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In our country, using calling devices for hairy raptors hunting, doesn't have so many supporters, fact that made me write this article, trying to emphasize some essential aspects, of which we should take account off when we go raptors hunting with calling devices, hoping that in future due to the beauty and sporty aspects it implies, this side of hunting will expand in Romania also.
Aspects concerning the field for hunting, the atmospheric conditions where we practice hunting, choosing and planning the place where we are going to hunt, the prey-predator relation, as well as the competition between predators, I will draw a general outline, from my own experiences, or practices taught to me by another experienced hunter, from
Being considered a sport in a continuous development from the technical (perfect the weaponry, the ammunition and the optical machines) and action (improving the hunting techniques and adapting them to the new conditions created by the game on the field) point of view, hunting is one of the most pleasant and beautiful means of relaxation, combining active resting with personal satisfactions as a result of success in hunting. In order to get the wanted results in any kind of hunting, we know vey well that, the more we know about the animal we hunt, the more chances of success we have. The game permanently changes its food and rest places, under the pressure of excessive hunting or environmental changes. The hunter doesn't have anything else to do, than to read these changes occurred on the field and to change and adapt his/ her hunting techniques. The study and selection of the best fields for hunting hairy raptors, we'll assure us the wanted results, in an optimal period of time. But in order to have success, we must constantly observe the animals' way of life that provide food for the hairy raptors and the ways they use the environment to get sources of food, water and shelter. That means that we must go on the hunting field during the entire year, to study it and to focus on the changes that occur.
The food and the sources of water as well as, the possible shelters, can change once with the seasons, and the traces of the raptors will reflect this thing. The clumps of forests and bushes, the hassocks and the different species of herbs, combined with hills, valleys, swamps, rivers provide with transit areas from one field to another for hunting – food. Here, in such areas find raptors also because the areas are productive.
To enjoy successful hunting activities we need efficiency that is the result of planning and intense research of the field. The changes that affect hunting nowadays leave its print on the planning of future outgoings on the field, activity similar to planning an adventure or a trip or an outdoor activity. When we plan a hunting activity, we know for sure the day and the moment of day we go on the field, but we cannot be 100% sure about the weather on that respective day. The approaching and the moving off of the atmospheric fronts, the strong winds, the rain, cold or warm weather, can affect any day the success of any hunting activity. Three elements become the most important for the animals when the weather changes: food, water and shelter. Because these three elements are essential for any animal, raptors must be looked for, near the living environments of the animals that represent their food – we have repeated this thing because is essential in understanding this type of hunting.
The atmospheric conditions can be our friends or enemies for the person that doesn't know how to interpret them in his/ her advantage. During windy conditions, rapacious mammals are hesitant in its actions because their acuity of senses is somehow reduced. Not only it is hard for them to react when in danger, but also the sense of smell is affected by the speed of wind. The animals find it very easy to move or to get somewhere with the wind blowing in their face and that's why the hunter must choose the place very well, from where he „calls” and chases the animal, so that the animal he wants to hunt, would get in a favorable shooting or observation position for him.
At the same time, the wind affects the distances from which the raptors can hear the sound made by our calling device.
When we use calling devices during windy days, we must choose the positions near any shelters or covers from the field because sometimes it may happen that at the sound of our calling devices, foxes, stray dogs or cats etc. come out from their hiding places, out of curiosity, not necessarily with the intention of approaching, and can take us by surprise. If we are under cover, by moving, the animal will expose itself and we can surprise it with a good shot and well placed position.
Hunting during storm (strong wind, cloud-burst or snowstorm) is not recommended, on contraire, the periods of time before and after the storm can be surprisingly good for hunting.
Only by going on the field on all types of weather, helps us understand better how to react in different atmospheric conditions and how to choose the best periods of time for going hunting.
In any chase, or hunting with calling devices, the best position is to be with the wind blowing in our face and to have a general overlook as possible over the area we hunt, but this doesn't happen all the time. If we think that raptors chased by us, may be behind us or on our sides and try to get near us under the wind, we should use some natural barriers such as: a river, a stream, a steep shore, a swamp, a lake, an open area or others in choosing the observatory place (for example, if the wind blows from the right to the left against the way we are sitting, is recommended to have in our left side a more open area, where to observe easily if an animal approaches us).
In choosing the place from where we hunt, we must take into account several factors, without which we would not have good positions on the field and we could not enjoy the so much wanted successes.
Visibility. When we choose a place from where to hunt, we must orient toward that point from the field that offers us the best visual advantage – maximum visibility. This means that a dominant position as covered as possible (or that is hidden) and advantageous from the point of the wind and sun. The predator we look for will do the same and try to discover the eventual enemy from such a place.
The distance between the hunting stations (places where we use the calling devices). The distance we walk between hunting stations is determined by the species of animals we want to hunt, by weather, field and many other factors that we can establish ourselves, depending on the previous hunting activities.
- in open field, where the sound can reach longer distances, we can have even 1 km or more between the established places for using the calling device, and this has to be certain that we make the sound for a new pair of ears – another animal;
- in a downy field or covered by vegetation, where the field and its configuration reduce the distances of sound propagation, is recommended to move in a new hunting station after 300-400 m;
- the wind will reduce also the intensity of the sound we imitate, not spreading too far the sound, fact that makes us establish the short distances between hunting stations even in on open field.
Wind and sun. Ideal would be that in the hunting station we hide to have the wind in the face and the sun in the back, but this is not possible all the time. When is not exactly as we wanted to be, we make compromises and sacrifice the position toward the sun in order to have in our advantage a good wind direction.
Providing the minimum comfort. Knowing the fact that in a hunting station we usually should stand completely still for minimum 15 min, we will strive to choose those positions that offer us as much comfort as possible: the possibility to sit, to straighten our legs, to lean on something with our backs; a comfortable place should be the one where the legs stay in a usual position, so that the blood circulates free and the legs don’t go numb.
Once we found the best position for us in the hunting stand, we are half way to our success, and the next steps extremely important because the main objective of the hunting with calling device is to make the animal get close enough to us, so that we fire a precise and lethal blow.
There are hunting terrains in our country and outside, where two or more raptors live in the same habitat, competing for the same type of food and that’s why using a certain type of sound for the calling device (ex. the sound made by the rabbit) we can have the surprise of another animal approaching than the one we are waiting.
Another aspect concerning the raptors hunting is that the interspecies fight for surviving leads to despair, spreading and occupying other habitats also by the young predators.
Rather fighting against the stress of lacking food sources and with the often attacks of the adult or dominant members, young predators venture in search of some free areas, so they are predispose to appear first at the sound of the calling device.
Taking into account this aspect, we must also know the differences between the ways these animals hunt, in order to know what species we could meet, and to explore this knowledge to our extent, maintaining on the filed the equilibrium of the multispecies.
The cats can answer to the calling device (a stimulus), approaching us in half an hour or more, while a fox can show itself the first minutes after making the sound. The cats make use a lot of their sense of sight in order to detect the prey, while the canidae family especially uses the sense of smell.
Usually the canidae show up quicker than the cats to the sound of the calling device, but there are exceptions, and in such cases we must take into account certain factors when we establish to stay in a place and use the calling device: the speed of the wind, the wind direction, the network in the area, the animal we chase and hunt. The raptors answer to the shriek of pain of their prey because this is a normal, fact requested by the food competition itself. The food secured by the raptors through their abilities, represents the thin line between prosperity – life and lack- death. The raptors which don’t succeed in providing food will die and in their turn become food for other predators. This thing can be translated easier as the prey – predator relation, an interaction between two or more species, an interaction between hunt and hunter. Prosperity and birthrate within predators depend a lot on the food abundance, and the population of predators’ food is controlled by them. In the prey – predator equation where the result should be the equilibrium, the hunter must be introduced in order to radically change the result of the equation.
Generally speaking, now we don’t hunt raptors for food or for maintaining our financial state (probably there are exceptions). As a conclusion to the idea above mentioned, we can say that the wish to protect the regulating hunting, added to the value of the raptors’ furs and together with the passion for hunting, determine the violence with which we hunt these raptors, and thus we influence their population.
If the numbers of the raptors with fur rises, these could negatively influence the food-animal species. The presence of some diseases would be more obvious in those hunting domains, where the number of raptors is very high, death caused by diseases often being the effect of the overpopulation.
We, the hunters, can interfere in maintaining the equilibrium of the relation between prey-predator, by mobilizing ourselves in controlling more intensively the population of predators than we’ve done it before. In this way we succeed in producing the domino effect: reducing the number of raptors will help the regulating hunting to recover and will prolong our spending time on the hunting domain during the cold season.
The short explanation of the relationship between the shriek of death of the animals and what it represents for the raptors is found in tight connection with the prey-predator relation and the subject of the article.
For every young raptor that captures the first prey with hot blood and hears its shriek of death, in the future will associate the sound with warm food from the past.
Concerning the shriek of animals when they are caught, we can try to explain the behavior of the prey associated with the immanence of being eaten by the predator. Beside the terror and the pain produced by the predator to its victim, communicated through the shriek of death, there is the possibility of other interpretations of the sound.
From the second point of view, there might be some altruistic or territorial reasons according to which the prey shrieks to death, or the behavior can be interpreted as a last strategy to surprise the raptor – for self-defense and escape. Altruistic and territorial reasons could be the following: to let know the other members of the species about the existence of a predator in the area; to warn other animals of cohabitation about the existence of a danger; to lure other predators in the area (so it will create a fight for food among predators) - existing the possibility to escape.
The moment is captured by a predator, the prey articulates through the shriek the terror as an answer to the inevitable fact that is about to be killed and eaten.
In case of raptors with feathers, the prey is tracked from the air. The victim caught by such raptors dies most of the times choking, being caught with the claws and squeezed until it pierces the chest cavity that stops the breathing or it causes a powerful bleeding.
All these things request time and last at most 1 minute. During all this time, the victim, as long as the air from the lungs allows, shrieks pitiful. Other raptors that hear the shriek of death, don’t resist the temptation (the shriek is similar to a dinner invitation) of seeing what is going on, hoping for food. A starved fox, wild cat, lynx will not have second thoughts and won’t hesitate to attack an eagle that has caught a rabbit, and if the eagle objects too much, it might end up as the rabbit. If the raptor is starved, it can react immediately and even aggressively at the sound of a shriek of death, but not knowing what is behind the shriek and fearing of the existence of a bigger predator, these raptors most of the time act under caution. The lack of attention and caution may cost a fox, a marten, a cat etc. its own life in confronting a bigger predator. When is caught the prey shrieks for all the reasons mentioned above and the result is well know- other raptors answer; in this respect, the biology of these conditioned answers is very important for us hunters. For example, the rabbit shrieks when is caught by a raptor, moment when another raptor reacts to the sound of the shriek, hoping to get a meal, and us hunters are conditioned to use and to transform this relation to our advantage. How? We hide in a bush and pretend to be a prey, hoping that the calling device and our mastership will attract a predator (or a specific predator) in a good position for shooting it.
At the end of this article I will present some “rules” that have been suggested to me by the American hunter and that I was able to use for the guarantee of a successful hunting with calling devices:
- probably the young predators use to bark/ howl/ meow more due to social reasons, whilst the adult predators manifest in other ways due to territorial reasons;
- there might be the chance that no predator will appear at the calling for the simple reason that is full and is not interested in a new prey; or maybe has found the traces of a prey that is in a different direction from where we are, and that will only mean to try to bring it in the opposite direction;
- trying to attract the animal to a potential danger area for him will not help us to obtain positive results: a road, a sheep-fold, a habitation place etc may represents dangers for the animal; on the other hand, luring the animal in the opposite area might represent the key to success;
- we do not have to leave the guard down if in certain area the raptors don’t appears at the sound of persistent calling devices from different places, we don’t talk about the blowing technique (of the calling device) – whether is good or less good, but about the fact if the field looks good from the point of view of the hiding places, doesn’t necessary mean that the wanted raptor must be there; the opposite of this statement is that if the raptor (fox, jackal, lynx) doesn’t answer to the calling device, doesn’t mean that is not there;
- the raptors must be hunted where they are, and our ability to choose those “productive” hunting stations represents the crucial way to success and this separates the hunters with good calling devices, from those without results;
- some animals are more shy than others and knowing this fact is recommended to start “the calling” on a low intensity increasing it step by step;
- if we perform the hunting activity in thick areas, we must allow more time for the predator to reach us, and without doubt, he will use the covered places to get closer to us;
- on a strong wind we can shorten the staying period in the hunting station, as well as the distance between them; in such conditions the intensity of the “calling” must be increased;
- is recommended that from the position taken in the hunting station to have a good visibility on a range of 50-100 m around us;
- some hunters wait in a place for 15-20 minutes after they made the “calling”, when hunting foxes, stray dogs, jackals, and very seldom, 30-40 min when they hunt lynx; if there are traces that in the area might be a lynx and might appear at the calling, is better to prolong our staying; we don’t stay less than 30 minutes, but if we have the evident trace of the present wanted cat, then we can prolong the staying in the hunting station up to 1 hour;
- if the animal answers the calling (ex: a howl), but doesn’t come to us, it might be too far; when this happen, we must move and approach him, using the hiding place from the area; after we got a bit closer to the animal, we find a shelter somewhere on the field, hide and do the “calling” one more time; maybe the animal will get closer to us in secret and silence, so we must be prepared;
