Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end
So I was talking to deathwokclan, and I go to Youtube to show her the Spike tuggy video. And while I'm there, I'm distracted by a National Geographic video of an eagle hunting a chevrotain, and then it occurs to me that I could do a Youtube search for "falconry", and I wonder why I never thought of it before. I'm not usually so slow to find new ways to
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Or were you? I'm tryin' to look on the bright side, here.
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I'm - I don't want to apologise or defend myself. But it's a clean death under fair conditions and they have a better than 50% chance of getting away clean. I didn't feel I was doing wrong then and I don't now. And I did, and do, think about it.
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I'm certainly not asking you to defend yourself or apologize. As I said, I'm trying to find a bright side.
I, personally, am not sure what the difference is between that, and, say, fox hunting, or live feeding a snake in an area where the prey can in fact escape. I know with fox hunting, the prey has a chance to escape, and it's a wild animal that has lived a natural life. Agreeing with the practice doesn't always hinge on those two things, though. ;)
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I suppose I look at it like this: hawks and ferrets are obligate carnivores; something will always have to die for them to eat, whether it's day-old chicks or frozen mice or wild rabbits. We weren't killing hundreds of rabbits, we never wasted so much as a bone or scrap of skin. And we were enjoying it. I won't fudge or evade that. But the deaths happened in a way I could live with. I still could, if I currently had a life I could fit keeping a hawk into.
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Although, honestly, I didn't really have a problem with most of it, it's just that my little vegetarian soul rebelled a little at the neck breaking part in the second video. I have a better opinion of people who use domesticated animals for working purposes than I do of the people who would prefer to dress them up in clothes and pretend that they're just furry little humans. At least the hawk and the ferrets were having fun doing what they do naturally.
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I can't call dressing ferrets up "cruelty", but I admit my soul always dies a little to see it. It feels to me like very much missing the point.
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Birds of prey are so beautiful, and so smart. I was at a field test recently, for pointing dogs. It was actually the most ridiculous set-up I've ever seen - basically just a big, bare pasture with trees around the outside. The dogs were taken through a specific route completely devoid of birds before reaching the actual (tiny) bird field, which was more bare pasture, about half an acre in size, and loaded with planted birds. Stupid as hell for these sorts of dogs, but excellent for the eagles and hawks, who would lazily swoop in at the planted birds every once in a while for an easy meal while the dog and its handler and the judge wandered around uselessly in the course before the bird field. It was quite cool to see. The hawks were better at it than the eagles, though. Even though the prey was pretty much stationary, the eagles had more unsuccessful dives than the hawks.
Anyway, end ridiculousy random rambling. :) Thanks for sharing, those are videos are cool.
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We'd have caught a lot more if we'd been working with a dog, only I couldn't have one then. I should have looked for some dog work in the videos - most falconers have GSPs or something along those lines.
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