Noel's South Texas Trip

[wilded]

Did you go? Any report? Thanks, ET

[ccrobbins]

He went, but still has Bob.........Kurt trapped though.

[wilded]

We want to hear the stories.

[Weasel]

Back from trapping! We went...... we saw....... we got one bird for my friend Kurt. I did not get one....tried like heck, but no luck. We saw about a hundred HH's, but all where haggard.....and yes, before anyone says it, we almost always threw the trap to the hags in hope that the immies where nearby. We had a ton of fun with the birds, the border patrol, some other falconers from Virginia and also, the border town of Laredo was.....different.......
If I see another Caracara it will be too soon! For every 1 harris there where 2 caracara. We did see a few white tailed hawks, a ton of Kestrels a handful of RT's, but mostly it was harris after harris after harris...... I think one of the problems was that some of these birds are now trap weary from every falconer in the states tossing a BC in front of them. We had several immies sitting on poles with mom and dad and none of them would come to the traps we set out.....heck, we where even trying to be stealthy when we put them out!
The border patrol was not too sure what to think of us....I had one of the drug dogs try to climb into the truck with us.....All I could think was"Oh crap they're gonna tear apart my truck because this darn dog smells harris crap..."
The first night we got there(or should I say morning) It was 4:00am when we arrived in Hebronville.....that's when we broke out the beer and wine to wait for sun up. We scouted out some roads before it got light and right in front of my headlights, a Harris flew by in the pitch black of night! I have to say that the best time to trap them is in the EARLY morning. This is the time we saw them gathered into family groups on power poles. As the day progressed, we saw more and more birds alone on poles or with the rest of the family in the nearby mesquite tree's. We wasted alot of time tossing for some lone hag harris in hopes that the family unit was nearby, but with little luck. I would say that in about 50 tosses of the trap, maybe 2 brought out the family to the trap. We never did get any of the harris's we trapped to hit the trap from the pole. It was always, glide down, hover and land next to the trap.....then they would take turns walking up to it to foot after the gerbil a bit, then the next one would give it a try until one of them got snared.
We did trap one massive female bird (haggard) and she was so big that she darn near flew off with the trap. she made it about 20 ft to the fence line before going no further. My trap weights almost 4 lbs with steel rods and horseshoes attached to the bottom so this was certainly a shock!
I plan on trying to go back down again within the next month. I beleive the guy I went with wants to go again too so we can get a good party going in the desert.
Cheers,
PS. I'll get a few pics up as soon as I can.

[wilded]

Last time I got checked by the border patrol 3 times. Do I look like an illegal? I thought that was what they were supposed to be watching for? No wonder we have an immigration problem in South Texas.

[Weasel]

Amen!!! Kurt and I started messing with the checkpoint gaurds after awhile....They always ask if we are US citizens and I started saying "Siiiiii....., Soy un ciudadano de Estados Unidos......." They didn't think it was very funny...........
Sounds like we have another trapping trip set for Dec.9th if anyone is interested in going. We will leave Friday night and be back Sunday night.

[wilded]

The border patrol saw Jim and I throw a BC and they turned on the lights and were all over us. I thought they were going to search us for a while. He thought we were throwing drugs out the window. Right!

[Weasel]

HAHAHA!!! We almost ran into that same situation as there was a Harris sitting about three poles down the road from where a border patrol officer was sitting.....I just new as soon as we started driving on the shoulder tossing stuff out the window that we where going to get pulled over. Given the situation, we drove up to him first and told him what we where up to so he wouldn't have ten patrol cars surrounding us.