February 3, 2000

Dear Barry,

Sorry to hear about your RT. Keep hope eyass season will soon be upon us. I'm not sure where you live but if your thinking eyass GHO start looking now. They have been known to nest with snow still on the ground as early as Feb. As for that brancher, sorry to say but its been my experience with owls that you need to be patient. Even though the weather may be cold owls drop weight very slowly. Franks brancher is going to react to training just a little slower than a true eyass. It's already been programmed and owls are real reluctant to change programs. One thing that I find essential is that an owl must ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS, eat on the fist.  Did I say ALWAYS??? I mean it too, all the time even when being intermewed. Your bird has got to completely associate your fist with food.  Now here's a trick that may help. Call the owl in the usual manner if it does not come to the fist but lands on the ground pick it up and give it the smallest morsel to eat. If it does come to the fist give it a somewhat more substantial amount to eat. Keep training sessions short to begin with and if the owl comes to the fist several times in a row let it feed up and gorge. Even if this means cutting the training session short or not training for a few days. The owl needs the positive reinforcement of a full crop. As your training sessions progress Frank can then start to extend the sessions and not feed up until the session is over. Also at this time gorging is not needed.  Frank will then be able to return to a maintenance diet.  GHO's are wonderful powerful hunters capable of being trained on many prey species. It's important that your bird be exposed to as many of the potential prey species that you may hunt during the early phases of it's training. In other words if you want to hunt cottontails your bird has got to see you feeding it cottontails, you want to hunt pheasant too then it needs to see pheasant.  Training will be slow don't expect great results the first year.  GHO's stay with their parents till the parents are ready to nest again and are reluctant to hunt their own food. So be patient.  Is your patience worth it??? Absolutely!!!!!  I have taken all the following prey species with a GHO: jack rabbits, snowshoe hares, cottontails, pheasant, several species of duck, egrets, common and snowy, crows, ground hogs, squirrels, snakes and have even chased herons and other raptors. As your bird matures if it has been trained on a variety of species they will become more aggressive when they see something new. If their exposure is minimal then they become mind set on their main prey species and are reluctant to chase anything else. So a broad range of exposure is imperative.  I could go on and on about training but will stop here for now. If you and Frank have more questions please feel free. I have no idea what your real experience is or what training methods you know.  If you give me a little more background on yourselves I would be happy to fill in and suggest modifications to your techniques so that they will have more pertinence to owls. 

Best of luck.

Bigtattoo