ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, January 21, 1996 TAG: 9601190013
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARK MORRISON STAFF WRITER
Spike sat, perched and poised in the top branches of a small tree, hungry for a kill.
Below, Craig Nichol beat a broken hockey stick against the underbrush, hoping to stir a rabbit from its hiding. It was early morning, quiet and cold, the grass still thick with the night's frost.
A perfect day for a falconer and his bird.
Then suddenly, almost from between Nichol's feet, out shot a streak of gray fur.
``Ho, ho, ho, ho!'' Nichol shouted excitedly, breaking into a sprint himself. ``Ho, ho, ho, ho!''
Hearing its cue, and with his hawk's eye to the ground, Spike spied its panicked reward. In an instant, her wings spread to a glorious span of four feet. She broke into a nature-perfect dive. A second went by.
``Ho, ho, ho, ho!''
There was a momentary squeal. The sound of death in the wild.
Then, silence.
In an instant, the stillness of the morning returned. Nichol stopped his pursuing sprint.
``Good girl,'' he said. ''Good girl.''
Certainly, there are easier ways to hunt rabbits, but falconers like Nichol aren't really interested in doing things the easy way. They are more interested in doing things the old way, the ancient way. It appeals because of the bond it gives them to history and sport - and to some of nature's most noble beasts.
A little known sport, falconry - or hunting with birds of prey - is practiced by a relatively small number of outdoorsmen who see themselves as keepers of a proud and dying tradition that dates back more than 2,000 years.
``By keeping a primitive thing alive like this, you get to keep a part of history alive,'' said Nichol, who has been a falconer for three of his 26 years. ``I think it's one of the only ways to be in contact with the environment on a level that I don't think you can get any other way.''
Nichol, raised on a farm outside Cincinnati, has always had a keen affinity for nature and the environment. In particular, he remembers a book titled ``My Side of the Mountain'' that profoundly affected him in the fifth grade.
The book tells the story of a boy who gets lost in the wilderness and learns to survive by living off the land and by training a falcon to help him hunt.
``The seed was planted,'' Nichol said. He told himself: ``One of these days, I'll fly a bird too.''
As he grew into adulthood, however, the idea faded. He joined the Navy in 1987 and was stationed in Norfolk. After his discharge, he moved to Bedford County in 1991 and enrolled in the environmental science program at Ferrum College. He worked at a silk-screening shop. Now he is a water treatment technician at Carvins Cove.
He also runs a business out of his home, making Native American artwork with bird feathers and other materials taken from the wild.
``Just being around feathers and things like that, the birds of prey thing just sort of resurfaced,'' he said.
A friend told him about the Virginia Falconer's Association, a group numbering some 150 members that promotes conservation and hunting with birds of prey. Nichol called the association's president in Richmond.
He told Nichol how to go about earning his falconer's wings, so to speak.
The first step was to contact the state Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, which regulates falconry in Virginia, for the necessary guidelines. Then he had to find a sponsor, an established falconer with two years of experience in the sport, who was willing to take him on as an apprentice. He found a sponsor in Abingdon.
He learned, too, that falconers in this part of the country generally don't fly falcons. They fly red-tail hawks. The difference is that most falcons hunt over wide-open terrain where they can soar high above the landscape and look for prey over several miles. Red-tail hawks usually hunt from trees over a smaller area, and therefore are better suited for the mountains. Falcons also mostly hunt ducks, which are not found in great numbers here.
Nichol also learned that to get into the sport, he had to start by trapping his own hawk - a bird less than a year old that has yet to become part of the breeding population and is more easily trained.
``You don't just go to the pet store and pick one up,'' he said.
To catch his first hawk, Nichol used a trap baited with a gerbil and covered with fishing line tied into dozens of small nooses. When the hawk swooped down on the trap, its talons got tangled in the nooses.
From there, the painstaking process of training began. Training a wild hawk is accomplished through food association, by spending hours and hours with the bird, and building trust. Maybe tolerance is a better word.
``You are there to partake in its life,'' Nichol said. ``It's not there to partake in your life. It's kind of a reversal of what we're used to.''
The training process begins by teaching the bird to eat off the leather glove used for its handling. Nichol fed his hawk mostly chicken parts. Next, they learn to fly small distances while tethered. Over time, the distances increase, from a few feet initially to finally across fields.
``Then, one day, you take the tether off, and hopefully, the bird doesn't notice,'' Nichol said.
Nothing prevents the hawk from flying away. Nichol said losing a bird this way is a legitimate concern of falconers. He has an electronic tracking device to help him find his hawk should it break away, but he has not needed to use it so far.
Nichol set his first hawk free after his apprenticeship of two hunting seasons, which run from Oct. 1 to March 31 for falconers. There is a reason for letting the apprentice hawk go.
``You're not a dog trainer when you've trained one dog,'' Nichol explained. ``It's definitely not a two-year experience, and then you're a pro. It's an ongoing learning experience.''
Nichol caught the hawk he now flies nearly three years ago. Her name, Spike, was taken from the thesaurus, where Nichol had turned to find another word for impalement.
``That's what she is,'' he said fondly. ``She's my little weapon of impalement.''
Hunting with birds of prey has been traced to Aristotle's time. The Greek philosopher wrote about ``hawking'' as long ago as 325 B.C. It was a common practice by medieval times. And although its practice has declined through the centuries since then, the basic method for hunting with the birds has essentially remained unchanged.
Typically, Nichol looks for a wooded area with substantial underbrush, where rabbits, quail and other small game prosper. He releases Spike, who finds a tree to perch on. Then, Nichol beats through the brush with a stick, hoping to stir an animal out of hiding.
It doesn't take much of a stir, either. He said Spike sometimes can spot movement in the middle of a thicket from 500 yards away.
Weight also is important. Nichol flies Spike at 45 ounces, a weight at which the bird is just hungry enough to be motivated to hunt, but not so low that she becomes anemic. It is often a delicate balance.
``A tenth of an ounce can be crucial to attitude,'' Nichol said.
He feeds Spike the equivalent of four chicks or eight mice a day - about five ounces of food - to maintain her hunting weight.
In the field, he employs a series of voice commands and sounds to communicate with Spike and keep her focused on the task.
``Get up. Get on up,'' he called, directing the bird to find a higher perch in a tree.
``Hey Sweetie, you gonna come to me?'' He whistled to get Spike to follow him. ``Come on. Right here, girl.''
The call Nichol and other falconers use when they flush out a rabbit or other prey is derived from the fox hunting cry of ``tallyho.''
``Ho, ho, ho, ho!'' That cues her that something is on the run.
``There's more to it than just flying a bird,'' Nichol said. ``It's art, it's skill and it's sport, and the sport almost comes last.''
After the kill, as Spike huddled protectively with her wings spread like a canopy over the lifeless rabbit, Nichol swiftly skinned the animal's leg and offered it as a reward to his eager partner. He also offered up the liver. Then, while Spike was busy tearing into her rewards, Nichol discreetly stashed the remainder of the rabbit in a pouch at his waist.
Later, he will cut up and freeze the meat to feed Spike in small amounts. He said he never lets her consume an entire kill because that throws off her weight. He also said he never eats anything she kills. For him, falconry is purely recreational, not for subsistence.
Nichol believes it is a fair way to hunt.
``It's not a shotgun with a five-foot shot radius,'' he said. ``I don't have a gun. If the hawk misses, the hawk misses. If the rabbit's not there, the rabbit's not there.''
To him, it's more natural.
``In the sense that you can participate in nature. It's the cycle of life. It's not just a walk in the woods.''
LENGTH: Long : 164 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ERIC BRADY/Staff. 1. Falconer Craig Nicol caresses hisby CNBred-tailed hawk, Spike, before a hunt begins. 2. Nichol beats a
broken hockey stick against the underbrush (above), hoping to stir a
rabbit from its hiding. 3. Spike moves through the trees (right)
enroute to the kill of a rabbit. 4. After killing a rabbit, Spike is
given the leg of a squirrel killed last season so the hawk would not
lose its appetite to hunt. color. 5. Some of the tools Craig Nichol
uses in his hobby include a leather glove (made by Nichol), a trap
to catch a wild hawk, a receiver to help locate a missing bird and
his permit to own a hawk.