Quote Originally Posted by MrBill View Post
>It’s the old nature versus nurture argument, and to put it in a different perspective, consider the following: If your child was having difficulty with spelling or math, would you rather have his or her teacher adopt a “nature” approach—that is, the child is just not naturally gifted, so is not worth the effort of teaching—or the nurturing approach which contends that with the right approach, the child can not only learn these skills, but excel at them?

Dillon, this example is way too anthropomorphic. Of course we would prefer the nurturing approach, but there is a vast difference between a child having difficulty with spelling or math and a hawk trying to make sense out of captivity. And, as you know, having obviously read the nature versus nurture debate, the “nurture” in this argument refers to humans, specifically childern during the developmental stage. Again, we are talking apples and oranges.


Bill Boni
This is an apt analogy. There is a vast amount of factual, repeatable, empirical evidence concluding that we humans differ from one and other in our ability to do stuff. Everyone is familiar with the graphical representation of the range of human abilities in the form of a bell curve. In math (to use one of Dillon’s examples), about half of us perform at a below-average level. About half perform above average. Regardless of the “approach” employed in teaching children math, half of them will never achieve an “average” level of performance. Are we to believe that similar ability bell curves do not apply to individual members of species other than humans? I think not.

Now, I’m being kind of nit-picky here about what is probably a minor point in the discussion. But it leads up to this: I tend to think that Dillon might be nearly correct when he contends “…any … raptor can be trained to take game, respond well in the field, and otherwise be well-adjusted in captivity.” (Although I doubt such a contention could ever be proven and I will excuse, for now, the tabula rasa nonsense). But where does that level of performance fall on the bell curve of raptor-for-falconry ability?

For me, it falls well below the minimum level of acceptable performance. Am I then, as Dillon suggests, a less “accomplished” gamehawker because I “blame” and reject some birds? Am I missing out on some “life-long learning” because of a belief that some birds are not suited to be falconry companions?

I would argue that the excellent manning techniques detailed by Dillon in his OP will naturally occur to reasonably-minded falconers as they gain experience in terms of time and number of birds trained. Even if they do lean more toward the “nature” side of the biological scale.

Thanks to Dillon for starting this stimulating and thought-provoking topic.