OTTER HUNTING, FALCONRY, SHOOTING 12 r 



birds when taken up know the lure and the whistle. 

 And, as for wildness — a good thing at this time — it is as 

 necessary to use the bow-net for taking up these as it is 

 in taking up those which have been fed from the hack- 

 board. In either case, the eyesses, on being put into the 

 loft, have been furnished with bells and jesses, the bell 

 being somewhat heavier than that used when the training 

 is over, which should be as light as possible. I myself 

 am for a very long hack, even up to the point of danger 

 of the birds being lost. Be bold, I say ; you had better 

 have four good than five indifferent hawks. 



We now come to wild-caught hawks — i.e., haggards 

 and red hawks, both ' passage hawks.' These are yearly 

 taken in Holland, as I shall show at once by an extract 

 from Reminiscences of a Falconer, an excellent work by 

 my late friend Major Charles Hawkins Fisher, of the 

 Castle, Stroud, Gloucester.* The extract shows the 

 means of capture ; the place is in the neighbourhood of 

 Valkenswaard, Eindhoven, Holland. 



" The method adopted is intricate and interesting, and 

 can only be briefly deecribed here. The so-called ' huts ' 

 are pits dug out, walled with sods, and roofed with sods 

 and heather, so as to be very undistinguishable from 

 the surroundings. The occupant, who is frequently by 



* They are taken in England also. Lord Lilford sent me a fine 

 haggard caught on his own property in Northamptonshire. He 

 named her Miss Hardcastle, because he hoped she would ^ stoop to 

 conquer.' To my great sorrow she broke her swivel when in the 

 process of training and I never saw her again. — G. E. F. 



