330 FALCONRY 



are ' hawks of the fist ' — that is to say, they are flown straight 

 from the hand, and do not mount after their quarry ; the 

 nature of the flight is a short, sharp dash at their prey, and 

 they either take it or give up the flight in a short distance. 

 They are never hooded except during training and when 

 travelling. It is their nature to lie in wait for prey on some 

 coign of vantage, remaining immovable perhaps for hours, till 

 the chance occurs of a swift dash at the unsuspecting quarry, 

 which rarely escapes. The trained bird, therefore, will learn to 

 look upon her master's hand as the vantage post whence she is 

 to kill, and will soon learn to sit thereon, bareheaded and 

 immovable, but ready to dash like lightning at the first prey 

 that stirs. The art of training her, then, is to carry her day 

 and night, till she is so familiar with her master and his hand 

 that she looks on the latter as her home on which she lives, 

 from which all her sport is obtained, and to which she will 

 return without lure after an unsuccessful flight. 



To arrive at this desirable end a great deal of trouble must 

 be taken. The older falconers made a good deal more use of 

 the hood than is done nowadays with goshawks, and took as 

 much pains to break them to stand well to the hood as they did 

 with any other kind of hawk ; we believe that they were wise, 

 for the more training these birds undergo the better they will 

 be. However, having procured a goshawk and put upon it 

 jesses of stout leather — white horseskin, if kept well greased, 

 is the most reliable — the best plan is to put on her a rufter 

 hood through which she can see a little — a loose old one with 

 a hole bored near the eye is very good — and to carry her for 

 the greater part of the day, and as much of the night as possible, 

 handling her in every possible way, and inducing her to pull at 

 a piece of beef in the same way as is recommended in the case 

 of the freshly-caught peregrine (see Chapter III.) As soon as 

 the goshawk will feed well and keenly through her hood, let it 

 be discarded, but from experience we think that the use of the 

 hood in the early stages of training saves time, and that it should 

 not be left off till the hawk is thoroughly at home on the fist. 



