Steve Chindgren posing for a shot in our film, at the entrance gate to the House of Grouse, before the mighty Wind River Mountains.
My tribute to a year spent learning from falconer and friend, Steve Chindgren
I’ll try to keep this brief, lest it take you the rest of the decade to read it.
From the moment I learned what falconry was, I’ve wanted to be a falconer; to hunt with a falcon. As a youngster getting into the sport on the East Coast, where minus a few exceptions long-winging is difficult, I would shelve that dream in favor of red-tailed hawks and squirrels. By the time I could take it no longer and made the move out west for falconry, I’d been in the sport long enough to earn my “master’s license.” I was no master then, nor am I a master now, but like most of my falconry friends will contend, once you’ve done falconry a certain type of way with good success for long enough, you start to feel comfortable and confident in what you know. You’ve developed a working method and the proof of concept as game taken in the field bolsters your sense of “knowledge.”
So I showed up in Utah for the wide open spaces, availability of wild/eyass Peregrines and Prairie falcons, and because it’s where Steve Chindgren lived... A man I’d not yet met, but whose reputation had long since informed me of where good falconry was to be had. Eventually I’d meet him, and learn he doesn’t practice falconry in Utah anymore. I met him by means of our second Falconry Told Podcast episode. He embraced the concept of the podcast, shared his story, and we became friends. He never questioned what I knew of falconry, nor challenged my knowledge in any way. But hearing his stories, watching his films, and reading his book had completely swept my personal sense of “understanding” falconry out from under me. He never questioned me because I was too busy listening, watching, and learning from what he was doing. He never challenged me because his career and success had humbled me; I never have and will never attempt to show Steve what I know... Because it would be redundant, everything I know about falcons and long-winging has come from him. Except for how to thread a needle using a needle threader. Somehow Steve had gone his entire falconry career without knowing what a needle threader was, and I was more than happy to demonstrate the ancient technique of threading needles like a sane person one morning when in exasperation he exclaimed “I can’t get this darned thread through the needle anymore like I used to!”
“Zander” on a freshly caught Sage Grouse.
So I threw away everything I thought I knew about falconry and started from scratch. But I’d have to learn fast, because nobody enjoys looking like a dummy. Though there were dozens of instances where he’d watch how I did something as small as lace jesses through a swivel, or tie a falcon to a perch, “rookie” he’d say and laugh! It didn’t bother me, because I’d dropped out of college where I had been pursuing an education in something I didn’t really want to do that was costing tens of thousands of dollars, and here I was getting an education in the very thing I wanted to do most, from a man the equivalent of Harvard, Princeton, and Yale combined, for free. So I did my best not to annoy this seasoned veteran by exposing my ignorance. By paying close attention to his every word, movement, and the subtle ways in which a falconer moves through motions honed by years of repetition that no author could ever capture in a book. I had Steve’s book, “The Art of Hawking Sage Grouse,” I’d read it, but at the conclusion of my first meeting with Steve, I’d learned more about falconry than he’d been able to cram into his entire book. By the time I’d seen him take his first head of game of the season, I’d learned more by watching and listening to him than I’d learned from every falconry book I’ve ever read, combined.
Because of how complicated and variating the art of falconry is, it’s impossible to truly master. Steve’s said that himself many times. When I saw my 8 years of experience become like a grain of sand on a beach as I sat down to record a podcast episode with him, I knew and felt in that moment that falconry could never be mastered. Despite all that, I’ve now had the privilege of meeting and even hawking with several of the finest falconers to ever practice the art, and Steve is one of those.
But more importantly, he’s my friend. He’s a diabolical madman when it comes to falconry. I’ve watched him charge over a mile through the sage on foot to put up a grouse, and I’ve also seen him go into a three day bout of depression because he “couldn’t put up game for his falcon” on a hunt. Ironically, with a flight which I found so incredible I made a short video about it. There’s nothing more bizarre for a green-behind-the-ears falconer to hear than Steve Chindgren over coffee in the morning dejectedly, with choking voice, proclaiming himself a “failure as a falconer.”
The four decades worth of gap between us in age means nothing, either. Nobody who knows Steve could possibly think of him as any less than a 24 year old trapped in an older man’s body. He bicycles to work, rappels, canoes dangerous bear-riddled rivers in Alaska, accessible only by bush plane, arranges difficult and dangerous platforms for photographing raptors, drives his Toyota like a teenager across the desert, challenges anyone to a game of horse, where his left-handed beneath the basket layup is sure to win, or to corn-hole, where I don’t stand a chance, or to horse-shoes, where I most certainly do.
He’s not the type of man I’d like to compete against at the Sky Trials, though it will be a privilege to. For while I plan to be a falconer my whole life, I know his kill-counts will never be matched, by me or likely anybody else… Unless some other 8 year old boy comes along promising his life to his red-tailed hawk “Shoulders”, and while Shoulders would go on without him, that boy would keep his word by ultimately giving his life to falconry. A career of extreme dedication and passion, that’s just getting started. 2019, the year I met Steve Chindgren, I will never forget.
It’s the year he showed me what falconry is.
Thank you Steve,
Israel Matson
P.S., here’s to the film projects we have planned!
