It’s the House of Grouse.
The place of falconry legend. Perhaps the singular most known falconry location, land-mark, building, in North America. It’s an old log cabin with a ranch style archway over the driveway adorned with a well-used raptor’s nest crown. Evening finds dust still settling on the road with you pulling into the circle of the compound… dilapidated sheds, a weathered weathering yard, and a basketball hoop silhouetted against a sky that holds promise of a magnificent sunset. Sagebrush hems the wooden fence standing between the efforts of man and the seemingly infinite wild desert. It’s one of the largest, and last vestiges of untouched land in the Lower 48. You are a small human being.
Then there’s commotion. You’re moving falcons, yelling the dogs to hold them at bay from pursuing the exploration of their dreams in the vast desert, ushering them into the kennels. The list of small chores to accomplish seasonal upkeep grows as Steve sees this and that needing mending or trimming, accompanied with a sigh. The wind and weather takes its toll on manmade structures out here. Duffle-bag in hand, you’re inside. The warmth of incandescent bulbs against log walls invites you, and in the living room you turn, a compulsory, always-in-vain attempt to absorb hundreds of falconry artifacts and artworks at once. Steve mentions something about how dust collects and opens windows to welcome the refreshing late August evening air. But you hardly hear him because you’re in awe, a white gyrfalcon on orange mossed rock, the majesty of an Andrew Ellis painting has swept your imagination from you. Then you’re being whisked out to the front porch, famous for its place in Steve’s falconry films. The promise of the sunset is being kept as the sky is graced with the first tinges of a flaming array of pinks, accented by the purple hues of the glorious Wind River Range soaking in the last light of day. You’re sitting in a rocking chair, next to a man who has watched this sunset a thousand times. You wish you can too. Steve is content, it’s his world at his time of year. He has a glass of Scotch and he muses—plans and expectations for tomorrow materializing. These will be the plans for every morning you’re here, if you can keep up. “You can sleep in the Gyrfalcon room anytime you’re here” he says, “but if Gary Boberg is here you get the basement, because Gary gets the Gyrfalcon room anytime he’s here.”
5:30 AM
I wake up excited. I can imagine a guest groaning at their alarm, but I’m no mere guest, I’m a falconer. It’s different, trust me. I brought a long-wing, a white Gyrkin. Falconers hardly feel like “just another guest” here, and this place gets a lot of guests, trust me on that too. Falconers feel like the House of Grouse is where they belong, though it is very much the residency of Steve Chindgren. I’m excited for so many reasons. This is falconry heaven. This is a morning spent flying falcons with one of the greatest to ever do it. This is a true signal of the imminent arrival of the upcoming falconry season. This is falconry at the House of Grouse. Steve’s already been up, he’s loaded Scotch the pointer into the Toyota Tundra; there’s two partitions in the truck-bed kennel, one is empty. A brief moment is shared in sombre remembrance of TJ, now at permanent rest beneath a grouse lek. He lived the life a pointer could only ever dream of. In the garage we weigh birds before loading them into the truck. Then we mull over final details while nursing a cup of coffee and a chocolate chip muffin. I always bring chocolate chip muffins.
Steve has his three hybrid tiercels on the wing by mid-August every season. Two of his birds are still molting, but they’ll be flown fat until they’ve completed their molt. One dropped a feather last night. “In the wild they aren’t given the choice, they molt on the wing” he states, “I like to see them flying 1,000 feet by September.” Leaving the House of Grouse premises with falcons in the truck brings a twang of excitement, your heart maybe even flutters a bit. This is how it goes down, some of the greatest falconry flights on record started just like this, the first slivers of dawn illuminating the golden desert dust clouding the dirt road in your wake. Meet game-face Steve Chindgren.
Game-face Steve Chindgren is a different animal. This is only a pre-season drill, I think to myself. But for Steve, this is the NFL. This may as well be our last practice before the playoffs. This may as well be the playoffs. Meet Super Bowl Steve Chindgren. This is serious business. He is driving and maintaining your 6:15 AM type of conversation, but his face is set like flint. This is Steve’s life, out here surrounded by endless sage brush, this is Steve’s world, I’m just in it. I’m happy to be in it, because I’ve been around just long enough to have a fair understanding of this man’s place already etched into the annals of time. I’ve read just enough falconry history to know falconry has never been pursued at this level. An entire lifetime fully devoted. If this were the NBA, this is Michael Jordan. I feel like a kid on the middle-school JV bench next to him. We continue to bump along as he mentions various exploits alongside his friends “just out that way, just over that rise”, and names familiar falconry names. Those are his peers. The other guys that practice falconry in his league. “Maybe you’ll meet them this September at the House of Grouse” he proposes. I hope so. Then we’re there.
Where? Absolutely nowhere.
But that’s exactly where Steve was going. There’s nothing but sage. No telephone poles, fences, anything. Just endless sage and its’ wild, crisp smell which permanently links your brain to this place. The truck is in park and Steve is stepping out, moving to the drones piled in the back seat. “We’re far enough here that the falcons can’t see the pigeons at the House of Grouse… I wouldn’t hunt here but it’s a good place to fly them to the drone” he says, tying a pigeon wing to a 30 foot line attached to the parachute which he stuffs into the tube hanging beneath the drone. I’m instructed on how to “take-off” the quadcopter, a type I’ve never seen before, but the controls are usually similar. I initiate the launch sequence and begin commanding it into the sky as Steve places the first bird, Zander, on a block perch a few yards from the truck. Zander is sporting two transmitters, Marshall Radio GPS and UHF. Zander will go 800 feet today, and he rapidly knocks off the first 100’ on a loping outbound rise, the empty desert becoming alive to the thunder of his hybrid vigor! It’s like an empty Snow Globe with one snowflake in it, there’s nothing to do but watch this seasoned veteran express mastery over the daybreak sky!
“300 feet” states the Marshall Radio AeroVision app. It’s been only a couple minutes, this bird is a machine. “Just wait till mid-season!” Steve exclaims, at once asserting this machine is rusty, while also beaming pride in Zander’s prowess, which brightens Steve’s complexion more than the soft warmth of the 6:45am sun. A puff of orange signals Zander’s success at achieving his desired height, as the bird and parachute drift 800 feet back to the earth! Both Steve and I are already moving through the sage towards where he’ll touch down, with the drone landing by itself under my wife Montana’s watchful eye at the truck behind us. Steve has a way with his long-wings born from decades of experience, honed by serious consideration and common sense. There is a method to the ease at which he makes in to Zander and ends up with him gracefully on the glove, with the veteran tiercel eating from a pigeon wing while keeping a cautious eye on the sky and surrounding desert.
Marshall Radio GPS & UHF transmitters alongside our old film camera.
In this arena, the only way to compete with a Golden Eagle is to avoid them as best you can. Steve has stories of tragic losses to them, yet he does not hate them… in fact he has a couple of them on his license for working with at the Hogle Zoo where he runs the World of Flight Bird Show. He respects them, and follows a set of rules by which there is the best chance of playing and winning this game of life and death that falconry inherently is. Flights with DC and Badger go equally well, though to pitches slightly lower. Today, and hopefully every day of this season, the falcons will come home safe. We run Scotch for several miles, he’s getting back into shape himself, and at just 3 years old I witness a pointer with a lot of potential, some realized, some that will soon be realized, as he works the Sage Grouse. Taking to his new role of Sage Grouse Front Command Chief Operating Officer with gusto!
Brunch is enjoyed again on the front porch. The falcons, satisfied with their morning’s work, are preening, bathing, and rousing on their Marshall Radio perches staked out across the lawn before us. There will be chores today, general upkeep… there will also be basketball, a game of “Horse” or two depending on how competitive things get, probably highly competitive. Joe Harmer stops by to see if I can fix his drone, it has a bad motor. I swap one from another broken drone over to it and a simple soldering has it back in the air! It’s warm. Dozens of Hummingbirds move fairylike around the feeders along the porch, taking breaks to land and watch us from the safety of the Russian Olive tree. It’s idyllic.
It’s pre-season falcon conditioning at the House of Grouse.
By Israel Matson
Enjoy the photos and links to past videos and our podcast featuring Steve below!
