Hunting: All hunters know what it means to look forward to the opening day of the hunt: they wait quivering in the summer heat, keep the dog in shape, check and double-check rifles and cartridges and when the day arrives, they finally give vent to passion!
Curated by Vittorio De Marchi
We high-flying falconers (those who are dedicated to hunting with pilgrims, lanner or sacred and their hybrids) experience all this in a different way. The hawks generally spend the summer stationary for moulting and changing their feathers is always a critical moment (a new flight or broken wheelhouse means compromising the performance of the bird of prey until the following season), even if some regions allow the training of the birds. hawks outside the hunting season for many of our hunting falcons it is better to spend a quiet summer with a diet specifically designed to favor the change of feathers, and if we decide to let them fly anyway the heat severely limits performance and for a falcone the flight without predation is only a pale palliative of what it will then have to face during the hunting season.
The preys have evolved at the same time as their predators, the strategies they implement to escape have been refined over thousands and thousands of years for this reason the life of a bird of prey in nature is anything but easy. Only a falconer knows how difficult it is to catch a bird of prey, so the opening of the season is just the beginning of a hard work of training that will probably lead us to have the bird of prey perfectly ready when it is time to close with hunting! Clearly there are differences if we are preparing a young or if we are going to take back our favorite who already has several seasons behind him but also the most experienced of birds of prey needs intense training.
There are techniques to increase fitness (jumps to the fist from different heights, go to worn out for example) but there is nothing like real hunting for a bird of prey. This leads us to consider the differences between Italian falconers compared to those of Europe and other continents: often in other nations those who practice falconry enjoy particular benefits on the hunting calendar thanks to scientific studies that show how the incidence of a bird of prey hunting on populations of wild prey is practically nothing. Animals such as crows, magpies, jays, mini-jays, considered "pests" often snubbed by traditional hunters, can be hunted by falconers practically all year round, with the necessary permits, thus obtaining two important results: keeping opportunistic species under control and being able to practice falconry at the highest level.
It is a pity that in our country, which was the cradle of modern falconry, we cannot match the possibilities that others have and that in comparison it is often inferior (not for training techniques or skills, which see us second to none. but for the actual possibilities we have of practicing correct falconry: the capture of a wild born in nature and therefore shrewd and skilled; it is not difficult for a falcon to capture a newly released pheasant but this is not true falconry and the satisfactions are very few).
The chance to observe a splendid hunting action and the more the prey has the chance to escape the greater the satisfaction, especially in the rare cases of success, it is true falconry! Personally in my field there are few wild pheasants, the rare hares are traditionally threatened by hounds and the ducks a dream that arrive in large numbers only at the end of the season except for a few sporadic cases and therefore I do not start hunting with the falcon at the opening, thus avoiding both the greater crowding on the field, and to spoil the falcon with some easy pheasant "ready hunting ".
I prefer to wait for the time of the crows and magpies by now very numerous, cunning and difficult and certainly wild to then get to undermine some pheasant that has made its bones and knows its stuff. When I am about to start a falcon from my fist to hunt for the first time of the year, the adrenaline is sky high and as I look into his dark eyes quivering with anticipation, I feel alive as never before knowing that it will rise. very high once again taking me with him where the air is fresh and the sky is blue!