Everyone has a favorite hunting partner. Wesley Barney’s choice is a sharp-eyed, red-tailed hawk named Tanner.
“Usually we just hunt for squirrels,” said Barney, who earned his falconer’s apprentice license in 2019 after retiring from the Marine Corps. “There’s a lot of walking and vine-pulling – and, every now and then – some running.”
Last weekend, before the sun melted a heavy frost along Edgefield County’s Lloyd Creek, the Martinez man and his falconry friends were already in the woods – and their birds were ready.
The idea, Barney said, is to stalk from the ground while the hawk watches from the sky. “He’ll be up there, just following us – unless he sees something. Then we’ll be following him.”
A half-mile down the creek, and with Tanner aloft, the day’s first squirrel soon emerged from a vine-shrouded treetop. It was in stealth mode, moving around the trunk to hide from those on the ground.
Tanner, meanwhile, swept in from a different direction – at lightning speed – but was too low as the squirrel climbed higher up the tree.
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“Get up! Get up!” Barney called to the hawk, as the squirrel raced toward the treetop. Tanner’s next try was closer, but the frantic squirrel leaped all the way to the ground, where it bounded to safety in a hollow tree.
During the next two hours, four more squirrels were spectacularly pursued, but not captured. The closest strike came from Evie, a Harris’s Hawk hunting with Paul Ward of Johnston, S.C. Although Evie snatched the squirrel from the treetops, she dropped it after it nipped her leg.
“That’s just how it goes. Sometimes we get the squirrel, and sometimes the squirrel gets us,” Barney said. “But the fun of doing this isn’t to always get something. It’s working with the birds and having friends who also like falconry.”
Tanner is having a great first season. The young hawk, which he captured and trained himself, took his 28th squirrel at Di-Lane Plantation Wildlife Management Area on Jan. 24.
Barney’s fascination with falconry began way back in middle school, when he read Jean Craighead George’s adventure novel, “My Side of the Mountain.”
The main character is a young boy – living alone in the wilderness – who learns to survive with the aid of a captured falcon he trained to hunt.
“Reading that book is what planted the seed,” Barney said. “Ever since then I’ve wanted to try it.”
If falconry seems simple, it’s not.
After moving back to Columbia County with his wife and their three sons, Barney began to explore the license requirements to capture and train a heavily regulated and protected bird of prey.
“The licensing test is tough – really tough,” he said. “I failed it two times, but I passed it the third time.”
In Georgia, where the Department of Natural Resources’ falconry regulations span 22 printed pages, there are plenty of rules to insure a falconer is up to the challenge of hunting with a bird of prey without overly domesticating it.
“You never call it a pet. I don’t even think you should consider it as owning a bird,” Barney said. “It’s a wild animal.”
As part of the licensing process, he was also required to become apprenticed to a licensed falconer who supervised and taught him.
Once credentialed, he was allowed to trap a bird to train. Using a specialized noose trap made from hardware cloth and fishing line, Barney captured Tanner on New Year’s Eve of 2019.
“His full name is actually Tanner Monroe Snow,” he said, because it was trapped on Tanner’s Bridge Road near Monroe, Ga., and Snow was a reference to a “Game of Thrones” character.
Rob Pavey is the Outdoors contributor for The Augusta Press. Reach him at robbie.pavey@theaugustapress.com
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