Falconry is often thought of as a relationship between falconer and bird, however there’s a great way to increase the abilities of both falconer and bird by adding a third component to the mix, the dog.
Dogs have multiple uses in falconry from upland game bird pointing, squirrel treeing, rabbit flushing and more. A dog can quickly become an asset to your falconry team. It’s not uncommon to see a falconry bird paying more attention to a working dog than the falconer himself.
In squirrel hawking a good dog will know to work the tree the squirrel is in and assist in both identifying the quarry and keeping it tree’d. It’s also not suprising for a bailing squirrel to end up in the grasp of the waiting dog. Goshawkers often using dogs to track and flush rabbits while the bird is waiting on the glove for the slip.
Photo to the side is David Peck’s stupendous beagle after assisting my passage red tail in acquiring a pheasant followed by Zack Reinhol’s (Deutschen Stolz Kennel) well trained German Short Haired pointers after successfully pointing and flushing a pheasant for my first year Peregrine, Evo.
