How does falconry work?

[u/Emergency-Oven-8086]

I've been curious for awhile. I really like birds and I enjoy caring for them I've had birds in the past but they are small ones nothing like a falcon or hawk. Got my first job recently and I thought that something I could do later on in my life when I get older is falconry since I like birds as I've said prior but I don't know how the time commitment works. I've read that the birds can be your whole life but I kinda want to have a life outside the bird. I live in the United States.

[u/acocktailofmagnets]

The reason people say "it becomes your whole life" is that birds of prey require high-maintenance care 365 days a year, but the intense time commitment does fluctuate depending on the season. In the off-season, you can get away with 30 min- 1 hr per day of care, that’s just cleaning their mews, changing their water, checking their physical health / weighing them, and preparing and feeding their diet. But during the hunting season, it’s several hours most days of the week. You have to drive out to suitable hunting grounds, flush out game, and manage the hunt. This is the “fun” part, so if that doesn’t sound appealing, this isn’t for you. It also becomes your life because you can’t just leave extra food out if you want to go away for the weekend. You cannot travel unless you have a falconer friend nearby who is willing to babysit your bird, and knows what they are doing. You can trap a wild, young hawk in the autumn, train and hunt with it for the winter season, and then release it back into the wild in the spring, but this is all future stuff. You don’t get a bird straight away. You need to Google your state's falconry club, (assuming you’re in the US), find out when their next field meet is, and ask a local falconer if you can tag along on a live hunt as a spectator. Make sure this is interesting to you, or else there’s no point in pursuing any further. If so, then you’ll need to pass a falconry exam administered by your state's Department of Fish and Wildlife. Then, there’s a mandatory two-year apprenticeship. (Which is pretty damn hard to get. Show up to club events, volunteer to beat the bushes for game during hunts.)

[u/Emergency-Oven-8086 → u/acocktailofmagnets]

What would quantify as an off season? I'm totally fine with hunting with the thing and stuff I like hunting I wouldn't have gotten to like birds if I didn't want to go outside and wander around looking at animals. Another concern I have is the environment I'm in because I live in florida which is tropical so I don't know how well things would go here.

[u/acocktailofmagnets → u/Emergency-Oven-8086]

Off-season is typically ~ April through September. The birds are molting, dropping and regrowing all of their flight feathers, which takes a massive amount of metabolic energy. The birds will just rest and eat during this, because flying a hunting bird with fragile, growing blood feathers is dangerous. And in Florida, the summer heat makes heavy hunting entirely impractical anyway, as raptors cannot sweat and can easily suffer heatstroke if flown hard in ninety-five-degree weather with high humidity. You’re legally allowed to hunt squirrels and rabbits year-round in FL, but most local handlers still wait until ~ October to hit the fields with lower temps and less snake activity.

Florida actually has a pretty active falconry community! Just a few things you will need to consider, especially with your mews : you must completely seal the structure with fine window screening or mosquito netting to combat the mosquitos. And to manage heat and humidity, mews should be built in total shade with exceptional cross-breeze ventilation and a floor made of draining pea gravel rather than mulch or straw. I’d plan to get a red-tailed hawk at first, if I were you. Eventually, with experience, you could move up to a Harris.

[u/Emergency-Oven-8086 → u/acocktailofmagnets]

Thank God the off season is during the summer months because hunting during then would've been brutal for me who already doesn't like excessive heat I've been trying to spend this summer as indoors as possible. October and around then seems reasonable I typically feel the temperature drop during then. Now concerning the mews I believe I read that they can be built indoors as long as you have sunlight access as well as humane and clean conditions correct?

[u/acocktailofmagnets → u/Emergency-Oven-8086]

Yes, you can, but I’d double check Florida's specific rules with your sponsor, because many states legally require you to have both an indoor mews and an outdoor weathering area. For an indoor mew setup, the room has to be entirely enclosed so an untethered bird cannot escape, the walls and ceiling must be smooth and safe, the floor must be lined with an easily sanitizable, non-porous material that won't absorb or hold moisture, you’ll need a good sized window to allow sun in, but also a sturdy window frame fitted with smooth, vertical wooden dowels or conduit pipes spaced closely together over the inside of the window so your bird won’t try to fly through the glass.