N.C. man finds joy in ancient sport of hawking

By Elizabeth Leland
The Charlotte Observer

Monday, February 02, 2009

Steve Hughes stopped at the edge of the woods and planted a tender kiss on his Lady's head.

You could see the devotion as she waited for his command.

Hughes raised his arm ever so slightly, Lady flapped her wings and away she glided to a branch high in a bare tree.

The hunt was about to begin.

"Life," Hughes said, "is not how many times your heart beats, but how many things make your heart skip a beat. In the scheme of things, not many people get to go out in the wild and watch a bird catch a prey."

You'll find Hughes, who is 60, in the woods several times most weeks with his two Harris hawks.

The Charlotte Observer reported that he has been flying hawks since he was a boy of 14, living near a horse farm not far from where Cotswold now stands in Charlotte. As a licensed falconer, he is allowed to raise birds of prey in captivity, train them and take them into the wild to hunt for food.

You could call it his passion, but it might best be described as his way of life.

As unusual as falconry may seem, with only a handful of licensed falconers in the Charlotte area, a few thousand in the U.S., it is an ancient sport with modern applications.

JFK International Airport in New York has used falcons to chase away birds such as the ones that flew into the path of Flight 1549 before it plunged into the Hudson River on Jan. 15. Farmers in Connecticut have used them to protect blueberry crops from starlings. Toronto used falcons, as well as hawks, to control the city's gull and pigeon population.

Hughes trained Lady and her companion, Hobie, simply for the sport.

"I love being a part of nature, a part of what's real," said Hughes, who is married with three children, two Harris hawks, one goshawk, three horses, three dogs, five pigeons, a turkey, two call ducks, four bantam chickens, 25 snakes, a wood turtle, a chinchilla and two marsupials called sugar gliders.

"We're here," he said, pointing to the woods, "in a whole little world inside of a world that has a life-and-death struggle going on every day."

It was a chilly morning, and the sound of traffic near Indian Trail punctuated the stillness as Hughes released Hobie to fly free with Lady into that struggle.

The birds perched on different trees for a few moments, then without warning flew off. Lady landed on top of a clump of twigs and leaves, a squirrel's nest, tucked into a crevice between branches.

Hobie waited close by as Lady, the bigger of the two and a gorgeous chocolate-brown, rooted around for a squirrel. Finding none, she and Hobie flew deeper into the woods to another nest, at the top of another tree.

From nest to empty nest, they soared, Hughes following on foot.

"Falconry," he said, "is one of the oldest sports known to man."

The Chinese used raptors for hunting as far back as 2000 B.C. Genghis Khan's army marched in the 12th century with thousands of falconers to hunt meat for the soldiers. In medieval England, birds of prey became status symbols, and birds signified rank. The king flew a falcon, priests had sparrowhawks and servants, kestrels.

Harris hawks, the ones Hughes trains, are among the most popular today because they're social birds and bond with their trainers. A Harris hawk can cost $400 to $700, a falcon up to $10,000, but only a licensed falconer can legally buy a bird of prey.

"Next to horses and dogs," Hughes said, "birds were the most cherished animals. You could be hung if you stole a falcon back in the Middle Ages."

His reverie was broken when Lady and Hobie swooped away, dodging branches and tree trunks as if they had radar. Hughes jumped over logs, sprinting to catch up.

From a nearby field came a raspy "keeer-r-r, keeer-r-r," the cry of a wild red-tailed hawk also searching for food. In the woods, Lady and Hobie lost sight of whatever rabbit or squirrel they had spotted and abandoned their hunt as quickly as it began. Hughes refused to give up. He shook a dead tree trunk, thinking it might be hiding the creature. Nothing emerged.

He peered deeper into the woods. "There's a good nest," he shouted. In the distance, a dark mass of twigs and leaves rested on a scrawny cedar.