Pursuing the sport of kings

By Jeremy D. Wells
Carter County Times

Falconry, or the art of hunting with trained birds, was ancient already when it was adopted by European royalty in the middle ages. According to some reports the practice originated more than 3,000 years ago – in Central Asia – before spreading throughout the region and then the world. Other accounts place falconry as far back as 2,000 BC in Mesopotamia, though there are questions about the validity of that origin. Still others trace is to Mongolia or the Iranian plateau. We do know that by 680 BC Chinese records were describing the practice, and that Aristotle described practices similar to falconry among the young men of Thrace. 

Wherever and whenever it originated, it eventually became widely practiced in the Middle East, where it’s still a popular sport today. It was from there, Gerald Dyson explained, that many western Europeans were exposed (or reintroduced) to the practice during the Crusades. Dyson, a professor of history at Kentucky Christian University (KCU), said that while falconry in Europe and elsewhere was often associated with the nobility – one of the only groups with the leisure time to train and work with the birds – there was also a practical side to the sport. For commoners and nobility alike, he said, the birds helped put meat on the table. 

They still can today. Michael Peffer, a Grayson resident who has taken up the sport over the last couple of years, said he has met some people who eat the squirrels or rabbits their birds catch, but he mostly uses them to feed his bird – a young red-tailed hawk – giving the bird his fill and saving any surplus to feed the bird on days they can’t hunt. 

Peffer, along with his sponsor Mike Crawford and fellow falconry enthusiast Eric Patton, showed off their birds and gave a demonstration of flying skills and training techniques at KCU on Monday afternoon. The sport, which is highly regulated at a state and federal level, requires those wishing to participate to complete an apprenticeship under an experienced falconer before they can obtain a license. For Peffer that person was Crawford. Peffer explained that he had always been interested in the hawks and other birds of prey he saw around him, but, he said, “I had this misconception that you had to be a Kentucky Fish and Wildlife person to even get to handle them, where they’re protected.”

Then, he explained, he came across the Kentucky Falconers Association, which had a list of folks willing to help those interested in taking up the sport, and only one name was listed anywhere nearby – and that was Crawford. 

“Everybody else was three, four hours away,” Peffer explained, so he reached out and Crawford graciously agreed to take him along on a hunt. 

“I’m his sponsor,” Crawford explained. “You have to have a sponsor for two years, that does everything with you for two years, before you get a general permit.” 

That includes trapping their birds for training. For red-tailed hawks, like Crawford and Peffer use, the birds have to be wild caught, Crawford explained, and can only be caught when they’re still bearing their first year feathers. If they’ve already started developing their distinctive red tail, they have to be released immediately. 

“These birds are wild. They’ll always be wild,” Crawford said. “I could let him go today and he’d be fine.” 

He said some folks will keep their birds for a year or two before releasing them back into the wild and trapping and training a new, young bird. 

Other birds, like Patton’s smaller Harris hawk, can be captive bred, but captive bred red-tails don’t do as well because they are exceptionally aggressive birds. Harris hawks, on the other hand, are more social and easier to train even if raised in captivity. In fact, Patton explained, unlike the birds used by Peffer and Crawford, his could not legally be released into the wild and would have to be given to another hunter or surrendered to an animal rescue if he could no longer keep her. Also, unlike the native red-tails, the Harris is not a native of Kentucky. They are found wild in the United States, where they hunt in packs – earning them their other moniker of wolf hawks – but only in the southwest, and down through South America as far as Brazil. 

Patton, who like Crawford hails from neighboring Boyd County, said he had been interested in falconry since he was 13, and read the book “My Side of the Mountain.” But he didn’t find his entry to the sport until he ran into Crawford, who he knew from the search and rescue team. 

When he learned that Crawford hunted with hawks, he said, “I was like, ‘Wait a second. How’d you do that?!?’ Then Covid hit, and I was working from home. So, every day I went out in the woods (with Mike).” 

Patton, along with Peffer and Crawford, are now part of a very select group. 

“There’s only 5,000 in the U.S. Only average about a hundred per state, and we have 109 in Kentucky, 109 licensed.”

Dyson said the popularity has ebbed and flowed over the years, with small clubs keeping the sport alive in Europe and then the Americas beginning in the 1920s. But, he said, WWII put an end to many of those clubs that sprang up after WWI until the sport began growing again in the 1960s. 

“The only place that it’s really stayed common was the Middle East,” Patton added. “Falconry in the U.S. is so new. We’re still learning what it’s about. We’re still learning these birds. We’re using species and ways that… if you had went to England and said, ‘I hunt a red-tailed hawk, on squirrels,’ you were going to get laughed at. But, now, they’ve started a captive breeding program for red-tailed hawks over there. They love them.” 

Contact the writer at editor@cartercountytimes.com