CORVALLIS, Ore. — Randy Carnahan works the swing shift at the Hollingsworth & Vose glass fiber plant in Corvallis.
A lot of people don’t like working nights, but Carnahan loves his schedule because he has the mornings free to pursue his passion: falconry.
“I hit it hard,” he said. “My goal is to be in the field 100 days out of the 107-day season. You see the great flights when you have fit birds.”
Falconry, the ancient art of hunting with trained birds of prey, used to be the exclusive province of the nobility. These days, it’s open to everyone — at least in theory. In practice, it requires a major commitment of time and effort.
In Oregon, anyone over the age of 13 can apply for a falconer’s license — but getting one is no easy matter. First, aspiring falconers must find a sponsor who holds a general or master’s license and serve an apprenticeship of at least two years. After that, apprentices must pass an exhaustive state test and earn a personal endorsement from their sponsor before receiving their general falconer’s license.
Carnahan fell in love with falconry after reading a book on the subject as a young boy.
“The idea of training a hawk or a falcon just blew my doors off,” he said.
Generally, falconers acquire their birds either by capturing a fledgling in the nest or purchasing one from a breeder. Carnahan got his first hunting bird, a Cooper’s hawk, at the age of 15 when “it flew into my pigeon house and laid waste.”
At the time Carnahan’s family was living in Coquille, a rural community in Southwest Oregon, and he spent countless hours working with his hawk. The bird was so well-trained that it would fly to him when he whistled from a quarter-mile away.
Now 61, Carnahan has flown all kinds of raptors since then, from peregrine falcons to merlins to red-tailed hawks.
At the moment he has two — a 16-year-old goshawk named Cully and a 5-year-old sharp-shinned hawk named Tink — that he keeps on the farm near Tangent where he lives with his wife, Lisa.
Unlike falcons, which dive down on their prey at speeds of up to 235 mph, accipiters are ambush hunters that succeed by accelerating quickly over short distances before their targets have time to react.
Carnahan flies Tink mostly around the farm, where she catches small birds such as starlings and English sparrows.
He used to take Cully out for rabbits at the E.E. Wilson Wildlife Management Area north of Corvallis, but these days they usually go after ducks on private land near Lebanon. With the goshawk, Carnahan’s strategy is to get within 25 yards of the ducks, then use a bird dog to flush them into the air. From there, Cully does the rest.
“He can go from zero to 50 in 25 yards,” Carnahan said. “There’s a lot of timing involved, but once you’ve done it awhile it’s not much different from making sure your shotgun’s mounted properly so you don’t shoot a barn or your hunting partner.”
Even after nearly half a century, Carnahan said, falconry continues to hold his interest — in part because every hunt is different, but also because it makes him feel connected to the world.
“Hunting, for me at least, is participation in the real world — it’s a genuine activity,” he said. “And I get to see things that nobody else gets to see, ever.”
