Thursday, October 8, 2009

Log Day 22/23

Ducked out of work again early yesterday (10-7....DAY 22), and went and picked up Jonathan. We then headed down to Bartlesville, and met up with Ryan and Kent. Kent got out to the field earlier than we all did, and had already flown his new bird for the first time. He said that the bird flew well all things considered, and put in some pretty hard chases on some bunnies. I was pretty psyched for him, and we then flew his "old" harris hawk up until around 6:30. By this time, it was raining slightly, and was starting to get a little dark, but I still wanted to fly, so we beeped the girl up, and headed over to the rose bush where she had caught her first rabbit. She weighed in at 1053 grams, and you could def tell that she was higher, b/c she wasn't really that focused, and didn't want to follow AT ALL! She took her position in the same cedar tree as yesterday, and we kicked up a rabbit in pretty short order. She took off after it, but came in too low. As she was closing in on the rabbit, she started hitting the wet grass, which slowed her down a ton, and she ended up missing. I'm not too bummed about this though, b/c it was a good learning experience for her (considering the previous few free flights where probably her first time chasing rabbits....that's what Ryan thinks by the way she is trying to fly them...anyways), and hopefully she will pick up the fact that she has to come in higher, and then do a wing over, in order to be efficient. Walked over near the road, and we ended up kicking up a couple more rabbits. She was up on a telephone pole, and had the perfect position for one of the slips, but a hag RT came out of no where, and tried to knock her off the pole (I was too busy chasin the bunny, and didn't see this happen). The rabbit was a young one, and obviously very inexperience, cause it was only flushing about five feet in front of me, and then stopping. I was running at it, trying to knock it down with my brush beating stick, and had three or four swings where I only missed it by like an inch or so. I have a feeling that she could have snagged it, had she been paying attentnion to me. After i finished trying to score my own rabbit (it would have been bird 1, Daniel 1!), I hear everyone talkin about the hag, and see (what I thought) was my bird fly off a long way into the field, and land on a pole. I start walking toward it, trying to call it down to my fist, but the bird was ignoring me (I was like....what the heck!!!!). I start to think that she is a little sketched out from the hag (plus it was starting to get dark), so I got a little worried about her nonresponsiveness (being she was high and what not). About this time, I hear Ryan yelling Ho ho ho cause he flushed another rabbit. I yell over that my bird is way out of position (thinkin the one I'm calling is my bird), and they all have a good laugh at my expense, cause I'm trying to call down THE HAG!!!! I then see my bird sitting right above all them on a pole, and felt pretty dumb LOL! Apparently, she was still a little shaken up from the encounter with the hag though, cause the rabbit Ryan kicked up was a great slip, and she just ignored it. Oh well. Tried to call her down to the rabbit lure, but she completely ignored that too (too high in weight!). I ended up calling her down to the fist, and put her away. This morning (Day 23), she weighed in at 1048 grams @ 7:00 AM. Took her out to one of my fields that runs along some train tracks. I have scouted the area before, and though I didn't see any rabbits that time, def saw A TON of trails running through all the brush and bushes. I'm HOPING this field contains a lot of rabbits, but the trails could just be from big rats and what not. Anyways, it was really foggy this morning, and sorta misting as we enter the field, but she was def more keyed in than she was yesterday. She followed along nicely, and I flushed "something" that she chased pretty hard, but ended up empty footed. I was pleased with the short session, b/c she followed along REALLY well this morning, and was watching me very closely. kept the session short (20-25 minutes), and then I pulled out the rabbit lure. I took off dragging it yelling "HO", and she IMMEDIATELY came out of her dead tree hott on my heals. She did a really tight wing over, and slammed the crap out of the rabbit lure. I then traded her off to her new lure (cause i somehow lost her other one...not really sure how....I'm gonna call Ryan and see if he by chance remembers me doing something with it........I'm pretty sure the day we caught the rabbit, I hopped her to the fist and stuck it in my bag, but MAYBE Ryan was being helpful, and picked it up while I was putting her jesses back in, and then i never got it from him.....here is to hoping, but I have a feeling he didn't, and I'm gonna get some $hit for this! Anyways, I digress)...traded her to her "new" lure, and then hopped her up to the fist. Put my very wet bird back into the GH, and made it to work EXACTLY on time (NICE!). I'm going to have to check the weather, but i'm pretty sure it's supposed to rain the rest of today and tom, so I probably will have to have an indoors jump-up session tom...maybe I will go to a buddies house, and do some jump ups to his second floor...that would be some good conditioning! If it's clear though, we will be heading out for some more bunnies!

2 comments:

  1. Quick question: what do you mean by "beep her up"? Does that mean you are putting her transmitter on?

    Thanks,
    josh

    ReplyDelete
  2. you are correct. It's always on her, but it has a magnet on/off switch.....I just touch a magnet to it, and off we go

    ReplyDelete