For book purchase:

1. Ed Pitcher -  [email protected]
2. Ricardo Velarde - [email protected]
3. Marshall Radio
4. Western Sporting Falconry

1.    Managing Towards Self-actualization

1.1. Understanding My Approach

• move beyond “waiting-on overhead” to flying of falcons
• important concepts
  •  success leads to success
  • use categorical thinking to form positive associations
  • use fear levels to manage feeding and weight
  • use fidelity to develop anticipatory behaviors
  • build trust to develop co-operative hunting

1.2. Getting Started

• Main tools
  • seeling, hood, and patience
  • steady hand/routine

1.3. Making Choices

• Primary goal is to choose to allow cognitive development to occur along age-appropriate timeline
• Allow learning by observing other falcons
• wild falcons know they can survive without the falconer; choose to encourage tolerance but not reliance in captive-reared falcons
• choose to allow the falcon to eat rather than to be fed

1.4. Preventing Bates

• use fear level to judge food intake; re-hood and set aside a falcon that stops eating.
• Same with bating; re-hood and set aside a falcon that wants to bate
• ounce  of prevention better than pound of cure
• skipping days is better than skimping on meals
• track g/hr of food processed

1.5. Leaving the Fist

• Not coming to fist; going away from fist to eat
• While feeding on the fist, slowly remove the food from the falcons feet, she should grab it, let her take a few more bites.
• Repeat, but make her reach for it.
• Repeat, but make her jump to retrieve it. Feed her well.
• With each session, progressively increase the distance until flying a few feet
• She is ready to kill her next meal

1.6. Introducing Prey/Quarry

• Mimics the process followed by wild parents
• Falcon on left fist, live prey in right hand
• Falcon will grab and administer lethal bite (cervical dislocation)
•  Leave the falcon for several minutes to pluck and eat
• Gently remove the dead prey from talons
• Re-hood with braces open
• Take dead prey away, unhood the falcon
• Repeat with prey tethered allowing the falcon to pluck and eat for several minutes
• Pick the falcon up on freshly prey, gutted and skinned
• Use tidbits
•  With each session, progressively increase the distance until flying out of the hood without creance across 1/8 mile
• Feed well…avoid flying daily and managing strict weight control as this will later encourage self hunting, which is reinforced when self-hunting is successful.

1.7. Weight Gain

• Time to begin adding weight
•  Falcon should:
  •  immediately search for prey when unhooded
  • Fly strong
  • Chase hard
  • Kill with confidence

1.8. Flying Free

•  Never jumped to fist
• Never called to the lure
• Never relied on the falconer to be fed
• Always been fed well…fly when empty.
• Only flown from A to B ¼ mile to live quarry away from the falconer
• Now the falcon leaves the fist looking for quarry
• Serve as far away as your courage allows (Serve wide).
• Gone from 1.5 g/hr to 3.0 g/hr
• With time and longer periods on the wing, horizontal distance when served transitions to height of pitch – genetic push.
• Serve when the falcon shows deliberate intent in mind set and style