07/05/2024
Giving a seminar gives you an opportunity to both reflect and hopefully refine what you have been doing and thinking and doing into a succinct, readily understood presentation. And hopefully I was able to do that the other weekend for the Finger Lakes Bird Dog Club – and the purpose of this piece isn’t to necessarily share that content, but a book review of sorts.
Over the time I spent with Bill Gibbons, I was struck by several of the books he had on his shelves – particularly Ray Hunt’s Think Harmony with Horses (1978) and Tom Dorrance’s True Unity (1987) – and he and I talked about the importance of trying to empathize with the dogs we were trying to train. And there are great lessons to be learned in those books too. But even in their most loyal, trusting, and bravest incarnations (like the bullfighters’ Lusitanos), horses are not animals we value for their predatory skill.
When I first picked up Matt Mullenix’s Four Falconry Fundementals (2020), I skipped through it and put it aside. I am not a falconer – and it seemed quite specific. For example, Mullenix’s four fundamentals are Prey Base, Husbandry, Recall, and Slip Management: the first is about selecting a hawk that suits the kinds of native game it will primarily see; the second is about four-Fs of feathers, feet, food, and furniture (the tackle used to fly and house the hawk); the third, the recall, might seem the most obviously applicable but is and isn’t; and, deceptively, perhaps because it is a commonly-used term in falconry, the fourth seems technically-specific, but is not in fact, however critically important.
It wasn’t until I was asked to give this foundation seminar that I picked it up again and realized that, from a philosophical perspective, there were any number of topics that might be applicable to starting a bird dog. And, perhaps, not surprisingly, it was the third section, Recall, that anchored me into the wider wisdom of this book.
Towards the end of this section of this book, Mullenix writes: “Rather than think of a new hawk as a blank slate awaiting detailed instructions in these duties, consider it instead a box of well-built parts with some assembly required.” (p.40)
This resonates for me because, in the majority of cases, we are hunting with animals who have been specifically bred for their purpose for over a century – and yet, we often seem to forget that we bred them to do and know better than we can. All to often we assume that all those ‘well-built parts’ are developing at the same relative speed, or that we somehow have a better grasp on scenting conditions to know where a dog should have pointed a bird from. ‘Assembly,’ in this regard means development through experience, not the piling on of subservience before the dog has ever had a chance to develop any sense of autonomous purpose. Or as Mullenix himself states, “... we treat the entire purpose of training a hawk as almost an afterthought! As a result, many hawks are over trained when finally entered, too focused on the falconer and unable to guess what’s expected in a hunt.” (pp. 39-40).
It should be pointed out that ‘training’ in Mullenix’s world is largely embodied in, by his own words, his ‘unconventional and expansive’ notion of the recall: “The term conveys a bird’s overall orientation toward the falconer both in the field and in the home.” As he goes on: “What should not vary is the falconer’s consistent messaging to the hawk. The falconer communicates through the regularity of interaction; in the reliable presentation of food; in consistent use of whistles and vocalizations; with the considerate introduction of new people, places, and pets; in short, with the timing, repetition and routine of everything.” (p.35; my emphasis).
Training, in this broad definition, is more than simple obedience – it is the establishment of a responsive and responsible relationship between falconer and hawk. It is not tricks, but trust. And with trust, comes a degree of freedom for both. “The falconer’s faithful routine and the hawk’s awareness of it provide the bird its first opportunity to affect outcomes on its own behalf. For such an independent and self-aware creature as a hawk, the return of its agency and some understanding of its world are, as much as food and flying weight, major motivators.” (p.36) In establishing that broad relational bond, we can then also periodically return the hawk’s (or dog’s) strong, genetic sense of purpose.
And we can develop the hawk (and the dog), to help it accrue experience and therefore skill, by carefully employing ‘slip management:’ “Stacking odds in favor of the hawk is a tactical matter every bit as important later in the season as on the first day.” (p.42) And while Mullenix is almost exclusively describing the development and hunting of hawks on wild game, the principle remains the same: for an inexperienced dog, especially, how can we stack the odds in its favor for it to discover and embrace its genetic purpose (even if the majority of us will still likely have to rely on farm-raised birds)? And are there ways in which we can do that to both instill that sense of self-awareness and agency in the dog? And to prepare them for the first time they are entered on to wild game? The answer is yes. But as for the hawk and a consideration of the meteorological and topographical variables within slip management, once we pay attention to things like scenting conditions, cover, weather, even on pen-raised birds, we can help stack the odds for an inexperienced dog to develop the skills for it to be entered on wild game.
There are of course analogies to be made to the first two fundamentals that Mullenix identifies – Prey Base and Husbandry. Picking a dog, or a line within a breed of dogs, to suit the country, game, and your own temperament would be the first. And while it merges into the weight management section of the book, keeping a dog in relatively good cardio-vascular shape year-round is another.
In short, we can find guidance for developing and training new bird dogs in a variety of non-canine sources – and Matt Mullenix’s Four Falconry Fundementals is another valuable one.
It can be found here at: https://www.westernsporting.com/FB2053/four-falconry-fundamentals-matt-mullenix-.html
