High Flying Gyrfalcons, Hardaswick / Christopher, Hardbound, 288 pages (R)
SKU: FB1051A

Description

By Vic Hardaswick & Kent Christopher, Hardcover, Dust Jacket, 7" x 10", Color throughout, 14 chapters, Epilogue and References, 287 pages.

High Flying Gyrfalcons: The Guided Development Program may seem like it is about flying Gyrfalcons in a grand style, and it is, but it contains a great deal about flying longwings of any description. It teaches us about our relationship with our hawks and how to guide them to their full potential. This book was 20 years in the making and a great deal was learned and compiled during that time by very clever falconers.

If, as commonly opined in the 19th and first half of the 20th Centuries, the art of successfully flying the Gyrfalcon is lost, Vic Hardaswick and the late Kent Christopher have gone a long way in finding it for us once more. Aided by the products of modern captive breeding, radio telemetry, and contemporary pharmacology, these two have produced an invaluable work. The results of taking their theories into the field make for high-flying falcons and spectacular falconry. Yet one need not aspire to towering flights at sage grouse over windswept western plains to find great usefulness in this volume because the detailed description of imprinting alone makes the book a must. More than simply needing a place on every falconer’s bookshelf, this work deserves time and study. Its attributes will raise the standards of the practice of our sport.

S. Kent Carnie, Founding Director and Curator (Emeritus), The Archives of Falconry