Pawnee Grasslands ウサギを追いかける

This past weekend the Colorado Hawking Club held a small meet at the Pawnee Grasslands in the Northeast corner of Colorado. There were about a dozen falconers there, lots of red-tails, a few Harris hawks, and a Praire falcon (that wasn't flown this time around). I had to choose between going out with a cast of Harris hawks to chase jacks or a couple of red-tails to chase cottontails...Tough choice!!! I ended up going with the Harris hawks just because I like to watch the jacks run. We ended up taking about 10 boyscouts who were up there help build nest platforms for Ferruginous Hawks but the service project ran into some trouble so we all went hawking instead. As you can see below, we had quite the line going to scare up jacks!

先週の金，土, コロラド鷹狩倶楽部が狩の大会を開きました。鷹匠１２人が集まりました。レードテールが３，４羽，ハリス３羽，プレリー隼とスウィンソンが一羽ずつ。ハリスを観るかレードテールを観るか迷っていて，結局朝からハリス昼からレードテールという形で出かけました。朝から人数が見えるように多かった！

There were PLENTY of jacks, both black and white tailed and we had a few decent flights (one where fur was pulled) but being early in the season and having that sort of crowd out threw the birds off and about 45 minutes into it we could tell that the birds were done. We headed back to camp for lunch.

ウサギがいっぱいいたけど猟期が始まったばっかりし人数が多かったため数回追いかけってから鷹たちが疲れって追いかけなくなった。残念でしたがそれにしても一回ウサギの髪を捕りました。惜しかった！車に戻って昼を食べてからレードテールと一緒に行きました。

After driving for hours around the grasslands looking for a spot that wasn't being used by shooters, we ended up at a spot back near camp. We got up a cottontail almost instantly...so fast even that the bird wasn't looking! A light rain began falling but we pushed ahead hoping to scare up another bunny. The bird was following along well and in perfect position, even came crashing out of the tree onto something at one point, but just as we were getting to the spot where our "guide" said the bunnies would be thick the falconer whose red-tail we were flying slipped on a wet log twisting the knee that he'd had reconstructive surgery on only two weeks before! Yikes. That ended the day pretty quickly as we collected his bird for him and worked to get him back to camp in one piece. So no bunny in the bag for us but the meet wasn't a total bust, another falconers red-tail took a cottontail in what was described as a nice flight. I headed home shortly after as the heavens opened and the rain really began to pour. There's another meet at the beginning of November. Hopefully we'll get to see some more action then!

遠いところを見にいって銃を使っている人があちこちいたのでキャンプに戻って近くのところでレー度テールを飛ばしました。草に入ってすぐにウサギが出ましたけど早過ぎって準備ができていなかった。少雨が降り出して，塗れたけど頑張ってウサギを探しました。鷹が木の上で待っていて一回何かを追いかけましたけどミス。そして鷹の鷹匠が塗れた草に滑って手術したばかりの膝を改めて痛めた（内村さんぽいに...鷹匠がなかなか止まらないね！）。それで狩が終わりました。鷹を回収してキャンプに戻りました。その後大雨が降り出したので帰宅しました。今回僕がウサギを捕まえるところが見えなかった（他の鷹匠のレードテールが一匹を捕ったけど僕がいなかった）けど１１月の始めにまた大会があるのでその時を期待しています。