Called in my first hawk...

[hogdogs]

Not that I would hunt them, just seeing if I could...

First time for everything!
While runnin' dogs yesterday, Junior heard a hawk squawking. He spotted it out a couple hundred yards in flight. I have a sound I have used since childhood to stop a tree rat that is on the run in the trees. I purse in my lips hard and draw in through one side. I can adjust tone with pressure and bt holding a finger over the spot where I draw in. Kind of a raspy squeaky sound. Well one day in the last few years I figured that in a barely kinda sorta way it may resemble a wounded rabbit sound. So as the hawk circled a tree a couple hundred yards away I through it out there for grins and he immediately showed heavy interest and pinpointed the sound. To speed over he actually tucked his wings into dive configuration and raced to the tree over my head and lit on a limb directly over me and looked down for the fuzzy critter, seeing none he immediately left out mad...
What a rush I got knowing it was not a happenstance coincidence!
Brent

 

[Brian Pfleuger]

Lest ya could do is bring him lunch next time.

 

[Art Eatman]

A wounded rabbit call will surely bring them in. Owls, too.

A buddy of mine and I were sitting on a hillside, trying to inveigle a coyote into posing for us. A really big redtail flew down and settled in a small tree about fifty yards away. Spent some ten minutes staring from first one eye and then the other. I'd blow on the rabbit call and the hawk would hunch forward as if to fly toward us, and then stop and look some more. Funny.

There's a picture, maybe somewhere on the Internet, taken one night when Murray and Winston Burnham were out calling. An owl was landing on Murray's hat. The Burnham brothers out of Marble Falls, Texas, were among the first folks ever to get into serious varmint calling and hunting. They started the deal with mouth calls and later tapes and such, beginning back in the 1940s.

 

[roy reali]

Bird Company

My dog and I was working some brush looking for birds. My dog went in and I could here the birds taking off from the other side. There was no way I could shoot them. Then something caught my eye overhead. I saw a hawk diving down towards the flushed birds. I could not see if the hawk succeeded.

The neatest thing was that hawk followed my dog and I the rest of that morning. She would always be in a tree near brush waiting to see if we busted some more birds out. I guess we both has the same idea in mind that day.

 

[treg]

That's neat hogdogs, thanks for sharing. I'm gonna try that next time I've got a hawk around.

 

[rantingredneck]

Brent,

I've used the same technique to coax 'yotes in that last few yards or to get them out from behind a tree/bush. Where I hunt the brush is thick and yotes like to come in to the estrous bleat calls. Sometimes they're a little close to be using it again, would be too loud. That wounded bird/rabbit sound will get them out from behind the bushes though. .

I'm sure if someone were watching me do it from a distance they'd think I was blowing kisses at the 'yote. Kinda what it feels like I'm doing.

Never got a hawk to answer it though. That's cool.....

 

[jmiller676]

I went coyote hunting this year and had a rabbit distress call. I blew for a few seconds and not 5 seconds after that a hawk came swooping down and landed in the tree right above me. Didn't get a coyote but, still cool to see wildlife in action like that.

 

[srt 10 jimbo]

My Dad had Raptors when I was growing up. He Had 2 Red-tailed Hawks a sparrow hawk and a Goshhawk. was neat to watch him train them and then hunt Pheasent with them.

 

[zeisloft]

Yea, its all fun and games till you have to shut er down in the middle of a winning varmint tournement to run your callin partner to the emergency room for 47 stitches because he was scalped by an owl. Ended up in fourth because of that dang owl.
~z

 

[hogdogs]

I was half expecting that hawk to come all the way to me in that dive form!
Shoulda got first since ya'll called a predator ALL THE WAY IN!
Brent