To Kite or Not to Kite????

My initial plan for this bird was to treat him like every other peregrine or Barbary I've flow in the past 8 years and train him to the kite.

I like kite training as a transition from the creance to game hawking. When you train a peregrine or any falcon to "wait on" your goal is to have a bird that will fly high up into the air and circle overhead, waiting for a bird to flush. There are many ways to accomplish this and I've used most of them, but I’ve found the kite to consistently produce great results.

But, naturally there was no kite training 40 years ago when falconers last trained passage peregrines and most of the experienced passage guys suggested the kite was not needed.

The second day of free flight I put the kite up to 800’ and put the bait 10’ off the ground. I unhooded Doc and he just sat on the glove staring at me, probably wondering what I wanted him to do. Previously I had always put him on a perch to start our training. He looked at the bait and back at me and finally took flight.

He circled out and came back towards me and the kite but flew right past the bait. He continued to circle around but never went for the bait. I finally called him down to the lure and let him eat the food on the lure. While on the lure I unhooked the bait from the kite and walked it over closer to him. Once he finished the food he finally hopped up a few feet and grabbed the bait from the kite lure line.

I started second guessing my kite training approach and the next two days out (including today) I didn’t put the kite up and tried traditional pigeon training. He flew around both days making circles around me getting up to 50’ or so and I served him a pigeon when I thought he was starting to lose focus.

We’ll see what tomorrow brings but I think I may pull my kite back out.