26 PRACTICAL FALCONRY, 
too hilly, to make it possible to be up while the hawk remains. She 
therefore comes back, and you beat again. (This only by way of 
parenthesis.) 
If the tiercel has killed at a distance, the markers will have been 
useful, and you will go at once to your bird. 
It may be necessary to take the hawk down to the lure before he 
has killed (I mean after some failures), in order to move to other 
ground; but this shculd be avoided if possible, for, when he comes, 
you can scarcely give him anything—though you must give a little— 
he having to fly almost instantly; besides, frequently calling a 
hawk to the lure destroys his pitch, and, as he can hardly be fed at 
all, makes him careless of the lure. An old bird will follow you field 
after field till he does kill; but be careful how you tire a young 
hawk. Use your own judgment, and act according to circumstances. 
A tiercel used to partridge hawking will kill you a brace and a half 
or two brace in a morning ; but this is too many to take from a very 
inexperienced bird. They should eat the head, or a couple of small 
mouthfuls from the neck, each time. The moment that is done—and 
it is perhaps done before you come up—hood the bird, and don’t 
snatch the partridge away first, for that will lead to carrying. 
Carrying is a most tiresome fault; but itis often, indeed almost 
always, the fault of the trainer rather than of the falcon. Some 
birds, it is true, seem to have a greater disposition to carry than 
others ; and the smaller species of hawks (but we have not spoken 
of them at present) are worse in this particular than the larger. It 
is indeed a nuisance to find your bird pick up the quarry and make 
off with it, perhaps for the distance of two or three hundred yards, 
just as you approach your hand to seize it; and the tamest hawks 
may do this if they have been improperly treated. It is done from 
no fear of the falconer—at least, from no fear of his presence; the 
hawk’s only suspicion is that she is about to be robbed ; and she 
has been robbed, no doubt. You have taken her off the food ina 
