Gary Boberg of California casting off “Caymus” his tiercel gyr-peregrine hybrid in Wyoming.
It’s not often that the activities of a hunt take my attention away from photographing it. But as I was backing up my photos and videos from the past week spent in Wyoming—dumping footage and photos from my memory cards over to my storage drives—I came across this photo of Gary Boberg casting off his hybrid. But then there were no other photos after it connecting it to any story or timeline of events. At this point I’ve photographed and filmed falconry hunts so many times that I’m used to having, you know, a sequence of shots of maybe the truck, the falconer holding the bird, casting it off, the flight, the kill, putting the bird away, etc. Unfortunately, I thought to myself, I don’t have all that to send to Gary from this hunt. But what I did have was my memory of what happened after he released his tiercel “Caymus”. Memory so vivid, I figured I’d share the photo on Instagram with a nice little caption about one of the most incredible flights I’ve ever witnessed. But as I started writing down my recollection of the event, I exceeded the caption size limit. I couldn’t bring myself to go back and leave out any details, so I wrote this blog post instead.
What happened in the moments after that photo was taken would develop into one of the most spectacular yet bizarre flights I’ve yet to witness! It started over a point by Steve Chindgren’s pointer, “Scotch.” As with most of these points out in Wyoming’s high desert, unless you saw grouse flush and put in, you really have no idea if what your dog has located are hens or cock Sage Grouse. In the early season, you hope it’s hens. The cock-birds are massive, and while any Sage Grouse is a challenge for even the best of falcons, the added testosterone of a male Sage Grouse can be the extra unwanted turn-off you don’t need for your tiercel, whose confidence you’re hoping to bolster with a tough yet doable prey. At this point in the season I’ve watched nearly a dozen flights by Caymus, and I’ve become familiar with his routine. He leaves the glove and begins mounting up, flying a thousand feet or more away from us as he gains altitude, while we slowly move towards the pointer.
Scotch pointing the Sage Grouse
This is where it gets tricky, because if Gary flushes the grouse too soon, Caymus won’t yet be in a position from which stooping and catching the grouse is feasible thanks to his habit of traveling so far laterally while getting up to pitch. So as Gary is moving through the sage brush towards Scotch, his eyes and attention are moving from Marshall Radio Telemetry’s GPS AeroVision App, to Scotch, to Caymus, back to Scotch, back to the app; it’s nerve wracking with a high margin of error. I’d already seen what happens when the grouse flushes and Caymus is out of position. Like most falcons, he’s savvy. He knows it would be a wasted effort to pursue something too far away, and if he believes it is, he’ll reject the slip... Hunt over, day over. At this point Gary and Steve are now tersely communicating back and forth in low tones, “not yet not yet not yet!” '“700 feet, 750 feet… 900 feet!” Then, our group’s encroachment becomes too much for the grouse to bear, and out of the sage rises a huge cock-bird, the mighty roar of his powerful wings shattering the suspense!
Caymus was still out of position. At a good pitch, but not yet overhead.
It was a big mature cock-bird, already hundreds of feet away and picking up speed, heading for a ravine over a distant hill. Game over.
Even on a good day, with the perfect setup, Caymus probably wouldn’t go for that.
But then, the firebrand hybrid rows a few more times to pick up speed, and to our disbelief, folds his wings tightly to his body, searing down and across the sky in a long arc over the desert! Will the 500 foot head start by the grouse prove unconquerable!?
Now over a thousand feet away, at the crest of a hill, we watch as Caymus throws the entirety of his existence into this stoop, defying the odds, defying our expectations! 117 miles per hour! There was an incredible “crack!”, accompanied by an explosion of feathers, and two clouds of dust arose from the top of the hill! Two clouds of dust?!
The entire group stood there slack-jawed, utterly spellbound. Caymus did not remount as falcons often do, to locate and bind to their stricken prey. That can either mean he got it, or something’s awry. Nerves on edge, Gary and his wife Becky dash back to their truck. Besides the obvious danger of eagles making in on the kill, we had no idea what might be going on over that hill! Had Caymus hit the ground? Was he alive? Did he catch the grouse? What even happened?! From where we flushed the grouse, the rest of us watched as Gary made short work of finding a trail to get out to where his bird had gone down, his Ford Raptor getting the Baja treatment it was designed to take as he sped towards the strike zone. Then he was out of the truck and running, pulling a fresh grouse carcass from his hawking bag and throwing it towards his tiercel who had briefly mounted into the sky a hundred feet or so from where he’d originally gone down. He dropped in on the carcass Gary had thrown.
“What in the world?!” I thought to myself, glad the tiercel was alive and unharmed, but disappointed that there wasn’t a grouse to show for it all. I knew how much these opportunities meant to Gary, how much these precious few weeks in Wyoming mean to him each year. When we showed up several minutes later, Gary and Becky were wandering around the strike zone, Caymus on the glove. “Are you looking for arrowheads? We’ve still got birds to fly, let’s go! That big cock-bird got away!” Steve urges. Becky however, is not so sure; “I swear I saw wings flapping over here, there’s feathers everywhere, the grouse has to be here somewhere!” But Gary has seen this story play out many times over his years of hawking Sage Grouse, and still stunned that Caymus had pursued a cock-bird to begin with, he concedes. At least it was a good flight and Caymus got to feel accomplished with the carcass he’d thrown for him. Dejected, we left the area to fly the remaining birds to the drone, as the day was too far spent and the eagles would be taking to the thermals soon. But Gary flies his other falcon first, after which being done for the day, Becky convinces him to go back for one last look.
Not long after, birds flown, fed-up, and hooded on their perches in the truck, Steve and I head back up the trail to check on their progress before returning to the House of Grouse; feeling kind of bad for Gary, because we had zero expectation of them finding anything. We pulled up next to their truck and could see that they were both kneeling down out near the strike zone with “Hope” their English Setter excitedly wagging her tail. Gary stands and holds the cock Sage Grouse up into the sky like an athlete wielding a trophy for us to see. CAYMUS HAD DONE IT AFTER ALL!
What Becky had seen as a flash of wings in the brush must have been the grouse’s last throes as life left it. It’s legs were broken, as well as a wing—Caymus had quite literally smashed the grouse into pieces. So hard in fact, that Caymus couldn’t pull up after making contact, and hit the ground himself alongside the grouse. Two clouds of dust.
Understandably, this must have disoriented Caymus, luckily he wasn’t injured or killed by the impact! Caymus’ brief moment of confusion had allowed the grouse to move away from the strike zone on foot, Sage Grouse are incredibly resilient. However this time its injuries proved insurmountable, and out of the corner of her eye, Becky had caught a brief glimpse of its final movements. This explains why Caymus had moved up the hill, for a better vantage, to get his bearings and try relocate his kill, which threw off Gary and Becky from finding the slain grouse the first time. Coming back to search for it the second time, Hope the English Setter used her nose to find it. Becky had a well-earned “I told you so!” which she delivered to Steve, and the pride and joy exuding from Gary was tangible; the guy was in a daze, high fives all around! He’d be returning to California in a couple days, and this would be the highlight of his trip! Caymus proved his mettle, and I’ll never forget the legend he etched into the desert dust and my mind that day.
Nearly 3 times his own size, Caymus threw himself at that Sage Grouse with reckless abandon and proved that it’s not the size of the bird in the fight, but the size of the fight in the bird!
iPhone photo by Gary
