Swoop

We spent the rest of last week working on the creance. By Friday she was doing much better. I had gotten her weight down to 103 grams and she seemed to be doing very well at that weight. This weekend was the annual THA meet. On Saturday the weather was so beautiful and Scarlet was at 103 grams. I just could not resist taking her out. After all, I did get her to hunt with so that is what I needed to do. We drove around for a while before finding any birds. It was not the ideal time of day (before dusk) but I wanted to fly her early enough that I would have time to get her back if she took off again. I did show her a slip of grackles but she was not interested. Hopefully that will come in time as she learns the game.
We finally found a slip in the college parking lot. I rolled down the window, she slicked down and took off. Unfortunately she missed. She ended up in a tree at the edge of the parking lot so I made my way towards her. I pulled out the lure and started to call her. This is when the game began. I threw the lure, she would fly towards it and swoop it then pull up into another tree. This was usually followed by her screaming at me which I interpreted as a laugh.
I finally laid down in the grass with the lure in front of me just wiggling it a little. It took a lot of patience but she finally came in and landed on it. I had put a small bird on the lure. Once she started plucking the bird, I put a tidbit on my finger and stretched my arm out to her. I slowly pulled her towards me until the tidbit was with in reach. She reached over and took the tidbit from my finger so I repeated with the bag of tidbits I had. I finally was able to reach in and tether her. We continued the tidbitting and eating on the lure until she was done, then she hopped to my glove and we called it a day.
Although the hunt did not goes as planned, all in all it was a good day. She chased, came to the lure (eventually) and I got her back. Sometimes that is all you can ask for. We are going to do some more lure work this week so hopefully we won't have a repeat performance of Saturday.
I will post some pictures soon.