trouble with hunters so I'm waiting for the moose season to end in november to go and free-fly him. So far I've been carhawking him on crows 5 times, he caught 3 crows and 1 ruffed grouse to which he didn't bind, unfortunately. He is very gamey, very motivated by the hunt, bates toward the car, look intently at anyting remotely looking like prey while I drive. He caught crows at 660gr, 650gr and 620gr and teh grouse at 610gr.

However, his recall has totally fallen appart! I've got NO response out of him when he misses a crow, it's like I'm invisible. That's the reason for playing with his weight so much, I even got him down to 600gr after totally skipping a day's meal with no results whatsoever, not even when I'm like 12 inches away from him (he will chitter excitedly at me then just like when he wants to be fed, but won't come to the glove).

It's becoming ridiculous. At home his response is always instant no matter his weight.

I'm stupid so I still fly him, looking for the best slips I can find and avoiding the more difficult ones, but I know I'm an idiot for doing this with a hawk who doesn't come when called... yet I can't refrain myself. What would you suggest? Of course I need to train him in the woods again, from small distance then increase the distance etc, but I'm trying to figure out what went wrong.

The cause is obscur to me: maybe he doesn't want to go back into the car, maybe he wants to stretch his wing and simply flying him free following on would resolve the issue, maybe he doesn't like the taste of crow meat which he has been eating on our outings for the last 2 weeks, maybe I flew him on the heavy creance too much and he feels like coming to me will be too difficult, etc... I really don't know. But I need to figure it out, make that unpleasant thing go away so coming back will be pleasant again...

I have found that my MHH's response when he misses a crow is very different from when he misses something else. He tends to be preoccupied with where the crows are and reluctant to take to the air when the crows are still about and in mobbing mode. When the crows are particularly aggressive I have seen him start to walk toward me.

I'd love to post some suggetions, but I chronically have this problem were recall falls apart.

I am too "bloodthirsty" for the oportunity for my hawk to hunt to really do what needs to be done (go back to basics and TRAIN). When my field recall starts to fall apart, I just muddle through as best as I can so I can continue to hunt.

It has left me in a very bad place... my old goshawk angel, now 13, will often make me wait for 20-30 minutes until SHE decides she is coming down. Quite frustrating. I must be a sadist, because I let it go on.....

How well do you reinforce your recalls when you are hunting compared to when you are just working on them? Could it be that he has become aware that the recall when you are out hunting isn't reinforced well?

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Originally Posted by goshawkr

(go back to basics and TRAIN).

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I agree, go back to basics, the fact that the bird is talking to you would indicate that you need to bring in the weight. What your experiencing is common. Your bird should be flown at a consistent weight thoughout his life. I put a greater value on control even though the bird is able to perform at a higher weight.

All of us would like to fly our birds at higher weights with the idea that the bird is building muscle and strength. However they are also building fat reserve which lowers their response to you.

Jeff

based on all that you have said..... he recall is fine at home and he sulks or has no recall when he misses game, I would still say that this is a weight issue. HH's are masters of deception!!! He is lacking motivation...and it may not be much....it may only take 10 or 15 grams but I would still say some weight reduction is in order....just my .02

I'm not trying to pretend I know birds of prey, but I do know training as seen in other animals. I think that the old style of training really bases everything on hunger and weight, I'm not convinced. I would agree that that needs to be ballanced, but what we are all talking about it reinforcement and the strenth of.

I don't know all the details, but I asked what I did mainly as a balance of reinforcment question. Lets say an animal knows a recall when training it at home because that's the name of the game, that's where the most reinforcement comes into play. If you are out in the car/field hunting, well that reinforcement schedule changes completely, often they get more reinforcement from the kill than the recall (as I've seen by some). Therefor, not only is the hunting reinforced but the hunting is reinforcing to them (I'm assuming by nature this is the case), thus making that hunting really really reinforceing exponitially in some cases. Maybe they get a decent bit of reinforcement for the recall but not nearly as much.

All of this is based on an individual for sure. We had a dolphin who was let's call "lazy", or it appeared it enjoyed hanging out doing nothing. So most of the reinforcement in shows/guest swims was given for "doing" things. We also had a dolphin that was "hyper" and seemed to really enjoy fast, crazy behaviors, always doing something seemed reinforcing on it's on. In fact, it was harder to get her to stay still and just "hang out". So more of her reinforcement was given for simply sitting there still and calm. Heck, you could even reinforce that by letting go do something, the "doing" didn't even need to get reinforced with food.

(forgive my spelling and grammar, it goes out the window when I try to get a lot out really quick in print)

How big are your tidbits? And how big of a reward does the bird get when it catches game? I've found that when tidbits are always the same size (generally smallish, but not necessarily) and the reward for catching game is big, birds' recall falls apart. Using larger rewards generally fixes it in just a couple sessions. Then use tidbits of variable size once they're coming nicely again. Bigger tidbits for faster recalls-and bigger doesn't have to mean meatier, but something that they have to chew on and can't swallow in one gulp.

I think you guys nailed it, or at least I hope! I hadn't seen it like that, but yes I use smallish tidbits for recalls (failed variable reinforcement: sometimes nothing, sometimes something big, most of the time smallish...) and I did crop him up on 2 of his 3 crows... Ouch. It may very well be the reason why everything is falling apart. I'll go back to the basics with larger chunks of foods mixed with the small tidbits.

As I said, I experimented with his weight this year because his hunting response was superb, but around 600gr he is very very sharp and mostly, weak. I don't want to go lower than that, plus it was never necesseray in all the past years. Something has changed this year, and it's either carhawking (which he seems to like), not catching preys (which he seems to dislike), being hunted by crows (which he hates, he once entered into a house to get away from ravens...) or my training regimen which is very different this year, not once free-flying him in the woods. So yeah I hope you guys are right, because I don't have much control over the other variables...

Using a variable schedule of reinforcement can very often lead to a poor recall. I do vary the type and size of reinforcer, but they always get something. A lot is being written and discussed on the 'blazing clicker' strategy of providing too many secondary reinforcers without a primary too. Lots of great examples of behavior breakdown and aggression due to lack of primary reinforcers.

You also may benefit from raising his weight a bit. Give him energy for tasks other than chasing.

Sounds like lots of changes though this year and some regression may be occurring. May need to just work on some basics a bit in the new environments and situations.

Good luck!

Andy

One thing you may want to keep in the back of your head as your going back to basics is the advantages you will have if he will "recall" to the car while your still in it. I have a few friends that car hawk crows with Harris' hawks, and after a miss, they simply stick their hand out the window and the hawk is right back on it and anxious for another try.

I have never seen this except with a polished hawk, so I dont know how the training progressed, but its really cool. They dont even need to take the car out of gear when the hawk misses.

I would suggest to anyone, that they want to make their recall the absolute strongest thing in any animal's repertoire. At the end of the day going home safely with our animal is the most important thing. Not only that, but in certain situations it could mean life and death.

Also you need to make sure your recall can be performed very quickly in the instance that situation should arise. When working with larger animals we would practice recalls even when we sent them to do something else. So if you make the mistake of sending a dolphin from one side of a pool on a fast behavior/jump, and you look up and there happened to be people in the water, you want to be sure that you can recall and prevent a situation from getting ugly.

I challenge most people to even try a recall when the bird was after game at least a couple times. Now, it may not be necessary, it may be too much, but it could mean the difference. What if it were chasing game towards a road with a truck coming, after a person's pet, or anything else that might be bad (again, I'm just starting out here so I don't know what all dangers for me or the bird might be out there, just trying to find some good examples). That animal needs to know that when you recall it is gonna get more reinforcement to top anything it's currently doing.

Geoff, that's exactly how I work with my kestrel Chibi, having her come back to the car directly if she misses. It's doesn't always work, especially when she tail chases and ends up facing a building or something else, but when out in the open it works. Saguaro the MHH did it a few times when I first started training him for carhawking at the beginning, he came twice to the moving car and lots of time to the stopped car, but now even when I come out of the car he doesn't come. I'll work on that this week-end, with days coming short I lack time to properly train him.

Oliver, your opinion about recall is the same as mine: my animals, be they dogs, cats or hawks, do not deserve the privilege to be free until they prove to me their recall is 100% reliable. If I call him back my dog will put on the brakes when chasing a hare and stumble head over feet at great distances from me, and that's what I expect of him. That's what I had with Saguaro, but I undid my training this year. I used kestrel-size tidbits, which are almost 4 times smaller than the tidbits I always used for him, plus everything else... It sucks but it will come back...

Just out of curiosity what was his weight when he caught the 2 crows you fed him up on?
My reason for asking is that ....my HH's all get a reward on the kill....not usually cropped up unless its the end of the trip or some special situation. My tidbits are usually around the same size. Because I have multiple birds in the air all the time, I dont have the option to have a bigger piece for recall. It has to be something basically concealed in the glove...so they never really know what they are getting (variable positive reward).
What it boils down to for me is that if the birds are on proper weight, their response , for the most part, is flawless!.....I have no one to blame when their weight is not on....it shows in their attempts at game, in their response, and in their overall attitude.
This particular topic is very interesting to me as I think this is where HH's kind of get their bad reputation from. They can fly average at a much higher rate then most of types of hawks....but when you start asking more of them....this is when the train derails so to speak :) Just some thoughts
I hope that he continues to do well! Hopefully it was just that simple :)

Heather, I value your experience with Harris Hawks a lot, I think you are among the people I know with the most experience with them! Thanks for your input.

My Saguaro was fed up on 2 crows, once at 620gr, once at 660.

Harris Hawks are not the best birds at all for my area, it's much too cold and we don't have good quarry for them, but when I started falconry 5 years ago I didn't have access to any falconer to help me out (closest ones 800km away..) so I took up this second-hand bird, 6 years old, trained for show his first 2 seasons then kept in a mews for the next 4 years. He was nuts. I tried to hunt snowshoe hares with him but they are very hard to find here, he caught 2 the first years but they were both very sick. I flew him on miscellanous stuff for the other years, we caught lots of small mammals but no hares. I grew tired of that and decided to carhawk him on grouse last year (a couple of outings only), and on crows and grouse this year. He is now 10 years old, he is used to having a meal at the end of the day anyway, no matter if he catches something or not, but I know that when he reaches 620gr-630gr he is on fire and will go to extremes to catch preys (ask people who saw him fly last year at the ontario meet, he made an impression). The reason I played with his weight so much this year is that he showed a great attitude at 650, then 660gr, something he never did the last years. Maybe he tricked me, but both times he gave his all to catch the crows (not one of them was an easy catch, all were caught on the wing after a tail chase).

Thank you Audrey!....I have been fortunate to learn all of this from some of the best!!! and by my own stupid mistakes :)

I think you hit the nail on the head!!!
"but I know that when he reaches 620gr-630gr he is on fire"

I would say that that might be your target weight. If you have all the parts without any issues...go for that weight. Some birds have the ability to go up in weight during the season or for different game...and some birds dont. I know that I fly an average of 50gs higher here in MN in the winter months, than I can, say if I head to Louisiana or TX. Its a difference of temps and quarry....but they have shown me in their lack of attemps or lack of response so I have had to make the adjustment.

Nothing wrong with playing around with his weight....you just might see some of this stuff crop up.....its up to you to figure out what you accept and what you dont....
My young FHH Irma can fly at over 1100g here in the winter.....the only thing that changes for her is her attitude towards me! She does the fly by's to the glove and bates much more frequently. But she catches game and recalls to the t-perch just like at a lower rate. I have made the decision that I will accept this as long as nothing else changes...but when i fly with other falconers she is at her target weight of about 1060g

I hope some of this helps....Sounds like hes figured out how to do the crows fairly well....now its just a little polishing :)

I could tell a long time ago that you knew what you knew what you were doing and we were on the same page, there is no question about that. I wish my dog listened half as well as your's seems to. I have an English Bulldog and he's one of the most stubborn animals I've ever come across, needless to say he doesn't leave the couch much, let alone the house.

I'm looking forward to learning a lot from you as far as OC seen in these birds, and bouncing ideas back and forth. I think what's great about training is that although the principles and ideas remain the same, no two situations are identical as no two animals are either. The only bad trainer's I've seen, even professionaly, are ones that think they never need help.

Luckily for all of us animals are pretty forgiving most of the time, so when we screw up it's usually easily fixable. I'm sure it won't be long for you to turn things around, as long as we have spotted the problem. Please keep us updated on the progress!

Thanks Heather.

The problem now is that whatever weight I fly him at, even 610-620-630gr, he doesn't come when called anymore. That's why I said it's not related to his weight. And I don't want to fly him any lower than 600gr as he is much too sharp.

Prior to you having fed him up on the crows....how long had it been since his last catch (reward)?
How long have you maintained him in the 620 to 630g range? and not had a good recall or response....
Do you spend anytime with him on the fist at home or out hawking....NO FOOD INVOLVED?...Just plain old manning....??? Sounds like maybe just a little shy of the glove???? I went back and re read your original post again.....and I still will maintain that tighter control on the weight is part of it but maybe there is some manning issues as well????

Just some different ideas....

Does the bird come instantly to the lure? If so then you may have a better idea of whether it is a weight issue, or a glove issue or something else that you pick up on by doing something different.

If the bird does come to the lure, then maybe call to the lure for a tidbit then jump the to glove for another tidbit and back to hunting. A lot of accipiter people do this. With my coop I did this because I could fly her at a higher weight than I could if I insisted she must come to the glove. Just throwing out a possible work around if it worked for ya and you wanted to keep hunting.

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Originally Posted by kitana

I think you guys nailed it, or at least I hope! I hadn't seen it like that, but yes I use smallish tidbits for recalls (failed variable reinforcement: sometimes nothing, sometimes something big, most of the time smallish...) and I did crop him up on 2 of his 3 crows... Ouch. It may very well be the reason why everything is falling apart. I'll go back to the basics with larger chunks of foods mixed with the small tidbits.

As I said, I experimented with his weight this year because his hunting response was superb, but around 600gr he is very very sharp and mostly, weak. I don't want to go lower than that, plus it was never necesseray in all the past years. Something has changed this year, and it's either carhawking (which he seems to like), not catching preys (which he seems to dislike), being hunted by crows (which he hates, he once entered into a house to get away from ravens...) or my training regimen which is very different this year, not once free-flying him in the woods. So yeah I hope you guys are right, because I don't have much control over the other variables...

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my tercel comes great if offered a foreleg of a rabbit from any distance, and as to smallish tidbits, not so much.
Anyway when he comes, I give him one or two nice bites and slip the rest into the glove.
I think you touched on something else, some hawks love carhawking and the exercise is nothing compared to regularly hunting the hawk from the fist.

Thanks Bob. However my hawks are never, nor never will be, called to a visible piece of food. The food is hidden, they never know what is there, and they will never know.

The problem is... SOLVED!! Woohoo!!! I guess the size of the rewards was the problem. Yesterday morning I went into the woods with him, in the car, and set him free. I let him settle in a tree, take a good look around, and then called him down from the window. I swear he stuck his tongue out at me! I then got out of the car and after calling him 3 other times, he came. I HATE rewarding bad behavior, but coming after 4 calls was better than not coming at all so he received the egg-sized piece of crow breast that I had hidden inside the glove. We went back to the car, did it again but this time his response was instant, again jackpot. Third try he came before being called and landed on the roof, and fourth time I never stopped driving and he had to work a bit to reach the fist while I was going forward.

After that I carhawked him for 2 days in town, for it was pouring outside so no chihuahuas or cats on the lawns. He was beautifully obedient, even when I went back to a variable schedule, and we are talking about a hawk with a fascination for all things human that led him to enter a house two years ago... I'm pretty happy, even if nothing was put in the bag, at least my bird acts as if I'm important again...

Audrey, really glad to hear that you seem to have everything sorted out!

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Originally Posted by kitana

....at least my bird acts as if I'm important again...

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Try to keep that illusion as long as you can. :D

Good to hear you got things on track again.

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Originally Posted by kitana

Thanks Bob. However my hawks are never, nor never will be, called to a visible piece of food. The food is hidden, they never know what is there, and they will never know.

The problem is... SOLVED!! Woohoo!!! I guess the size of the rewards was the problem. Yesterday morning I went into the woods with him, in the car, and set him free. I let him settle in a tree, take a good look around, and then called him down from the window. I swear he stuck his tongue out at me! I then got out of the car and after calling him 3 other times, he came. I HATE rewarding bad behavior, but coming after 4 calls was better than not coming at all so he received the egg-sized piece of crow breast that I had hidden inside the glove. We went back to the car, did it again but this time his response was instant, again jackpot. Third try he came before being called and landed on the roof, and fourth time I never stopped driving and he had to work a bit to reach the fist while I was going forward.

After that I carhawked him for 2 days in town, for it was pouring outside so no chihuahuas or cats on the lawns. He was beautifully obedient, even when I went back to a variable schedule, and we are talking about a hawk with a fascination for all things human that led him to enter a house two years ago... I'm pretty happy, even if nothing was put in the bag, at least my bird acts as if I'm important again...

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