90 ART AND PRACTICE OF HAWKING 



likely, if a light line has been used, she may have supposed for 

 days past that she was flying free. Possibly she has never once 

 suspected the existence of the creance. 



It is well to make all hawks to the lure, even if afterwards 

 you should have no use for it. A lost goshawk will very often 

 come to the lure when she will not come to the fist. As a rule, 

 it will be seen that short-winged hawks in the field should not 

 be called to the lure ; they are " hawks of the fist," and should 

 be taught to come to it whenever they have the chance, in 

 default of wild quarry. It requires some faith to believe when 

 the wild-caught sparrow-hawk is first taken in hand that she 

 will ever do this. Nothing will seem much more unlikely than 

 that this fierce, restless creature, a feathered termagant, would 

 ever so lay aside her innate wildness as to come contentedly 

 out of the free air, and, disdaining all other resting-places, take 

 perch by preference on the hand of her once detested captor. 

 Yet so it is. Goshawks and sparrow-hawks can all be brought 

 to come habitually to the fist, and remain there willingly at all 

 times except when there is quarry to be pursued. In their case 

 the calling-off to the hand in the open field is only a prolonga- 

 tion and extension of the early lessons in which they were 

 taught to jump to it from the perch, as already described. 

 After the creance is no longer necessary each kind of hawk 

 should be called off for two or three days at least, the one to 

 the lure and the other to the fist, one man holding the hawk, 

 while the other swings the lure or holds out the fist. And here 

 ends the early drudgery of reclaiming the wild-caught hawk. 



The education of the eyess, whether flown at hack or not, 

 must, of course, be brought down to the same stage. If they 

 have had no hack at all they will have been manned very early 

 in life and habituated to come to the fist. If they have been 

 well hacked, they will have become in many respects very like 

 wild hawks — possibly " more so." Anyhow, they will be full 

 summed and full grown in all respects before they come to 

 be put in actual training for the field. We took leave of our 

 eyesses in the third chapter, soon after they had been taken up ; 

 and we must now assume that by a modified application of the 

 regime prescribed for the haggard they have been manned and 

 taught to come to the hand or the lure, or both. The time 

 occupied in this process will of course have varied according to 

 the disposition of the individuals. A well-natured eyess merlin 

 hacked under the lure-and-fist system will be manned in two 

 or three days. A goshawk, or a peregrine of an independent 

 turn of mind, hacked at the board, may resist for the best part 



