>Bill, I'm going to try to address your post without cluttering it up by directly quoting you. Also, I'm trying to be as concise as possible, so please don't read any of this as being purposefully disrespectful-- on the contrary, I have an enormous amount of respect for you, based on your book. Online debates tend to take insidious turns for the worst, even with the best intentions.
Dillion, my very best falconer friend is Harry McElroy, and me and Harry have had some disagreements over the years, but he is still my very best friend. So, I don't have a problem with people disagreeing with me. What I detest is when that disagreement is based upon personal feelings about someone, which happens quite often in the falconry community, unfortunately.
Speaking of Harry, you are absolutely right, he was speaking of the most desireable birds. And, as we all know, beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, so Harry's view of the top ten percent might be different from mine or yours. The point I was trying to make was that, when it comes to nature versus nurture, Harry is solidly on the Nature side of the house, as it pertains to wild-caught hawks. And, frankly, he may feel the same way about imprints as well; in other words, he may feel that nature is a more powerful determiner of behavior than nurture.
>I point this out only in case you were skeptical of my experience base. So, yes, some falconry birds won't be stellar because of their genetic predisposition, but I argue that with the correct approach, they can all adjust well to captivity. We'll have to agree to disagree, for reasons I'll elaborate on below.
I was not skeptical of your experience base, but I am glad you pointed this out for the sake of others. And, yes, we will very definitely have to agree to disagree on this point; in fact, I feel so strongly about this that I am surprised that someone with your experience would take this position.
In terms of Watson, if you are talking about his suggestion that there is no distinction between humans and other animals when it comes to behavior, yes, I would have to agree with you. But, keep in mind that most of his studies and writing revolved around children, not animals, including, of course, "Little Albert."
>I started this because the prairie falcon mentioned in the original thread barely made it to the free-flight stage, and the consensus was that the bird just sucked. I won't accept that. What I want others to recognize is that mistakes are just an opportunity to start again with more information for success, and that the lack of success with this bird was still extremely valuable to the falconer-- should he focus on what he learned instead of choosing to blame the bird for simply not being good in captivity and destined to fail in falconry.
I wasn't part of that original thread, so I don't have all the facts, but, I will say that you are right suggesting that we learn from our experiences with these birds; however, I don't "blame" a hawk that I feel is not worth the effort, and I don't know that other people do either. Some of us just have limitations, and there is nothing wrong with that, at all (IMO). I remember a conversation I had with Tom Coulson years ago. We were talking about the passage Cooper's hawk, and as I recall the conversation, Tom could not understand why people would mess with the demands of this little hawk when they could fly a HH with a lot less effort. For Tom falconry was about enjoying yourself as much as possible; it's hard to argue against that logic. In fact, I have written an article about this topic to be published in the August Hawk Chalk. I hope you will read it.
Please don't forget to share with us the advantages of your training method over the "traditional" method. Thanks.
Bill Boni
