Winter hawking with Teddy Moritz: multispecies interaction

This picture of Teddy's Harris hawk was taken at field trials in New Jersey in October 2012. It was enhanced to show the maximum of details and vibrancy of colors.

The below excerpt from Teddy's recent e-mail is particularly interesting to me as it speaks about interaction between her hawk and mini dachshunds.

 

Hawking has been good particularly since the weather has been open and fairly mild till this cold snap. There's been no excuse not to go out.

This Harris's doesn't take the cold as well as my others did. I don't know why but he starts shivering when the temps hit the low 30's. I used to fly my other birds down to the teens, if only for an hour. The wind is a factor here in Delaware also, making the cold harder on the bird. I've even brought him into the garage these last few nights. Carl keeps the garage at just above freezing to keep the water pipes, paint, etc. from the cold.

Anyway, the hawk is doing well. He is very gamey, meaning he hunts hard, watches the dogs like a hawk, shall we say, and the best part is he leaves the dogs alone. The last two birds I had would hit the dogs in frustration if we weren't putting up game. That is something I find hard to tolerate. The dogs aren't seriously hurt but it demoralizes them. They don't understand why they are being punished. After a few hits they'll just follow me through the fields, watching the hawk and not hunting. Fortunately this bird is very keyed to the dogs, more so than to me. If I yell ho ho ho when a rabbit gets up he may or may not look at me. If the dogs put up a rabbit he's right over them and after the rabbit. I can deal with that.

He's also decided my red stud dog, Bane, is the one to watch. He shadows Bane as Bane hunts. Sometimes Bane works out further than the other dogs. If I lose track of the bird I'll call Bane in and when he comes, so does the bird. When Bane is on a rabbit the hawk stays right with him, rather than looking at the other dogs. It's not that the bird doesn't watch the rest of the dogs if I don't take Bane, but if Bane is out, the hawk is with him. My previous female hawk eventually did the same thing, figuring Bane was the one to be near. Bane is a good dog but so are some of my others, particularly Fitz, the little one. And to my surprise, Bane, at 5 and a half, recently started running in on the hawk when the hawk caught a rabbit. The squeals of the rabbit are very enticing but my dogs are punished early for trying to take the rabbit from the bird. It's one thing when they simply anchor the other end of the rabbit, which some of them do, but it's another thing when they grab the rabbit and take it away from the hawk. Bane did that three hunts in a row. One time he got the rabbit and held it, one time the rabbit got away, and one time I managed to corral the rabbit when the hawk and Bane lost it. I was rather unhappy with Bane so he got to wear an e-collar for the next few hunts and I was able to remind him of his manners. I don't know what his thought process was as he hasn't run in on a bird since he was a pup. He's a rock solid, reliable hunter and produces plenty of game, but he has to leave the bird alone.

I'm out almost every day with the hawk and dogs so we've been having good sport. I like finding new spots especially and only take one or two reliable dogs when I check out a new area. Delaware cover is thicker than in north Jersey, vines being the biggest challenge. The little dogs can snake through the tunnels under the vines, just as the rabbit does, but the hawk can't always see the rabbit in the vines and it often moves way ahead, losing the hawk. Then the dogs make it move again and we start over. Much of Delaware is ditched or there are old tire tracks in the woodlots. That much of a dip in the ground is enough to give the rabbits a runway, then when the vines, greenbriar, Japanese honeysuckle, poison ivy, trumpet vine, etc. grow over the tire track or ditch, the chase becomes one of tunnel running. And because the weather tends to be milder, the vines don't get pushed down by snow or ice and they continue to provide cover. The honeysuckle really doesn't even lose its leaves so it almost always provides a hiding spot. Sometimes when I put the dogs down they disappear completely under the variety of vines and briars and I don't know where they are until one opens and the hawk takes off after the rabbit. And a dog has to face water to hawk here as many ditches, deep and shallow, have water in them.

 

There are also woodchuck holes to contend with. In these hedgerows the dens can be very tight, despite the sandy soil. The tunnels go through the maze of roots and the dogs sometimes can't get as tight as the rabbit. I don't usually bother to dig because I'd spend more time cutting roots than actually digging. However, my smallest dog, Fitz, at barely 6 pounds, can almost always make a rabbit vacate a den. She's provided many a chase for the bird this winter. She's nine and a half and I hope I can breed or find as small a dog to replace her.

Enough about me....I always look forward to reading your blog and enjoy seeing all the deer the trackers have recovered. Andy has good stories with plenty of detail. I know you work hard on the blog, so thanks!

 

A good learning experience for a young mini dachshund Garmin

Teddy Moritz from New Jersey has described her hawking with dachshunds in one of her older articles:

I hawk rabbits with a Harris Hawk and miniature longhair dachshunds. I hawk small woodlots and waste fields behind industrial parks, housing developments, etc. I need a small flushing dog with a good nose, lots of line sense yet enough obedience to be called up to a fresh line, and the ability to go to ground. Without the dachshunds the hawking would be much less successful and the number of slips or opportunities for the hawk would be much diminished. The hawk is an opportunist and will use the dachshunds to provide those chances at rabbits. The hawk will follow the dachshunds from tree to tree as they search the briars for rabbits. When the rabbit flees from the dogs the hawk goes after it. If the rabbit goes into a hole, the dachshunds run it out again. We are an inter-species team. Rabbits are abundant, easy to find but not always easy to catch. There are days we catch one out of six rabbits and there are days we catch every rabbit we put up. If I were to hawk without a dachshund I would have to do a lot more brush beating myself. I would not see as many of the flights as I do now and my hawk would have to constantly chase fresh rabbits, rather than staying on one rabbit and making it count, with the help of the dachshunds.

I hawk where there are no gun hunters so I am not taking game from other hunters. I am licensed both by the Federal and State government to own and use the hawk. The team either brings a rabbit to bag or the rabbit escapes cleanly; there are no cripples left in the field. The rabbits are used for hawk, dog and people food. And even if I take a number of rabbits out of one small area, the remaining population will now reproduce to fill that void.


Today Teddy wrote about an outing with her dogs, and I found her pack's dynamics very interesting:

Had a good day's hawking today. There was a crust on the snow so the dogs and rabbits could run instead of flounder. We saw three rabbits and got three rabbits. Two for the hawk, one for the dogs.

The photos are of Garmin, a Navarre pup I got from Connie LaRosa out in Long Island. Garmin is six months old. Today she got to learn about dead rabbits in holes. My smallest dachshund, Fitz, is happy to slay rabbits who don't bolt, but it is beneath her dignity to pull them out. If Navarre can reach the rabbit he'll pull it, but he's a good bit bigger in the chest and can't always get to the rabbit. When Fitz came out of the hole with fur in her mouth I knew she'd had her way with the rabbit. Navarre tried but couldn't get past some roots. I asked Garmin to go in but she was hesitant because both Navarre and Fitz are dominant over her. She would look in the hole, then come out and wriggle in Navarre's face and lick his mouth. I held Fitz and she just glared at Garmin, which was enough to keep Garmin away from the hole.

However, by clamping my hand over Fitz's face, Garmin eventually slid down into the hole. She could certainly smell the rabbit although it was a good six feet away from her in the tunnel. She disappeared a few times, then came out and went back in. Then she began barking, which is not unusual for a pup when it first encounters an animal in a hole. After a bit she got up her courage and disappeared completely into the den. I waited and held the other two back. After a few moments she backed out, pulling the dead rabbit with her. Good learning experience for her, and game in the bag.

Good girl Garmin!

Too much snow in Berne, NY. Hawking in Ohio with a mini dachshund

First - news from Berne, NY. We are snowed in! Here in the Helderbergs, on the top of our hill we got over 3 feet of snow, and it is a very heavy wet snow. In some places the snow it is up to the top of our four foot fence. Two dachshunds went over the fence this morning into the white yonder, but luckily we managed to get them back. A local man who usually does plowing for us will attempt to plow our driveway today but I have serious doubts whether he will be able to do it. It is a long (200 yards) and narrow driveway and there is just no place to push the snow to the side. Anyway, we were without power last night for eight hours. Hopefully we won't lose it today. Unfortunately, we expect here more snow, 4-8 inches. The snowshoes are the absolute necessity here in winter. We could not move around without them.

The view from our garage

Kennels are not accessible as the snow is up to the roof and blocks the doors.

Update: Friday 9:00PM

We are doing well thanks to Jay Becker, who plowed us out. It took him two hours to do our driveway, but he succeeded, and we were able to get to the post office. We were snow bound for two days, and book orders have built up. As it turned out we don't have a mailbox any more. A snow plow that worked Helderberg Trail must have taken it down and pulled it away. Jim O'Shea, our postmaster, said that there are quite a few people in Berne in the similar situation. By the way, old timers living in Berne say that they have not seen that much snow since 70s.

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This came from Teddy Moritz (thank you!):

A falconer in Ohio, Mick Brown, got cabin fever when his area received three feet of snow. Mick has recently begun using a miniature longhaired dachshund for rabbits and is very pleased with her. The deep snow prevented him from running the dog so he went to Cabela's and got snowshoes.

Here are some photos of Mick's recent hawking success. He uses a male Harris Hawk over the dachshund, Tippy. He carries the dog, drops her under the snow covered Christmas trees and she runs the rabbits out. He also snowshoes to thick briar patches and puts Tippy in. The rabbits soon come out.
The hawk is in the white metal box.

Hawking with Teddy Moritz - hunt hard, kill swiftly, waste nothing, offer no apologies

In the United States dachshunds come in two sizes (minis and standards) and three coat varieties (smooth, wirehaired and longhaired). Teddy Moritz from Rockaway, NJ whose bumper sticker says "hunt hard, kill swiftly, waste nothing, offer no apologies" is a falconer, and she uses her pack of minis to hunt rabbits. More info on Teddy is given in the article published by Outdoor Life. Here are some recent pictures taken by Brian Bradley - thank you Teddy!

Harris Hawk 'Gripper' watching dachshunds work.

Gripper and rabbit dachshunds flushed.

Teddy with Tar and Fitz after some hard hunting.