My comment to an earlier post that “As for me, I herd with a firearm”generated the question of what exactly I carry. The two pistols and two shotguns in these photos are my regular companions, so please ignore how dirty and scratched they may look – these aren’t collector’s items, but are tools like shovels …
Month: January 2011
The Kazakh Bird Dog
When I got Ataika from Kazakhstan years ago her people insisted that a good tazi would also work as a bird dog to the gun, and wouldn’t need much training. Atai has always worked as a hare courser and a falcon’s partner (see last weekend’s post) and during the one month she was taken out …
Kipling Goshawk
As mentioned below, Rudyard Kipling’s father John Lockwood Kipling, artist and museum curator, wrote a book on Indian animals (Man and Beast in India, 1892) which includes a bit on falconry. Here is HIS gos.
Reducing carnivore conflicts
Many Q readers are familiar with my family’s varied efforts to keep large carnivores from preying on our domestic sheep, and of my firm belief that we wouldn’t be in the sheep business without the use of livestock protection dogs. This time I’m going to share a story of the efforts of family friends, the …
More Far Away- and Great First Lines
“He sat, in defiance of municipal orders, astride the gun Zam- Zammah on her brick platform opposite the old Ajaib- Gher– the Wonder House, as the natives called the Lahore Museum”. The opening lines of Kim, of course. My friend Grayal Farr, formerly of the Special Forces, naturalist, archaeologist, and fellow Kiplingite (see Kipling’s “The …
Far Away and Long Ago: Family with Megafauna
Just for fun: a shelf in the library has accumulated a bunch of photos with this theme, dating from the thirties (Betsy Huntington) to just eleven years ago (me). Here are a few. First, Betsy, at four, with her mother, at the Pyramids: Second, Libby on an elephant, in the early seventies, at TIGERtops (see …
Weekend Hunt
We– Terence Wright, Karen Wetherill, their lurcher Loki (grandson of our Plummer and Lashyn), gyr- prairie tiercel Cog, Daniela and her smooth saluki pup Blaze, English master falconer and author of Game Hawk Ray Turner, Libby and Ataika and I– spent January 16- 17 hiking and hawking, first on high La Jencia Plain, on Lee’s …
High tech herder camp
One of these days I’ll post some photos of the inside of a sheep camp, but meanwhile, enjoy this high-tech camp. The herder uses a solar panel to power his radio. This camp is parked in the Upper Green River region of western Wyoming, thick with grizzlies and wolves.
Weekend wonders
Jim and I had to make a run to Rock Springs, Wyoming to pick up a load of corn. Met this sweet sheepherder’s team waiting to cross the highway just north of that town. We also spotted a herd of elk that had migrated from the mountains to the high desert sagebrush near the Big …
Random Links, Good & Bad…
The Saudis believe they have thwarted an Israeli spy attempt— by a vulture. In the context of deconstructing a dumb set of generalizations by Dennis Prager, LabRat gets off a brilliant riposte (emphasis mine): “I absolutely believe he’s correct in that contempt is the most corrosive thing there can be in a relationship, and that …