Brookings hunter takes on a hawk as a partner

BROOKINGS, S.D. (AP) - Alone in the cab of his tractor, Karl Sterud would stop once in a while, just to watch the hawks wheel and circle overhead.

And as a crop sprayer, the Brookings pilot would marvel at the freedom his feathered companions enjoyed as they rode the thermals across the roof of the prairie.

Sterud doesn’t actively farm anymore, nor does he operate his aerial service, but he still flies regularly - on the wings of a red-tailed hawk he calls Odin.

Sterud has become a falconer. It’s something he says he’s wanted to do all his life, and it’s a natural extension of his years as a hunter, the Brookings Register (https://bit.ly/1tZFLC0 ) reported.

Although he still “gun hunts,” these days he’s more likely to be carrying a hawk than a shotgun.

“I’ll hunt anytime, anything - deer, duck, pheasant, goose - I’m a typical South Dakota hunter, but probably not as fanatical as most,” he says with a grin.

“I’ve been hunting all my life,” the Brookings County native continues. “I enjoy traditional archery - you know, no training wheels - as well as hunting with rifle and shotgun.” Sterud got his start with falcons and hawks just five years ago.

Despite his longtime desire to become a falconer, he says he found his mentor “strictly by accident.”

“I was driving between two farms, and I saw Bill Murrin (of Brookings) on state land, going out to hunt for a falcon. I was so excited I left the tractor in the road … He invited me to hunt with him that day, then he invited me to help him train some birds.”

That led to a three-year apprenticeship in trapping and training birds for the hunt. Finding a sponsor who will work with you is the single most important step in becoming a falconer.

In South Dakota, falconry involves perhaps 30 to 50 active, licensed practitioners. “It?s a small community,” Sterud explains. “You don’t hear much about it until you get into it.”

“It’s quite a process, really,” he says. “You have to take a written test, then you have to have your facilities inspected by state - and this is before any permits are issued, before you can even get a bird.” Most falconers trap their birds in the wild, Sterud explains, but captive-raised birds are available (expect to pay from about $800 to more than $5,000 for these pen-raised birds, depending on the breed and its rarity).

Sterud got his hunting companion the old-fashioned way, trapping Odin in a field near Brookings. Although there are many ways to trap a wild bird, Sterud used a harnessed pigeon to lure the red-tail in, and as the hawk attempted to take the pigeon, his talons became entangled in the small nooses on the pigeon’s harness. Sterud rushed in and wrapped up the hawk - and a new partnership was born.

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What Sterud trapped was a handsome animal, white underneath with red splashes, a brownish-red back and the distinctive, cinnamon-red tail. The species has a four-foot wingspan, and, more important, dagger-like, inch-plus talons. Their hooked beak is as sharp as any fillet knife.

The bird was christened Odin for Sterud’s heritage - he’s Norwegian and Danish - and training began almost immediately. That starts with teaching the bird to eat out of your hand.

“Odin began eating from my fingers within 24 hours,” Sterud recalls. “He took the food immediately, but he wouldn’t swallow. Once he swallowed, he decided, ’This isn’t so bad.’ And once he began taking food from my fingers, he had to learn to take it from my open hand - that’s the dinner table.” In a process called “baiting,” Sterud coaxed the bird into traveling greater and greater distances to take his morsel. The two kept at it until the bird could be worked on a 100-foot tether.

Odin was an immature hawk or “passage bird” when he was trapped last year.

Falconers are encouraged to trap passagers because the mortality of hawks and falcons is so high, Sterud explains.

“It’s about 80 percent the first year, and of those that survive, the mortality is another 80 percent the second year. So (by trapping young hawks and falcons) we’re saving a lot of birds.”

It’s hard to believe, he said, but many falconers will fly a bird for one year and turn it back to the wild. That means releasing a healthy, well-trained hunter whose chances for survival are good.

A bird like Odin will probably have a lifespan of eight to 10 years in the wild, but a bird raised in captivity might live as long as 20 years.

Sterud, who earns his living these days as a trucker, compares the red-tail to a Ford. They’re not as elegant as a peregrine falcon or as beautiful as a gyrfalcon, but they’re sturdy and reliable.

“They?re indestructible and they just love people,” he says.

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Hawks are different from falcons in that they have broad wings. That makes them slower than a falcon, but it allows them to hunt in a certain type of habitat. Cooper’s and sharp-shinned hawks have very short wings, and that allows them to speed through heavily forested areas. Falcons, on the other hand, have long, tapered wings, which gives them incredible speed.

The most common of all North American hawks, the red-tail was damned with the nickname “chicken hawk” for the prey it supposedly stole from farmyards.

“And red-tails get blamed for killing a lot of pheasants,” Sterud adds. “I don?t think they do. They can kill them, of course, but raptors know how much energy they can give up to gain energy, and there’s too much energy involved in killing a pheasant.

“In a field chase, the only thing that could outfly a pheasant would be a gyrfalcon. This guy (pointing to Odin) can’t.”

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The reality check for wannabe falconers - who enjoy a romantic notion of flinging a beautiful raptor skyward - is how much time they require.

Confessing that he’d like to fly daily, Sterud spends at least three days a week, two to three hours at a time, taking Odin out for a hunt. He won’t hunt him over the summer months because that’s when the hawk is molting.

During that time, Sterud says, the hawk is content to stay on his perch as long as he’s well fed.

“When they’re full, all they want to do is sit,” he says.

Sterud’s and Odin’s “busy times” are during the small game season from September to March.

That’s when the bird will go after cottontails and tree squirrels, doves, even quail if they’re available. Sterud says he has to carry the same license as a gun hunter, and he can take whatever game they take. But in this case, instead of being the hunter, “when he’s (Odin) hunting, I’m the bird dog.” Odin takes gophers regularly, too, but there’s no season on them.

Odin always gets his fill of any kill, but the rest of the carcass goes home for future meals.

Red-tails like Odin - who is a relatively small, two-pound bird - can consume a gopher in one sitting. The daily diet includes mice and gophers, as well as rabbit and squirrel. Sterud occasionally feeds chicken, “but then I add vitamins - it’s a lighter meat, and it doesn’t have the vitamins wild animals do.”

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Even after five years of experience, Sterud is still learning, still fascinated with falcons and hawks.

“Until I got into this,” he says, “I never knew there were so many kinds of hawks … And they all have a different style of hunting. The kestrel, for example, hunts with ultraviolet vision. When a mouse pees, it leaves urine on its legs, and that leaves a UV trail. The kestrel is watching that urine trail, and when a shadow blanks it out, he drops down and he’s got a mouse.

“A marsh hawk hunts by sound, and that’s why you see them gliding just a few feet above the ground, listening for mice running through the grass.” The red-tail has incredible vision - that’s why it can soar so high and still spot prey on the ground hundreds of yards below. Their eyesight is about eight times better than a human, ’so good,’ claims Sterud, “that they could read newspaper headlines from a quarter-mile away.”

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It’s hard to believe Sterud will ever give up Odin - the bond between man and bird is obvious. But the falconer is considering his options. He can’t sell Odin - it’s illegal to sell a bird taken from the wild. So Odin may one day return to the grasslands of eastern South Dakota a free bird.

In the meantime, Sterud’s given some thought to acquiring a prairie falcon, an aggressive hunter but notoriously difficult to train.

“They’re very good on ducks and pheasants,” he says.

He might like to get into an abatement program, helping control waterfowl at parks or airports, or perhaps chasing starlings or some other nuisance birds at a manufacturing plant.

Although there’s always that thrill of the hunt, one gets the impression that Sterud would be content just to sit and watch his hunter preen its feathers in the morning, one by one. Or watch it circling overhead.

“When they’re soaring up there,” he says, “they don?t have a care in the world.”

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Information from: Brookings Register, https://www.brookingsregister.com/