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H for Hawk, mentioned here, made me fall in love with the idea and at the same time, know that I should never have a falcon. Intense commitment.
"...Unlike at other, similar hunts, these full days of hawking did not culminate in family-style meals; there were no hunters stirring pots of gamey stew or smothering their chicken-fried squirrels in cream gravy..."
I'm trying to understand if this really means the hunters do eat squirrels on other occasions? How is it chicken-fried?
Btw, the other day I was a surprised observer of a large grey bird trying to snatch a live squirrel righ off a relatively busy kids playground. I thought it was an owl, now think it could've been some transient hawk. The attack was unsuccessful, the brave rodent waved just in time to evade, then busily continued its foraging... Wonder how a big-city squirrel can acquire a pray-bird evasion skills or this knowledge is somehow hereditary?
I've had squirrel, though not chicken-fried. It was gamey but not bad, more like rabbit than venison. ("Chicken-fried" just means breaded and fried cutlets of something that isn't chicken. Often served back home with white sausage gravy, and just the thing for supper on a chilly night.)
Hawks will take more than squirrels. My mom carries a pistol to let her dog out - he's a Shih Tzu, well within the size range of prey a redtail will stoop on, and it has been a problem before - and her chickens occasionally benefit from a little anti-air fire as well.
Urban environments can be well suited to raptors, especially those with a habit of preying on birds. Peregrine falcons nest in a fair number of our structures, one of which is visible from my front porch, and Cooper's and sharp-shinned hawks are frequent visitors; while as accipiters these latter favor taking passerines on the wing, they won't shy from taking mammal prey. Squirrels are fast and agile, and big raptors can have a hard time giving chase after a failed stoop, so it isn't as one-sided a contest as it might seem.
> if this really means the hunters do eat squirrels on other occasions
I don't know if these same people do, but yes, people eat squirrel. I've had it once when a relative served it to us.
They lived in a rural area, and they would often hunt for food. I think one Thanksgiving we had wild turkey. Anyway, I'm not aware of a store-bought squirrel option.
> How is it chicken-fried?
It means you prepare it just like you would prepare fried chicken.
In Texas, this means you: (1) dip the pieces in a milk/egg mixture (can be buttermilk), (2) coat them in seasoned flour, then (3) fry them in a skillet on the stove, turning a few times since you're not deep frying.
That would have been how it was prepared when I had it.
zoomablemind says >"I'm trying to understand if this really means the hunters do eat squirrels on other occasions? How is it chicken-fried?"<
Most squirrel hunters eat squirrel. Most prepare it like fried chicken. But since most squirrels are smaller than an adult chicken you need more squirrels to make a meal.
Squirrel is tastier than chicken. Its more challenging to hunt squirrel than to either harvest or shop for a chicken.
Perhaps Popeye's will someday feature "chicken-fried squirrel", making me both fatter and lazier.
If squirrel meat is anything like rabbit's, it is low fat. So the danger may be mostly from the Popeye's added oils.
Otherwise I'd be concerned more about "rabbit meat starvation" aka protein poisoning [1].
Hawks are not that uncommon in urban land, even Manhattan has a handful hawks.
Many tactics for avoiding predators are indeed taught from parent to child. I know it's true for bunnies, so I'd guess squirrels are no different.
However, even without any prior training, imagine if you yourself saw a giant bird of prey (bigger than you) coming at you from above, you'd probably do your best to get the heck out of the way, wouldn't you?
What was really amazing is that the squirrel did not run away and up a tree like it does when encountering a dog. Just waved a few inches side to side and just kept very much on the same spot were it was foraging the instant the bird attacked, like another day in the office. Such a badass squirrel indeed!
that doesn’t always work. i once hit a squirrel with a football that i was sure it was going to dodge. but after scampering back and forth, it dodged right into the path of the football at the last moment. it didn’t appear to be hurt, and scurried away afterwards, but i still felt really bad about it.
> but after scampering back and forth, it dodged right into the path of the football at the last moment.
Note that (like many evolved things) squirrel behaviour is designed around a actively adversarial environment. (It may or may not have had a explicit mental model of the process, but from a behavioural perspective) it was likely expecting the football^Wnovel bird of prey to course-correct towards it, in which case lunging in the opposite direction that the attacker just expended effort accellerating toward gives it the best chances of getting away. (Or something along those lines, I don't know enough details to be particularly sure.)
yah, that's kind of what i assumed as well. the squirrel was stunned for a good few seconds, not realizing what had gone wrong with its evolutionarily-inherited strategy, which was a cartoony kind of funny after-the-fact.
I feel like it would be weird to hunt squirrels and not eat them. The thinkin’ man’s chicken.
When I was about 10 a friend and I killed a squirrel with an air gun. As punishment his mom made him skin it and my mom cooked it and made us eat it. Iirc it tasted sort of like chicken.
Punishment? When I was about ten I killed my first squirrel, and we cooked it up into a fantastic stew.
Many people think squirrel is the best meat in the woods. Nutty.
i know this is old but just wanted to point out we were explicitly told numerous times do.not.shoot.the.squirrels haha
‘A kestrel for a knave’ is another great novel on this theme.
It was made into a film ‘Kes’ I’ve not seen it though.
Too early in the morning.
I read "squirrel hawkers" and thought of "hawker stalls" in Singapore, which have nothing to do with hawks. "A vendor of squirrels?" OK.
To be fair, I also saw that headline and thought “guys going around selling squirrels they had caught/shot,” and half my family is from East Texas!
Patent Hell!
Marshall, Tyler, all those places I never had to go for a trial, although other tech assistants did.
A pair of red shouldered hawks have nested near me this summer and it has been really fun to see them flying around or perched up in trees or once the fence outside my bedroom. They are loud though.
i was mesmerized just yesterday by a hawk circling lazily over my LA neighborhood and crying out in regular intervals (the same piercing call from a western or historical wuxia film). i couldn’t tell if it was distressed, hunting, or just being a hawk.
Backyard apricot tree owner here. I thoroughly approve of this.
and i'm not. I like how squirrels come harvest the persimmons, carry them around, find convenient place and munch on it.
TIL that killing animals for no reason at all is OK, as long as you do it with a trained exotic bird and not with a gun.
It's perfectly OK with both a bird and a gun. As well as bow and arrow.
Falconry is the oldest sport in history, dating back at least 6000 years. Thousands of years ago, men hunted with raptors -- falcons, hawks, owls, and sometimes even eagles. They would catch young falcons in the wild, spend years training them, live with their birds, then release them, using signals from hundreds of feet away to coordinate the hunt, and then split the hunt with the bird.
Today, they usually give all of it to the bird, nevertheless it's still a beautiful and noble sport in which man and bird work together to catch prey.
Fun Fact: Falcons are used in public parks and golf courses to chase away nuisance birds. It's also used by farmers -- more effective than scarecrows. There is a long apprenticeship required and a centuries old system of knowledge and training.
The most famous book is called "The Modern Apprentice". It's a worth a read even if you don't practice falconry. http://www.themodernapprentice.com/glossary.htm
Here is the CA club: https://www.calhawkingclub.org/falconry-apprenticeship/appre...
Each state has its own regulations for falconry as it does for all other forms of hunting.
These chickenhawks are about the least exotic birds imaginable in this part of the world FWIW.
Hobbies like this typically result from spending absurd amounts of time outdoors in the first place, that some of those most attuned to their local environments have turned themselves symbiont with the neighborhood apex predators is quite beautiful, and closer to where we should be headed imo.
> Every squirrel she kills is gradually fed back to her.