The Art of falconry is a regular part of life at Paicines Ranch

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The art of falconry was on full display at Paicines Ranch on Jan. 25, when members of the California Hawking Club discussed the sport’s history and their experiences as falconers with around 60 guests who attended the event.    

Among the birds on display were several red-tailed hawks, which were described as solitary birds well-suited for hunting rabbits and other small game; a peregrine falcon, which is the fastest and most agile bird in the world; and Harris’s hawks, which are social birds that hunt in groups.

“Falconry is unique, a little bit different and very specialized,” said club director Don Hildebrand. “We hope these events are an enlightening experience. We pride ourselves on it and feel people see what we do and think, ‘This is amazing—this is really neat.’”

Describing it as the “sport of kings,” Hildebrand said falconry is an ancient sport dating back at least 3,000 years. It is also a very specialized sport, with only about 650 licensed falconers in California and 4,000 in the country.

“It is also a very demanding sport,” he said, “initially requiring an extensive apprenticeship to learn to care for the bird, and a substantial commitment of time and resources.”

Becoming a falconer begins with passing a falconry exam, getting a hunting license, building a habitat for the bird and finding someone to agree to a two-year sponsorship.

“You go through an apprenticeship,” Hildebrand said. “You learn about the ins and outs of animal husbandry, the facilities you need to build, the type of food they intake, and how you’ll feed them. You learn to take care of a bird and get it where it understands it can rely on you for shelter and food.”

The birds can be purchased from a captive breeder or caught in the wild using a bal-chatri trap device. It uses live bait suspended in the middle of a conical trap and has a network of thin nooses that entangle the bird’s feet. Young birds, at the earliest point of their independence from the nest, around four months old, are the prime age for training.

Some birds are harder to acquire than others. The Peregrine falcon, for example, cannot be trapped in California and Washington state, where Bill Ferrier got his bird. The state gives out only one permit a year. 

Ferrier said that his bird can fly up to 125 mph when scouting for prey and can reach up to 275 mph in a dive. At the event, he had his bird hooded as a means of keeping it calm.

“He’s a wild trapped bird,” Ferrier said. “He wouldn’t like all these people around. But with his hood on, he’s a happy camper.”

Hildebrand said that once a bird becomes accustomed to a trainer, it starts looking to them for sustenance, responding based on a food reward, such as jumping from a perch to the glove or from a perch to a lure garnished with food.

“Eventually, you get to the point where it’s free-flying,” he said,  “and is looking for certain items to catch based on instinct. They’ll start to respond to what you’re requesting, either by whistle or by calling.”

Some falconers, like Blade & Talon owner and winemaker Nat Wong, use the falcons in their traditional role as hunters, sharing a meal of captured game with his red-tailed hawk.  

“They hunt for the stuff I like to eat,” he said. “I like flying the birds, but there’s no better hunting meat than a rabbit tenderloin.”

Describing himself as a “bird guy,” Wong said falconry is the ultimate dream for somebody like him.

“I’m not a social person,” he said. “I like disappearing into a field alone, communing with nature and paying attention to my bird. The redtail is my favorite: they want just to be left alone, so they fit my personality.”

Other birds serve a more utilitarian role, helping to keep overbreeding populations down, or in the case of Kevin Wheeler’s Harris’s hawk Violet, monitoring pests from a shopping center roof.

“The birds keep California and Western gulls away from the center,” he said. “We fly the birds around in the morning when there might be 20 to 40 gulls. My birds will go sit up on the roof, and all the gulls get very upset that there’s a predator in the area, so they leave.”

Wheeler said he loves the challenge of falconry, even though training and maintaining the bird is hard. 

“It is a lot of effort with very little reward,” he said. “But when you do get your reward, like when your bird catches something, it is worth it. You put in two months of work for just one fantastic day.”

Though the weather and a sighting of an eagle, an alpha predator, threatened to cancel any demonstration, the group briefly took several birds into the field to hunt rabbits, which they were able to locate and take down in a matter of seconds, and had the peregrine falcon chase a lure. 

The birds are allowed to eat a small amount of what they capture, and the rest is packed away to use as food during molting season, when they are unable to hunt.

Paicines Ranch is only one of many places in the county with which the club has a relationship. Hildebrand said that the use of the property for falconry started with a simple request to bring the birds there and is now part of the ranch’s abatement program.

“The jackrabbit,” he said, “under California law is considered a pest. They are good destroyers of crops and they will chomp them down. Some carry diseases and spread them as well.”

Hildebrand said that using the falcons is a natural alternative to other forms of pest control, such as sending people out into the fields with shotguns.

“They kill them and just bury them,” he said. “The food is not used for anything at all. We offer them a solution where we help control the population over time until it reaches a manageable level.”

Unless a bird is purchased from a breeder, which allows it no natural experience before the trainer works with it, the birds tend to be released back into the wild after a certain period of time. Hildebrand requires his apprentices to trap one bird each of the two years and let each go at the season’s end.

“They train and care for it,” Hildebrand said, “and, in the late spring, release it back to the wild. You are taking care of a natural resource, and you have an obligation to that bird to ensure it will do its best.”

A farm-to-table dinner at The Overlook followed the demonstrations. Lamb and beef were sourced from the ranch, produce from Valois Farms in Hollister, and fruit from Castellanos Farm in Dinuba, CA. The wines with dinner were sourced from the Paicines Ranch Vineyards, including selections from Margins, Blade & Talon, and Terah Wineries.  

The next event at Paicines Ranch will be the annual Valentine’s Day Dinner at The Overlook on Feb. 14 at 6 p.m. and 6:30 p.m.

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