The Mad Racehorse

William Percival, The mad racehorse only really arrived by mistake, we'd heard about an ex racehorse looking for a home and went to have a look at him for a friend, I jumped on board to give him a spin and thought wow,now if this would take a falcon what a great horse he would be........

Despite being told by a self proclaimed expert that an ex racehorse would never be suitable for a falconry horse (news to me, my first falconry horse,Toffee was an ex racer) he ended up coming home with me

 First thing we did on arrival was cautiously approach him with Agravane, My old harris who's made all my falconry horses.He didnt bat an eyelid so we tried a noisy imprint falcon,Barny.
He wiffled him and went back to his haynet.

 Thinking he might just make it we took him outside and introduced Artemis.....he was more interested in the fact his nose tickled than there was a large eagle flapping its wings next to him'

                        

So I jumped on Board    
                            

A Falconry horse that takes too much making is never going to be reliable enough, but I've never met one that took to it with as little effort as this, he's now done dmos, I've hunted with Falcons and Artemis from him, he's great with the dogs and is an allround lovely chap...what a find

The Shaggy Pointers

I've been asked on several occasions why dogs future so prominently in what is a falconry centre.
  Well, firstly anyone who knows me knows that working dogs have always featured as a large part of my life,as workers and companions ,and if I'm somewhere my dogs are not far away.

Secondly dogs are actually a very important part of what we do at Dartmoor Hawking,the majority of our hawks hunt as well as doing our various falconry experiences, and we would have very poor days with out the dogs to find and flush Rabbits, Pheasants ,woodcock, snipe and hares for our hawks .

for the experience days they also add huge amounts of entertainment as both the Ginger thing and Little Will . I . Woof are big characters and are guaranteed to butt in at some stage to disrupt things.
  Thirdly on the odd time I have to camp up at the barn they make fantastic hot water bottles.
 so the dogs are very important to me, Mt right hand men, and constant companions . if you don't like dogs Dartmoor Hawking is possibly not the place for you

Back when I had hair

10 years ago, we a couple of years after I started crow hawking seriously the BBC approached me about featuring the Dartmoor Falcons this was the result

Watch "The Dartmoor Falcons on inside out" on YouTube

With typical journalistic licence they failed to mention that we caught 7 crows whilst filming this

A moment of fame

A great article in the western morning news

The Dartmoor Falcons

After a disorganized couple of years, only flying falcons from horses occasionally had become the norm, but with the arrival of the spotty pony, and a more settled life it's time to  get organised mounted falconry back and so I'm planning to breathe new life into the Dartmoor Falcons, our old mounted falconry/ crow hawking club.

This will be flying pursuit falcons at Corvids, on Dartmoor, our main quarry being the carrion crow,

This is, in my mind, the most spectacular form of falconry, and because of the way it's run opens up the spectacle of the classical high flight of falconry to many who would never be able to see it.
Our main afternoon will be Fridays, others by arrangement, starting in August, Non riders are welcome to come and watch (especially if they bring cake)

Anyone interested please contact me 

The imprints

Very unusual for us, two of our falcons this year are imprints, Fedrico the American kestrel, and Philippa's falcon, Bernie the Barbary. These are being well looked after by are other youngster, Boris the Ginger thing
Both have been running the Reception desk at Bovey Castle in their spare time,

As the year starts

We've had a great start to the year,with out a doubt the big achievement has been the work we've done with Rosie , the rather bad tempered ( I'm being understated here ) Bald Eagle who is now a regular part of our falconry days.

Several new plans are taking shape for 2012 including greater use of Bovey castle for the hospitality side ( so much nicer than eating in a cold barn, sharing a table with Danny) , and hopefully my new friend Lance will be getting more involved in things as the year progresses

2500 displays at Bovey Castle

We were doing a tot up yesterday and worked out that, give or take a couple, Saturdays display at Bovey Castle would be our 2500th display there.

We've had a very good relationship[ with Bovey Castle over the years, started in November 2003 when Chris mount called and asked us if we would be able to do displays until they had their own in place.

I said of course pleased to help and we started just before Easter 2004 when the Hotel opened

Nearly seven years later we are  still in there practically every day, and run experiences for a lot of their clients, and of course, we are now working on Artemis, the Bovey Castle eagle.

It's a relationship  that works very well for both sides, and one we hope will run for years to come

Artemis' first display

Well Artemis too part in her first flying display today, performing (in a very limited fashion) in the breafast time display at Bovey Castle this morning

Her manners are still lovely, and as training progress she is going to be a stunning adition to the displays at the hotel and give a great oppertunity to clients wishing to spend time working with an Eagle

The lawnmower's today,

we have now cancelled our bookings pre Christmas a sss we are inacesable

Shazza's progress

She settled well yesterday and is even better today, hooding needs a quick hand, but is manageable.

She went into Bovey Castle today to look round and behaved perfectly, without baiting once, even posing inside for a couple of photo's.

The dogs are a permanent fixture while she's being manned, but  Danny gets a bit over excited, I think he assumes I've got a BIG Harris' for him to go hunting  with

Waiting for a rabbit to bolt,

Agravane,Gawain and Horrible hector a few days ago, back when we still had sunshine

The big old owl

I was talking to  someone yesterday about how much abuse Merlin, our Euraisian eagle owl gets from me during the course of a year, as apparently I can be  quite rude about him (I'd say honest was more appropriate) and we started trying to  tot up how much he's actually done in the 10 years that I've had him .
Even at a conservative estimate the figures were quite amazing, he's done getting on for 4000 public displays, flown to around 6000 individuals, appeared on TV at least 6 times,  done 4 radio interviews.
No wonder with  all  this he has managed to embarrass me in more places and in front of more people than  all my other birds put  together

We're moving

After a lot of persuading we are taking out the lease on a new 60acre site with room Indoor flying s so we can do our introductions in practically any weather, better hawk accomadation, and better facilities for clients to make the Falconry experiences we do even more memorable.
We will be able to offering pub lunches as part of our day experiences (to give clients better defrosting in cold weather), adding to the hunting team to make our hunting days really unique, and adding even more variety on the Falconry experience and Falconry day.
The move won't be happening till after Easter so in the mean time it is business as usual (obviously with a lot of plotting and planning)

Old Friends

It was so nice to see a couple of old friends, Robin and Ali Tuke, with there sons Charles and Richard

I've known Robin since his days at Exeter university, and in the early days of Dartmoor Hawking when we used to do the falconry at Kelso show we'd land on him and Ali for the duration.
They run a fantastic business selling their Aberdeen Angus beef (Which is the best beef I have ever had)
For any one who likes top quality beef take a look at their website Hardiesmill

A view from Puddaven

Looking at the fantastic sky this evening it made me really appreciate the beautiful part of the world we live in.

Crow hawking is running down as with the snow most of the crows have rolled off the more into the agricultural land at the edges, so only Morguasse is still in action for a few final days.
We're in quite exciting times now as we are discussing planning permission for a new venture which is going to be a huge bonus on what we already have going on at Dartmoor Hawking, among other things making the hunting days even more exciting,  possibly making the experience days better (though we'd be the first to admit they are very hard to improve on ) a great improvement for the evening with owl sesions (which are turning out to be very popular) and making expansion of the business easier (Have no fears we're not opening to the public) as we're growing nearly faster than we can keep up at the moment.
Last year, apart from a couple of minor blips was a great one for us, this year is looking even better.
we never like to rest on our laurels, we think what we offer is already excellent, but excellence can always be improved on

Letter from America

I had a lovely email from a couple from America who came out with me a couple of years ago, and with Marks permission I'm copying it here, it's really made my Christmas:

Hi Martin,

Sometimes you have a profound effect on someone's life, and you might never hear about it.  That's sad.
Here's an instance where your kindness enriched someone's lives, thousands of miles away.

We flew with you one day about 2 years ago.  Attached is a picture from that day, of Cindy, me, Mark and Grumpy.
Also attached is our Christmas card this year, Cindy, me and Roxy.

Roxy is a beautiful red tail that we trapped January 19 of last year.  She's been an incredible companion.  We have done
everything except catch the elusive cotton tail.  Hopefully, that will happen soon.
I was just overdue in getting a note off to you, thanking you for starting us on this falconry journey, and for being such a
nice friend one week long ago at Bovey.

Mark Choate

A good weekend

Having dug out  all my thermals we've had a really good weekend here, we had snow in sunshine for yesterdays display at Bovey Castle, making it a very festive one  (along with my Bah Humbug Christmas hat, thanks to Ffyona at Galloway Falconry )
 Myself, Max  and Mordred took a very well known couple out for a bit of snipe hawking, Mordred missed the first two and caught the third after  very good solid points from Max (and luckily they were holding well to point for once).
In the afternoon Georgies Cousin Charlotte helped exercise Charlie and did really well with him

A hawk walk this morning followed by a belting (unintentional)flight at a crow from the flying field by Morwenna made for a very enjoyable day today

A full team

Well we filled our vacancy for a display falconer to join our team today(welcome aboard Neil) which is great news as we now have a full team People wise, and with  the arrival of a young Feruginous hawk and a replacement for Sebille next summer will have our full compliment hawk wise.
Talking about the Hawk team Charlie our Male Peregrine saker got his moment of glory today, he normally only does display and private group work, but I finished up a bit early today with only him left to exercise so decided to slip out and see if he fancied a play. I found a single which did not hang around for long enough to let him get a look in (being a display falcon he's not very focused at times like this). Anyhow a quick driv on and I slipped him at a flock, this time he powered into them, and I saw a spectacular stoop , he did not reappear so I walked in to find him sat proudly on................... a piece of silage bag

A few thoughts

Well I've been stuck in all day sorting out accounts, and as always at times like this my brain drifts off to anywhere except the job in hand, and looking at tthe diary I realised that apart from an odd space on things we already have going we are completely booked up until the 10th of January, the busiest Christmas season we have had. Richard Lammin, came over the other day to discuss the work we had in,and where he'd be able to help out, and he started telling us about some of the going's on when he lived in Basingstoke,  this was quite an eye opener for someone like me who's always lived the quiet rural life,some of it was very funny ..

For those of you who have met richard I found this great photo of him from when he was helping us out a couple of years ago, with Annous and Borris