Glad you guys are enjoying it!

Tame hack went very well. I never saw him catch anything, but I really suspect he may have. He was really chasing hard and was a strong flyer at the end.

He was getting to be fairly independent though, and was staying further from the house which was beginning to make me nervous. I live on a scout camp, but there are neighbors with cats and dogs. Also, directly behind my house is the rifle range (.22's), behind that is the archery range, and behind that is the shotgun range. All of those ranges were active during the afternoons and evenings... The range officers are of course camp staff, and were on the look-out for my bird, but still... He avoided the ranges for the most part, and the staff has radios so could contact me or my wife to come fetch him up.

Anyway, I decided to alter my hack timing to limit it to afternoons only (so I could be home letting him out on hack over the supper break, etc, and I hacked him on the days/afternoons/evenings the ranges were closed, and all weekend. That worked out fine, but when he began heading WAY back in the woods I decided to end it on Sunday and call it good...

Up to that point everything was going very well. Too easy almost!

That was until I called him in to the lure on Saturday night. He came in immediately like normal, but when he grabbed the lure he immediately began chittering and looking around like he was going to bolt. I would normally toss a quail down to the side for him to transfer to, but before I could do that he took off. He flew off into the woods outside my yard, but I could still see him.

I swung the lure and whistled, but he ignored me and looked pretty stressed. After a few minutes he moved off a bit where I couldn't see him, so i moved into the back yard to get closer, and swung the lure again. This time, he came right away, but immediately began chittering again when he hit the lure, and looked extremely stressed.

I decided the situation was going downhill too quickly to try the transfer, so just reached in gently and grabbed his jesses. That's when i noticed his left rear talon was gone. The quick was still there but it was raw and bloody. To make matters worse, he decided to take off again but since I had his jesses it turned into a major bate-fest with full-blown panic and chittering. Not cool...

I got him into the house and tethered to his perch, after placing his quail nearby. He eventually ate some anyway, but spent the rest of the evening favoring his foot, mostly keeping it tucked. I called Aaron to see what he thought, and skimmed around here on the forum to see what i could find. Aaron knew of a local falconer/vet who's dealt successfully with this injury by simply painting a few layers of clear nail polish over the quick, so I tried that.

I was able to take my time and dab it on while he sat on my wife's leg. He acted at first like it stung when I applied it, but once I had a coat on and dry it didn't seem too bad. For the next few days I continued to build up the thickness of the polish. A month later now, the talon sheath is coming back and it looks like it'll be fine in the long run.

That episode set me back significantly though. It sure seemed like he was blaming me for the injury (even though I know he must have done it somehow on his own; it wasn't due to the lure and he was fine when i put him out in the morning).

Within about a week, he seemed to be getting back to normal, so I decided to move forward and work on hooding. He needed some down time to heal up, and since there wasn't a whole lot to do other than keep him fed for a few more weeks, it seemed like a good idea. Nope. Bad idea.