🎯 Hunting & Training · 6 min
The lure
Why this matters
The lure is the one truly indispensable piece of field equipment. Without it, the manual says, you look no different to your bird than any other person.
By the end of this lesson you will be able to
- State when a lure is used and what it is for
- Describe the correct construction and garnishing of a lure
- Explain the very narrow role of a live lure
What the lure is for
Conditioning, recall, and recovery. It is a useful tool for conditioning any falcon, and it is what turns an escaped or reticent bird into a bird you can pick up. It is not a general-purpose good, though: when the exam asks for "the benefit of using a lure with any bird," the answer is none of the above, because the listed benefits overreach. A red-tail conditioned by lure stoops is a red-tail not being hunted.
Construction
- A weighted lure beats a one-piece lure, almost always. A one-pound padded weight swinging on a four to ten foot line brings a big female goshawk to earth in fifty yards, and once down she cannot get going again. The same bird can carry a 26 ounce one-piece lure almost indefinitely and reflush with it. Pad the weight well.
- Garnish with tough, stringy meat. It stays put and cannot be bolted. Chicken heads are ideal, clipped through the nostril and lower mandible with a snap hook and secured with a leather thong. Day-old chicks are more common and are secured the same way.
- For a Kestrel, the lure must be lightweight. And because Kestrels carry, a weighted lure line is the standard countermeasure.
Flying the lure to a falcon
A young falcon's instinct is to circle and come at the lure into the wind on a low raking approach. What you want to teach is the opposite: a steep dive flying downwind. So any time the bird climbs steeply into the wind after a miss, try to get it onto the lure immediately as it turns downwind.
And play fair. If the falcon strikes the lure firmly on the first stoop of the day, give it the lure and feed it. As a bird improves it will start connecting on passes you meant it to miss. Snatching the lure away from a clean hit teaches the bird that hitting the lure is pointless.
The live lure
A live lure is for emergencies only: getting a bird out of a dangerous situation, or recovering one that is otherwise going to be lost, such as a wild-caught bird out of control and ignoring a dead lure. Repeated or careless use will ruin a game hawk.
Discouraging carrying
Young hawks grab the lure and try to leave with it. Prevent the vice before it forms by holding the lure firmly or fastening the lure cord to something stationary. For a bird that snatches food off the fist and bates away with it, the remedy is to let it eat only off the fist, in small tidbits, never large portions. A tiring helps too.
This lesson is part of the NY Falconry Exam course. Open it in the course to answer the retrieval checks that go with it, track what you have read, and quiz the whole unit. Lessons, quizzes and the glossary are free.