Falconry provides exciting option

Few consider falconry a conventional method to hunt.
By LEW FREEDMAN
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
CHICAGO -- Buffy the Bunny Slayer perched on Jacques Nuzzo's left arm, the glower on his face a natural expression for a hawk with a killer instinct. It was between stalks for Buffy, but then again the wise rabbits in the neighborhood were lying low anyway.
Fall means hunting season in Illinois and throughout the Midwest. But for most it means cleaning the rifle, prepping the shotgun or sprucing up the bow. Nuzzo, program director of the Illinois Raptor Center in Decatur, hunts with birds, a much more unusual way of participating.
Buffy, clearly named with a nod to the television show "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," has black-brown feathers, white on its tail and yellow claws. It is a Harris' hawk, commonly found in South America. Nuzzo, who has a "Gone Hawking" sticker on the back of his vehicle, has always been fascinated by falconry, once the province of British royalty, and now fascinates friends and bystanders with his birds.
At a recent outdoors seminar in Alexandria, Minn., Nuzzo explained details of the sport while Buffy vegged out. Mostly the bird was content to sit still on Nuzzo's leather arm protector, but once in a while flapped its wings for show.
Regular license
Someone who hunts in Illinois with a predator bird must obtain a regular hunting license to chase rabbit, quail and pheasant.
"We walk the field like you're with a dog," said Nuzzo, a master falconer whose hunt is limited by numerous rules.
If an animal breaks out of the bushes and it's a protected species, sometimes there is no way for the hunter to stop the hawk from attacking.
"If you take a nontarget kill," Nuzzo said, "and you put it in this vest, you're breaking the law."
Federal law regulates the licensing of falconry, Nuzzo said. An apprentice-class falconer may possess one bird. A general class falconer may possess two birds and a master-class falconer may possess three birds.
Bald eagles are not in the mix, he said, and only master-class falconers may work with golden eagles after years of training.
A variety of birds fit the bill for hunting, including Harris' hawks, goshawks and Cooper hawks. Nuzzo has marveled at groups of hawks hunting together, alternating the lead as the team swoops down on a running rabbit. The site is stunning to watch, he said.
"My jaw dropped," Nuzzo said. "How in the world do they know who takes point? Who goes first? I've also seen rabbits that are so good they've blown off nine Harris hawks."
Occasionally movies will present false pictures of what hunting birds do. Birds in the wild do not act like animated Disney creatures. And they don't have super jaw power. Buffy weighs about 2 pounds.
"They don't carry the prey," Nuzzo said. "They bend it in half and sit on it. They muffle it. They flick their talons into it. Then I'll get in there on the rabbit and break the neck."
However, by the time Nuzzo reaches the scene the hawk might be chomping on the rabbit.
"It's not Hollywood," he said. "They'll feed on it when it's alive."
Nuzzo stood on a swatch of grass beside a lake as a small group of onlookers raptly followed his presentation. Then he asked who wanted to hold Buffy. Paul Saylor, 8, of Fargo, N.D. stuck out his arm. Often kids have no fear in approaching animals, even though Buffy gave the boy the evil eye.
After a little while, but with no apparent bonding, Saylor was ready to relinquish the bird.
"He was heavy," the boy said.
Impression
P.J. Perea, a former Illinois Department of Natural Resources employee who recently moved to South Carolina, took a hunting trip with Nuzzo and some hawks and was impressed.
"It's the coolest thing," Perea said. "We were kicking up rabbits every 50 feet. One [hawk] would flush it out in the open and it would run at another [hawk] one. It was beautiful the way they teamed up."
Nuzzo, 34, has worked at the Raptor Center since 1991. He said falconry is growing incrementally and there are schools available for training, though none in Illinois. The most recent statistics he saw indicated there were still only about 140 registered falconers in Illinois and just 3,000 nationwide.
It is both challenging and time-consuming to become a falconer. A federal permit is necessary to own the birds. And then training both the birds and the hunter is another effort.