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| Lauren McGough with Scott Pelley |
Golden Eagle falconer Lauren McGough was featured on 60 Minutes on Sunday. Check it out! A very nice pitch-perfect presentation.
Falconry, the art of hunting with birds of prey, was born in the forbidding Altai Mountains of Central Asia. Hunters there still loft golden eagles into the sky in a partnership of man and bird that predates recorded history. We say 'man' but, in truth, one of the best hunters in Mongolia today is a woman from Oklahoma City. Lauren McGough took us to one of the most remote places on earth to meet the hunters who trained her.
I don't know Lauren beyond Facebook, but we have a dozen or more friends in common. Why do I know so many falconers? Perhaps it's because terrier work and falconry are both Medieval sports with little changed in over 400 years, other than the use of telemetry. What else? Well, there is a shared quieting of the heart as two species work together to hunt a third. Hunt with hawk and dog, and four species are now in on the circus!
I call it a quieting of the heart, but perhaps it is more than that; an acceptance of tragedy as a possible outcome of any given day.
When a bird is released, or a dog is allowed to slip to ground, there is no guarantee that substantial injury, physical loss, or even death will not be the outcome. Falconry and terrier work are not for the faint of heart!
There is also the nature of the beast. Dogs, of course, are far more biddable and easier to train that hawks, falcons, or eagles, but there is something truly feral in a lot of working terriers. When the code explodes, it is not something you create but something you can only hope to direct and channel in a way that leads forward to results rather than backwards to grief.
Are these very small connecting threads?
They are, but it seems to be enough for a lot of falconers to understand a core part of dirt work, even as we diggers understand the psychic and emotional burdens of those who chase feathered furies across the sky.
1 comment:
Ah, the Altai MTs, scene of numerous mega-floods, when millennia ago, ice dams collapsed emptying massive impounded lakes over the landscape at millions of cubic meters per second. Altai floods and US'glacial Lake Missoula have few dissimilarities.
Have found it not unusual for Border Collie handlers/breeders to also practice falconry. I personally know two. Humans working with animals' predatory instincts for their mutual benefit seems to be elemental. IMO, getting out in the field with dogs and birds of prey bonds modern men/women to the land and to their distant ancestors.
The movie "Alpha" is one writer's and director's version of how human-animal hunting bond came about at the end of the ice age in Europe. -- TEC
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