Anchor ads are not supported on this page.

4S Ranch Allied Gardens Alpine Baja Balboa Park Bankers Hill Barrio Logan Bay Ho Bay Park Black Mountain Ranch Blossom Valley Bonita Bonsall Borrego Springs Boulevard Campo Cardiff-by-the-Sea Carlsbad Carmel Mountain Carmel Valley Chollas View Chula Vista City College City Heights Clairemont College Area Coronado CSU San Marcos Cuyamaca College Del Cerro Del Mar Descanso Downtown San Diego Eastlake East Village El Cajon Emerald Hills Encanto Encinitas Escondido Fallbrook Fletcher Hills Golden Hill Grant Hill Grantville Grossmont College Guatay Harbor Island Hillcrest Imperial Beach Imperial Valley Jacumba Jamacha-Lomita Jamul Julian Kearny Mesa Kensington La Jolla Lakeside La Mesa Lemon Grove Leucadia Liberty Station Lincoln Acres Lincoln Park Linda Vista Little Italy Logan Heights Mesa College Midway District MiraCosta College Miramar Miramar College Mira Mesa Mission Beach Mission Hills Mission Valley Mountain View Mount Hope Mount Laguna National City Nestor Normal Heights North Park Oak Park Ocean Beach Oceanside Old Town Otay Mesa Pacific Beach Pala Palomar College Palomar Mountain Paradise Hills Pauma Valley Pine Valley Point Loma Point Loma Nazarene Potrero Poway Rainbow Ramona Rancho Bernardo Rancho Penasquitos Rancho San Diego Rancho Santa Fe Rolando San Carlos San Marcos San Onofre Santa Ysabel Santee San Ysidro Scripps Ranch SDSU Serra Mesa Shelltown Shelter Island Sherman Heights Skyline Solana Beach Sorrento Valley Southcrest South Park Southwestern College Spring Valley Stockton Talmadge Temecula Tierrasanta Tijuana UCSD University City University Heights USD Valencia Park Valley Center Vista Warner Springs

The Falconer: Part 3

Master falconer Kate Marden: “The sport is changing; more women are involved and it’s less secretive.”
Master falconer Kate Marden: “The sport is changing; more women are involved and it’s less secretive.”

Finishing with Kate Marden, master falconer and owner of West Coast Falconry, an establishment that provides falconry classes and services.

Marden says, “If you have a bird of prey, and you’re not hunting with that bird, everybody in the community will look down on you. It makes sense; that’s what the bird is born to do. I have a Swainson’s hawk. It’s illegal to hunt them. He cannot be released into the wild, doesn’t know how to take care of himself, but we still serve him live prey because, as a raptor, as a predator, that’s what he needs to make him a whole creature.

“The sport is changing: more women are involved and it’s less secretive. I remember when I was getting into the sport, being called a killer by someone whose dog was chasing a rabbit until its heart burst.

Sponsored
Sponsored

“We encourage people to use radio telemetry. You can buy a transmitter for $140. The transmitter can be attached to the ankle or tail of the bird. The receiver is a lot more expensive than the transmitter. The least-expensive receiver is about $500, so we encourage people to just put a transmitter on the bird because you’re going to know at least four falconers, including your sponsor, who will have a receiver.”

On the drive out to a hunting ground: “You can either put a hood on him or use what we call a giant hood, which is a big dark box with a perch in it. Most of us use a giant hood. So, you put him in the giant hood, put the hood in the car, you have your transmitter, you have your lures to attract him in case you get in a bad situation, you’ll need little bits of food for them to eat to encourage them to behave. You might even have a big, what we call, ‘pick-up piece,’ like the leg of a jackrabbit or a wing. When you hunt with a hawk, that’s pretty low cost.

“When you hunt with a falcon, you have your transmitter, you have your receiver, you have a live pigeon to call back with, you have a dead pigeon, you have your lure, you have your binoculars. You feel like a sherpa with all the stuff you need with a falcon, because a falcon can fly in a straight line 60 to 100 miles an hour. Hawks don’t fly that fast, they don’t fly that far. My falcons will sky out at two, three thousand feet. Can’t even see them. Hawks tend to stay closer. Hawks hunt ground-prey, primarily. Falcons hunt avian prey. So, falcons need to get higher. If you’re on a budget, I’d say stick with a hawk.

“When I go hunting jackrabbit with my bird, the backstrap —the piece between the hips and the bottom of the rib — the backstrap and the thighs are for me. The heart, lung, and liver, that goes to our birds in the field. Everything else comes back and are either fed to us or to our birds.

The Vegas Line:

Odds to win the 2014 World Cup

“Most falconers I know don’t go for bag limits. It’s usually one hawk, one kill. For instance, if Jana [Barkley] and I go out together, we’ll hunt our birds together because those birds are hunting partners. We try to take one rabbit. Depending on how we feel and our birds’ energy, we might take a second rabbit. It’s very rare, but sometimes we might go out and between two birds take four rabbits. You can only do that with a seasoned bird. With a young bird, every time she kills something, that should be it. The first ten kills, it should be one kill and that bird eats until she steps off of the game because she’s so full. You’re trying to cement the relationship between the food and the bird and you. So, if you strip her off a kill to go hunting again, the young bird, she’s just going to get angry and fly away.

“This is how most falconers work. As your bird is sitting there eating the game, you can get a scissors and cut more meat off the carcass. A lot of times I’ll use my scissors or my glove hand to pull open and show more blood, more heart, all the yummy bits. In the meantime, you can also take stuff out of your pocket and add to it, so the bird always sees you as being positive not negative. You’re not taking anything away from her; you’re adding to her bounty.

“That’s how they roll. They’re very selfish animals.”

Marden can be reached at westcoast-falconry.com or 530-749-0839. For West Coast Falconry–San Diego, call 619-722-0092 or stop by skyfalconry.com.

Here's something you might be interested in.
Submit a free classified
or view all
Previous article

Melissa Etheridge, The Imaginary Amazon

Events April 1-April 3, 2024
Next Article

2024 continues to impress with yellowfin much closer to San Diego than they should be

New rockfish regulations coming this week as opener approaches
Master falconer Kate Marden: “The sport is changing; more women are involved and it’s less secretive.”
Master falconer Kate Marden: “The sport is changing; more women are involved and it’s less secretive.”

Finishing with Kate Marden, master falconer and owner of West Coast Falconry, an establishment that provides falconry classes and services.

Marden says, “If you have a bird of prey, and you’re not hunting with that bird, everybody in the community will look down on you. It makes sense; that’s what the bird is born to do. I have a Swainson’s hawk. It’s illegal to hunt them. He cannot be released into the wild, doesn’t know how to take care of himself, but we still serve him live prey because, as a raptor, as a predator, that’s what he needs to make him a whole creature.

“The sport is changing: more women are involved and it’s less secretive. I remember when I was getting into the sport, being called a killer by someone whose dog was chasing a rabbit until its heart burst.

Sponsored
Sponsored

“We encourage people to use radio telemetry. You can buy a transmitter for $140. The transmitter can be attached to the ankle or tail of the bird. The receiver is a lot more expensive than the transmitter. The least-expensive receiver is about $500, so we encourage people to just put a transmitter on the bird because you’re going to know at least four falconers, including your sponsor, who will have a receiver.”

On the drive out to a hunting ground: “You can either put a hood on him or use what we call a giant hood, which is a big dark box with a perch in it. Most of us use a giant hood. So, you put him in the giant hood, put the hood in the car, you have your transmitter, you have your lures to attract him in case you get in a bad situation, you’ll need little bits of food for them to eat to encourage them to behave. You might even have a big, what we call, ‘pick-up piece,’ like the leg of a jackrabbit or a wing. When you hunt with a hawk, that’s pretty low cost.

“When you hunt with a falcon, you have your transmitter, you have your receiver, you have a live pigeon to call back with, you have a dead pigeon, you have your lure, you have your binoculars. You feel like a sherpa with all the stuff you need with a falcon, because a falcon can fly in a straight line 60 to 100 miles an hour. Hawks don’t fly that fast, they don’t fly that far. My falcons will sky out at two, three thousand feet. Can’t even see them. Hawks tend to stay closer. Hawks hunt ground-prey, primarily. Falcons hunt avian prey. So, falcons need to get higher. If you’re on a budget, I’d say stick with a hawk.

“When I go hunting jackrabbit with my bird, the backstrap —the piece between the hips and the bottom of the rib — the backstrap and the thighs are for me. The heart, lung, and liver, that goes to our birds in the field. Everything else comes back and are either fed to us or to our birds.

The Vegas Line:

Odds to win the 2014 World Cup

“Most falconers I know don’t go for bag limits. It’s usually one hawk, one kill. For instance, if Jana [Barkley] and I go out together, we’ll hunt our birds together because those birds are hunting partners. We try to take one rabbit. Depending on how we feel and our birds’ energy, we might take a second rabbit. It’s very rare, but sometimes we might go out and between two birds take four rabbits. You can only do that with a seasoned bird. With a young bird, every time she kills something, that should be it. The first ten kills, it should be one kill and that bird eats until she steps off of the game because she’s so full. You’re trying to cement the relationship between the food and the bird and you. So, if you strip her off a kill to go hunting again, the young bird, she’s just going to get angry and fly away.

“This is how most falconers work. As your bird is sitting there eating the game, you can get a scissors and cut more meat off the carcass. A lot of times I’ll use my scissors or my glove hand to pull open and show more blood, more heart, all the yummy bits. In the meantime, you can also take stuff out of your pocket and add to it, so the bird always sees you as being positive not negative. You’re not taking anything away from her; you’re adding to her bounty.

“That’s how they roll. They’re very selfish animals.”

Marden can be reached at westcoast-falconry.com or 530-749-0839. For West Coast Falconry–San Diego, call 619-722-0092 or stop by skyfalconry.com.

Comments
Sponsored
Here's something you might be interested in.
Submit a free classified
or view all
Previous article

Angry Pete’s goes from pop-up to drive-thru

Detroit Pizza sidles into the husk of a shuttered Taco Bell
Next Article

Summit Fellowship wants to be a home of belonging

Unitarian Universalism allows you to be exactly who you are in the moment
Comments
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed Big Screen — Movie commentary Blurt — Music's inside track Booze News — San Diego spirits Classical Music — Immortal beauty Classifieds — Free and easy Cover Stories — Front-page features Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts Feast! — Food & drink reviews Feature Stories — Local news & stories Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore From the Archives — Spotlight on the past Golden Dreams — Talk of the town The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it Letters — Our inbox Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news News Ticker — News & politics Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated Poetry — The old and the new Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers Reading — The hunt for intellectuals Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds SD on the QT — Almost factual news Sheep and Goats — Places of worship Special Issues — The best of Street Style — San Diego streets have style Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves Theater — On stage in San Diego this week Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads Your Week — Daily event picks
4S Ranch Allied Gardens Alpine Baja Balboa Park Bankers Hill Barrio Logan Bay Ho Bay Park Black Mountain Ranch Blossom Valley Bonita Bonsall Borrego Springs Boulevard Campo Cardiff-by-the-Sea Carlsbad Carmel Mountain Carmel Valley Chollas View Chula Vista City College City Heights Clairemont College Area Coronado CSU San Marcos Cuyamaca College Del Cerro Del Mar Descanso Downtown San Diego Eastlake East Village El Cajon Emerald Hills Encanto Encinitas Escondido Fallbrook Fletcher Hills Golden Hill Grant Hill Grantville Grossmont College Guatay Harbor Island Hillcrest Imperial Beach Imperial Valley Jacumba Jamacha-Lomita Jamul Julian Kearny Mesa Kensington La Jolla Lakeside La Mesa Lemon Grove Leucadia Liberty Station Lincoln Acres Lincoln Park Linda Vista Little Italy Logan Heights Mesa College Midway District MiraCosta College Miramar Miramar College Mira Mesa Mission Beach Mission Hills Mission Valley Mountain View Mount Hope Mount Laguna National City Nestor Normal Heights North Park Oak Park Ocean Beach Oceanside Old Town Otay Mesa Pacific Beach Pala Palomar College Palomar Mountain Paradise Hills Pauma Valley Pine Valley Point Loma Point Loma Nazarene Potrero Poway Rainbow Ramona Rancho Bernardo Rancho Penasquitos Rancho San Diego Rancho Santa Fe Rolando San Carlos San Marcos San Onofre Santa Ysabel Santee San Ysidro Scripps Ranch SDSU Serra Mesa Shelltown Shelter Island Sherman Heights Skyline Solana Beach Sorrento Valley Southcrest South Park Southwestern College Spring Valley Stockton Talmadge Temecula Tierrasanta Tijuana UCSD University City University Heights USD Valencia Park Valley Center Vista Warner Springs
Close

Anchor ads are not supported on this page.