I am an old hunter there Joseph (hope you are getting ready for the annual Xmas pageant down there at the Guiding Light Mission on S. Beale St., ho ho ho).. But I am also, like Audubon, a bird watcher, and ever since my boyhood days have been fascinated by aircraft and flight. To me, all the Airborne Taloned Patrol are the most gracefull killers God ever cooked up on His drawing board of Death- Swift, Silent, Deadly.
Hawks do way far more good than harm, their main food "targets' are field mice, snakes, rodents, dead or dying gophers and woodchucks, etc.
About 20 some years ago, when I had an earlier Johnny Stewart model game caller (that one played 45 RPM recordings) we went out for fox/coyotes in early Feb- snow, cold- I had the .243Win and my pal had a M12- we set up in heavy brush on the edge of a stand of pines, facing both the wind and a slight hill about 300 yards distant, behind that, a hardwood stand- Fortunately, I had set the speaker with a longer cord about 30 feet to my right- I started the rabbit squeal- short, faint, in a heartbeat a big redtailed hawk screamed in from out of nowhere and headed right towards that speaker in a limb- I lifted the gun barrel (not to shoot the hawk) and at that motion he went into a vertical power climb and disappeared- Most impressive thing I have seen in all my years hunting/shooting, even more so then the two buck deer fighting with their antlers tangled- about 15 years ago in MT.
We have lotsa "antis" patrolling our various sites today- many of the Audubon-its hate hunting, add to that the "yo-yo" factors, the graphic shirts and bumber stickers, etc- than some of our brother "hunters" feel they must display- I wish there had just been a foto of the shotgun- not a deceased red-tailed hawk-- and the shotgun is NOT an LC Smith with that style of fore-arm release latch- Crescent, Davis, Thomas Parker, Hopkins & Allen perhaps, but But not an Elsie..
Last edited by Run With The Fox; 12/14/09 04:25 PM.
