Jynx- 2025
Archive Record 003 - Season II
RELEASED | ARCHIVE CLOSED
RETAINED | ARCHIVE CONTINUES
Overview
ARCHIVE RECORD 003 | SEASON II | JYNX
Season II represents: Jynx returning as an experienced bird, the team becoming established, and the season becoming less about teaching the game and more about refinement/adaptation.
Milestones
Milestones preserve key transitions in a bird’s progression through falconry, documenting changes in trust, training, flight, hunting, and long-term development.
Trap Date: See Season 1
Accepts Food: See Season 1
First Step-Up to Fist: See Season 1
First Hop to Fist: See Season 1
First Jump to Fist: See Season 1
First Creance Flight: 10/22/2025
First Free Flight: 11/01/2025
First Hunt: 11/07/2025
First Successful Take: 11/22/2025
Season End: 03/14/2026
Release / Archive Closed: Retained
Weight & Quarry Progression
Weight management is a fundamental component of falconry, influencing condition, motivation, health monitoring, and safe participation in hunting activities. Daily records help preserve progression across a season.
* Red dots mark notable events
Stories / Records
Entries below preserve events considered relevant to the bird’s development, hunting progression, or long-term record.
September 30, 2025 — Before the First Flight: Our First Molt
Season Two began with a setback before we ever made it back into the field.
Jynx had spent the summer completing his molt outside in the mews. My interaction with him was intentionally limited—weight checks, feeding, short check-ins, occasional manning sessions, and a few short creance flights. Otherwise, I tried to let him simply be a bird in his own space.
On September 30, while feeding him on the fist, I noticed several bright red spots against the yellow of his feet. Closer inspection revealed small punctures where he appeared to have footed himself.
He weighed 1160 grams that afternoon—above his original 1150-gram trap weight and considerably heavier than the roughly 915 grams he had carried during his first hunting season. My best assessment was that I had begun handling him again while he was simply carrying too much weight, contributing to clumsy footwork while moving and remounting the glove.
The inspection revealed something else: the very end of the rear toe on his left foot was gone.
There was no active bleeding or infection, and the damage stopped short of both the foot pad and nail. It appeared he had caught the toe on something or struck an edge while landing. I rounded the edges of his feeding platform afterward as a precaution, and no similar injury has occurred since.
Season preparation stopped.
Jynx was moved to indoor protocol while his feet were cleaned, treated with SSD cream, monitored daily, and supported with a short course of antibiotics. The injuries scabbed cleanly and began healing without further complication.
The setback delayed our first free flight and hunt until November 7.
Back on familiar ground, Jynx looked like he remembered exactly where we had left off. He sought high perches and watched as Wren and I worked the brush below, followed us through the field, and threw several wingovers across open terrain before settling again to wait for a rabbit to break.
Wren covered roughly five miles that day. After several hours without producing a rabbit, I ended the hunt with a lure recall.
There was no catch, but for the first free flight of Season Two, Jynx checked every box I needed him to check.
The rear toe would carry its scab until roughly January 3, 2026, but it never prevented him from continuing to hunt.
After months away from the field and another five weeks lost before we could begin, bird, dog, and falconer were back together.
The season had finally started.
*Lesson Retained: Begin weight reduction before returning to active training. The transition from molt weight to working condition is part of season preparation; waiting until training begins creates unnecessary risk.
December 2025 — Return to Form
With the delayed start behind us, Season Two was finally beginning to take shape.
Success came on Hunt #4 while visiting a friend's family farm. After several hours without producing a rabbit, we moved to another section of the property. Jynx was already showing some frustration, so I called him back to the fist while we crossed the field. A fox squirrel drew little interest, while a couple of drops into the cut corn suggested mice or some other small quarry had caught his attention instead.
Once we reached the new area, Jynx went back up and Wren returned to work.
Eventually, Jynx settled into a tall tree behind us and refused to move forward. On its own that doesn't mean much, but I had learned that sometimes his refusal to follow meant he was watching something we weren't.
We doubled back and sent Wren through the area again.
Two rabbits broke from the same cover in opposite directions.
One headed toward a nearby hay barn. The other followed a small creek, putting the bend between itself and an approaching hawk. With Jynx closing, the rabbit attempted to jump the creek.
It didn't make it.
Jynx caught it just before the crossing, and after a tumble they landed in the creek with his legs underwater and the rabbit still firmly secured. I reached them, assisted with the dispatch, and moved both onto the bank where Jynx could stand comfortably and take his reward.
Three people and a dog had walked past that rabbit.
Jynx hadn't.
That success seemed to mark the return of the bird I remembered from Season One.
Over the following weeks, his consistency continued to build. Even in wind gusts approaching 25 mph, he worked to stay with the team. By the end of December, we had completed 13 hunts and taken eight rabbits.
Training evolved as well. With winter darkness and work limiting weekday hunts, I added a lure machine alongside extended creance flights, jump-ups, and occasional free flights around the house. A puzzle board was also introduced for enrichment, modified with 550 cord so Jynx could manipulate the pieces while searching for hidden tidbits. He solved all nine pieces and found all four rewards in less than twenty minutes on his first attempt.
His feet continued their slow recovery without further complications, while recall and lure response remained strong.
Something else had changed too.
Season One had been flown around an average of 915 grams. By Season Two, Jynx was performing consistently around 960 grams—a roughly 45-gram increase without sacrificing field performance. Response remained strong until approaching 1,000 grams, where the first noticeable delays began to appear.
The season that had started five weeks late was no longer trying to catch up.
Jynx was back in form, the team was working together, and everything pointed toward a strong winter ahead.
*Lesson Retained: Consistency doesn't require doing everything the same way. As the bird, season, and circumstances change, the program has to adapt with them.
January 2026 — The Month of Misses
2026 started with success.
On Day 419, Hunt #13, Jynx secured rabbit #9 while hunting a friend's farm. We had flown the property several times before, and it had become a great place for the team to work. Another falconer joined us that day with their bird, and spending time in the field with other falconers and like-minded people was slowly becoming one of my favorite parts of the sport.
What followed was something I wasn't accustomed to.
There was no injury. No illness. Jynx's behavior seemed normal, and his commitment in the field hadn't changed. The biggest difference I could identify was winter itself.
Fresh snowfall and cold temperatures changed the landscape. Heavy snow laid down much of the tall brush, while fresh tracks made rabbit movement almost impossible to miss. We were finding sign, producing multiple jumps, and Jynx was engaged and chasing hard.
He just couldn't close.
January became what I started calling "the month of misses."
Again and again, rabbits seemed to escape in the final inches before Jynx could secure them. On one chase, a rabbit ran the edge where mowed grass met the taller field before cutting sharply between two saplings barely three inches apart. Jynx turned with it, but caught himself between the trees with his wings spread and brakes applied.
The rabbit disappeared into cover.
These felt like veteran winter rabbits that knew their side of the dance just as well as we knew ours.
As January gave way to February, temperatures began to rise and the heavy snow started disappearing.
On February 7, the streak finally broke.
Wren produced the flush and sent a rabbit on a long run. Jynx committed immediately and made quick work of the opportunity, securing rabbit #10.
You would never have guessed he'd just spent a month playing a game of inches with the same quarry.
After weeks of close calls, it was a well-earned success for the entire team.
*Lesson Retained: Persistence pays. Not every problem requires a major correction—sometimes the answer is to keep working, adjust where you can,
and trust the process.
February 14, 2026 — Business as Normal: Falconry at Its Best
In further evidence that the "month of misses" was finally behind us, Jynx found success again on Hunt #19.
Rain was moving in later that night, so we headed out first thing in the morning. Not much was moving early, but eventually we produced four rabbits and Jynx put together several solid chases.
He finally connected on a short drop when one rabbit tried to disappear beneath tall grass that had been laid flat by the winter snow.
Jynx wasn't about to let that happen.
He had it out flat.
It was a great two-and-a-half-hour hunt. Jynx followed beautifully and stayed locked in with Wren and me throughout the morning. Wren covered just over five miles and, apparently deciding that wasn't enough, finished the hunt by rolling in something absolutely foul.
The truck ride home was memorable.
Wren went straight into the tub.
And in many ways, that hunt represented what much of Season Two had become.
We continued to find success, and we still had days when we struck out. Jynx showed that he understood the game and knew his role within the team. A few hunts brought other wild Red-tailed Hawks into the field, but thankfully we avoided conflict and everyone went their separate ways.
We also made it through the season without having to play the stressful game of tracking down a bird that decided to leave the hunt behind. A hawk flying independently while still wearing anklets and jesses can quickly find itself in trouble, making every clean return to the falconer something worth appreciating.
By March 14, warmer temperatures were returning, and with them came the beginning of rabbit breeding season. It was time to remove our pressure from the field and let the rabbits do what rabbits do, helping ensure healthy populations and fields that could continue to provide in the seasons ahead.
Jynx finished the season with 24 hunts and 13 rabbits—one more than the year before despite our delayed start and the memorable month when seemingly every rabbit escaped by inches.
There was no dramatic ending to the hunting season.
Bird, dog, and falconer had simply settled into their roles, worked together, and finished another season healthy.
Sometimes, that's falconry at its best.
*Record Retained: Managing the land and knowing when to stop are part of falconry too. A successful season isn't measured only by what was taken from the field, but by what is left there for the seasons still to come.
March 31, 2026 — Close of a Season & the Journey Ahead
With another season behind us, I couldn't help but look back at the two seasons Jynx and I had spent together.
From the first day trapping him—and getting a flat tire in the process—to everything that followed, we had come a long way. Through the milestones, mistakes, setbacks, recoveries, and time in the field, we had built a system that worked. Jynx had matured into an experienced hunting bird, Wren understood her role beneath him, and I had learned how to read them both.
But the end of Season Two brought another question.
When is it time to let him go?
As I write this in August, Season Three is approaching and I still don't have an easy answer.
We're finishing our second molt together. Bird and dog are healthy, and all three of us are preparing to return to the field. But this journey with Jynx was never meant to last forever.
He is a wild bird.
At some point, the question becomes whether his next chapter should continue with us or return him to the wild from which he came.
That is part of what makes working with a passage Red-tailed Hawk so meaningful. For a time, we are allowed into their world. We watch them develop, mature, become stronger and more agile, improve their footwork, and grow into increasingly capable hunters.
Then comes the difficult part: recognizing when our place in that journey may be finished.
I've spent months thinking about that question and discussing it with close friends and fellow falconers. For now, I've decided to retain Jynx and let the next season help provide the answer.
In many ways, Jynx has always told me what I needed to know.
He tells me when he's watching something in the field. He tells me what he likes, what he'll tolerate, and what he wants no part of. Even when I allow someone else the experience of holding him, the final decision isn't really mine.
It's his.
So Season Three will begin the same way.
I'll listen to the bird.
If Jynx returns to the field, stays committed to the game, and continues choosing to work with Wren and me, then we may have our strongest season yet with an experienced bird.
If he loses interest, begins wandering, or shows that the partnership has run its course, then perhaps he'll have answered the question for me.
And when that day comes, he'll return to the wild from which he was borrowed—with the hope that somewhere in Kentucky he might pass along some of what made him such an exceptional bird.
Maybe, through some impossible bit of luck, I'll even find myself flying one of his offspring someday.
There's no way to know.
A little wishful thinking never hurts.
For now, Jynx stays.
Season Three is waiting.
*Lesson Retained: A wild bird owes you nothing. The partnership continues because the bird chooses to participate in it. Listen to what the bird tells you, give him every opportunity to become the best version of himself, and be willing to recognize when it's time to let him go.
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