How did you get your bird?

When you said legally trapped, do you mean you like... caught him and then trained him to catch stuff? Do you just repeat with a new bird every hunting season? This whole premise is incredibly funny

Yeah LMAO basically! In the USA, falconers are legally allowed to trap a juvenile, aka “passage” bird to use for falconry. Actually for a long time, the law REQUIRED apprentices to trap their first bird from the wild (as opposed to purchasing one from a captive breeding program). The government really said “you WILL get a fucking bird from the side of the road”.

Most falconers will keep a passage hawk for a season or two before releasing it back into the wild and starting the process over again with a new bird. For me personally, that’s a big part of the appeal! You get to develop a relationship with a new bird and get to know their personality and quirks etc, and also the more birds you train, the better you get at training.

It really is a pretty fucking hilarious premise, but it’s also really faithful to the way falconry was originally practiced in the middle east/central asia for centuries, where people would trap a migrating juvenile bird to help feed themselves during the lean months, then release it when food was plentiful again.

Falconry in the USA is incredibly tightly regulated which is why wild trapping is allowed - it’s also allowed because the vast majority of juvenile raptors (75-80%) die before they reach breeding age, usually during their first winter, so taking them doesn’t impact the breeding population whatsoever. In fact, it can actually BENEFIT the raptor population, because taking one from the wild and giving it food and medical care and a safe place to live gives it a much higher chance of surviving to breeding age.