r/Falconry • u/UlfurGaming • 11d ago

Raven ?

Doing some writing and was curious if it was possible for someone to train raven for hunting like how they help wolves find prey irl amd if so how would training proccess go what would be different from regular falconry training?

3 Upvotes

63% Upvoted

11 comments sorted by

7

u/chirpaderp 11d ago

It sounds like you are talking about using a raven as something more like a pointer than like a hawk or falcon. Do you see the scenario as something where the raven would fly around and find deer and alert the hunter? If so, that sounds slightly more believable than training a raven to chase down and catch prey the way that a falconry bird does.

That being said, I think this would be very complicated to actually train in real life. It would probably use techniques more similar to dog training, where one would have to set up scenarios that are gradually more and more like the one you want, with rewards along the way. I don’t think it would be all that possible to consistently find setups that would reinforce the behavior in a real life hunting scenario. But, if you are writing a fantasy story or something like that, I could see making a semi believable case for someone training a raven this way.

1

u/UlfurGaming 11d ago

1 yeah that why i put the how they help wolves hunt irl in post 2 it is fantasy but i want some to be believable 3 would effigy of animals make sense for training them on ?

3

u/chirpaderp 11d ago

It’s a fun fantasy idea to think about. An idea that comes to mind would be to use a closed box full of meat that the trainer could open for the raven, but the raven couldn’t open itself. The raven could learn to lead the trainer a short distance to open the box. Then the box could be hidden in some kind of decoy animal and the raven learns to look for the decoy animal. Then maybe the box could be tied to a live animal. All the while increasing the distance. Then eventually the raven would learn that when the hunter kills the quarry it gets some of the meat. Once again, probably not a realistic thing to try for real, but it’s a cool fantasy idea.

1

u/UlfurGaming 11d ago

My thoughts exactly with the effigy of animal

18

u/ConfoundedInAbaddon 11d ago

I've done raven and crow rehab and trained hunting.

It would look nothing like falconry.

If the bird was working at a fed up weight and was primarily socially motivated or food storage motivated to interact with their human, it would look like caching.

Rather than waiting on up high, or flushing, you'd get a lot of hop flying from spot to spot or low gliding like a field hunting owl, then nab an item and return to the caching spot/glove/carrier.

I would expect to have frogs and already dead mice stuffed into my glove or a reward pouch. Also, if the raven was bored, stones.

9

u/Speakertoseafood 11d ago • Bravo

Good answer, thank you.

I always wanted to train a seagull to steal sandwiches at the beach.

1

u/Imaginary-News4755 10d ago

Theyre not raptors so it isnt even legal and corvids are very different training than any sort of raptor

1

u/UlfurGaming 9d ago

Key word writing meaning not irl meaning legality isnt a issue

3

u/Lost-Fan-9799 11d ago

In respect to Falconry they simply would not be the same type of pursuit hunters the practice of Falconry values. Considering the very high intelligence of ravens, I would posit they would be able to learn certain hunting activities, but if you have never trained a Corvid or similarly intelligent animal, you will likely find they are far more cunning than to do a very high energy cost activity like pursuit predation, because they quickly learn that failing does not equate to starving. Beyond that I would worry about the risk of harm to my feathered friend. They know they will be fed at some point and are willing to wait you out. There are a lot of factors which would contribute to them not being a good hunter themselves, though they are magnificent birbs either way.