Season 2025/2026

Flying at about 903 g Cisco worked his butt off today. He looked really good but squirrels can be hard to catch sometimes.

Farrah didn't catch anything but we had some pretty good chases today. Apologies to Michael Faraday for the title ..

Cisco was right where I wanted him this morning at 904 grams, and peeping a little bit in the box which I actually like. But after yesterday's rain and the fog that we drove in with, it was pretty humid. Cisco spent a good hour looking before we even got a chase. Also a fair amount of drooping wings which I see with him in humid weather and that's usually not too good. On the way back he had his first serious chase, but got beaten because the squirrels got up into a pine, and Cisco's not the greatest in pine trees. 

There has been very little quarry around Houston for Farrah to catch. Each season I try to get her on squirrels because she has such great ability in the trees. But after a few outings the squirrels always start having lunch on her feet and I move away from that. This season she caught a couple of them and later lost one that munched up her feet.  So it's out to the open fields where there are no game birds and no rabbits around Houston. The heat this fall is just atrocious.  This morning I got up about 0400, with the expectation of going down to Iowa colony and chasing game birds with her. On the way down there I could tell it was too warm, so I went to Bass Pro shops instead. She followed on very poorly and stayed on the t perch for only short periods of time before she started working on my training. She found a nasty looking truck parked nearby and landed on it. Into the bag I  went, pulled out a chicken and called her the fist. This exercise worked really well for he...

Beginning on 11/11 Cisco had a mini streak catching three cat squirrels on three consecutive hunts. In my exuberance I overfed him a little on the 15th. He was an ounce high the morning I took him next to hunt. I took him out later that day; he was better weightwise and he caught a squirrel. His theoretical ideal weight is 900 g. See the chart below. Cisco was absolutely masterful today, hunting steadily for about 40 minutes, before he found the perfect squirrel which he nailed. He stayed up in the tree top with it for a long time, killing it very quickly up there I believe. He's now caught five squirrels since November 11th.  Check out this little YouTube clip here:  Labrador Red-tailed Hawk