12 PRACTICAL FALCONRY. 
swivel, which is fastened to your glove by a bootlace, or something 
that looks better if you like. You then unhook the swivel, and leave 
him on thepigeon, which I need hardly say is fastened bya short string 
near the block. Put a pigeon out alternately with the dead lure 
every night in the dark, or before daylight in the morning, and you 
may keep your bird at hack a fortnight or more, especially if the 
hack-bells are pretty heavy; for she will come in the morning. 
Feed in the evening too. 
Indeed, I may as well mention here « plan which, such as it is, I 
originated, and which I have found very successful with older birds. 
I fly my hawks in my own neighbourhood, and therefore I have the 
following means of keeping them about. I have a block in my field 
near the house, to which I fasten a live pigeon. A young hawk, 
just before it is flown at game, is put up and brought down to this 
pigeon ;’it is fastened to the block, and allowed to eat the bird. 
Remember, also, that it has been flown at hack in the neighbour- 
hood. The arrangement may be repeated; and, that having been 
done, I think you are quite safe as regards the hawk coming home, 
should she be out all night on a grouse, which she has killed where 
you are not able to find her. In such a case, put down your live 
pigeon at night, and be up by daylight ; she will be on it. This I 
call my “live hack.” The dead lure will not do for successful 
game hawks, which always look for blood; at any rate, it must be 
used (I still, of course, speak about the lost hawk and live hack) 
very sparingly. There is some danger in hawks being out all night 
in the spring or early summer, but even then they will generally 
come to thelive hack. It has saved me an immense deal of trouble 
—the trouble of going for miles shouting and throwing up Iures.* 
Hawks in our first case, let out tio hack when perfectly tame, may 
* If a lost hawk should not return to the live hack, it must be looked for 
at daylight close to the place where it was last seen. 
