JUST WINGING IT : FALCONERS AND THEIR HAWKS FORM PLAYFUL HUNTING PARTNERSHIP.

Byline: John Husar Chicago Tribune 

You quickly learn it's not as easy as it seems for even a hawk to drop from the sky to nail a moving mammal.

You miss far more than you strike.

But it's a fine way to make a living for a 2-pound bird, as long as you don't have to go out and kill something for food every day. As long as you have a human partner who generously keeps you in frozen quail and rabbit.

Otherwise, this would be more of a job than a sport, much more serious work than play.

And, from what can be told from falconing for rabbits with Byron Marshall of West Chicago, Ill., those adroitly trained birds tend to play more than one would think.

``I try to wear the same clothes on every outing, certainly the same hat - so the bird knows exactly where I am,'' Marshall said in the midst of a brushy field one cool and windy afternoon. ``And every now and then that hawk will swoop down, grab my hat and carry it into a tree.''

The bird will sit there, glaring triumphantly, before dropping the hat to the ground.

Marshall once had a hawk that loved a sip of beer. And his other current bird, a chocolate-brown female Harris hawk named Useless, turned out to be a glutton for spicy, barbecued chicken wings.

``She was in the house during a cold spell and she kept eyeing the chicken wings we were eating,'' Marshall said. ``We finally gave her one. She got this transfigured look on her face, like, `God, I've never tasted anything so good.' ''

We were in a 50-acre briar field off Illinois Highway 59 with a young male red-tailed hawk named Orion for the mythological hunter. Orion had been hunting unsuccessfully for more than an hour and clearly desired a snack. He let Marshall know this by coolly flitting from tree to tree in the opposite direction in which we were heading.

``He wants free food,'' Marshall grumbled. ``He thinks if he heads away, we'll offer him a snack to get him back.''

Sometimes the bird is right. Marshall donned a thick, leather claw-like mitten, blew his whistle twice, held up a tempting treat of sliced raw beef heart laced with vitamins and turned the hawk's head with a series of hawk-like ``kirs.''

Watching Marshall like, well, a hawk, Orion lifted from his perch and glided smoothly across the field shoulder-high past several men, past the dog, dropping gently onto the glove. He tugged free the slice of meat, gobbled it down, then awaited his next assignment.

Sometimes the bird spots prey from the glove and darts forth, but most of his dives start high in a branch, where he can survey the broader field.

Marshall has had this hawk for 17 months, since legally trapping it along a country road. Like all licensed falconers, he has had to pass an apprenticeship and stringent federal tests to qualify as a raptor handler. With nearly 30 years of bird-training, it took him only 13 days to teach Orion to fly free and return on command.

Mostly hunting only on Sundays, Orion has caught 12 rabbits this winter - ``but it's not the kill that matters to me,'' Marshall said. ``What I revere about this sport is the chance it gives you to see and be part of things in nature that you otherwise never would see.''

Just as all wing-shooters know the thrill of working in tandem with an intelligent dog, one who gauges the hunter's intentions and temperament, the falconer develops an intimate relationship with a bird. Such dogs and birds are equal partners in a hunt, elite companions who know the idiosyncrasies of partners as well as prey.

Having this kind of relationship with an essentially wild bird is beyond the ken of most folk. The art of falconing defies conventional avian assumptions. Striding through a field, rattling bushes with staves to scare up rabbits, knowing a bird watches your every move, flits along to keep pace, awaits a signal, is a rare and wondrous experience.

Probably no more than 100 falconers exist in all of Illinois. The commitment oSf time and energy is forbidding.

``It's not a part-time occupation,'' Marshall mused. ``It's more like a full-time job. It's like having another child in the family.''

To maintain their bonding, Marshall takes his hawks for walks in the neighborhood, the birds keeping pace, tree to tree, like puppies in the sky. During the years, only two of his birds have flown away. The rest returned readily to the glove.

The trick seems to be to keep those birds active and interested.

``They like to hunt,'' Marshall said. ``That's all they want to do.''

Orion proved this after Marshall released him to fly to a tall red oak in our first field. Within 10 seconds, the bird dived through thick, thorny underbrush, just missing a rabbit. It hit the ground with a loud thump, sat for a moment to catch its breath, then gamely lifted into another tree.

`When they dive, it's all or nothing,'' Marshall observed. ``They'll crash and burn. You have to keep checking them for injuries. This guy once came back with a bloody beak from running into something.''

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Photo

Photo: (color) Though hunters by nature, birds of prey like this red-tailed hawk will take handouts.

Chris Walker/Chicago Tribune