Training a falcon is a months-long process built on trust, patience, and legal compliance. In the United States, you cannot simply acquire a bird of prey and start training. Federal law requires a falconry permit, and beginners must complete a two-year apprenticeship under an experienced falconer before advancing. Understanding that framework is the first step, because everything else, from choosing your bird to flying it free, follows from it.
Legal Requirements Before You Start
The Migratory Bird Treaty Act makes it illegal to take, possess, or transport any raptor without a federal and state falconry permit. You’ll need to pass a written exam covering raptor biology, training methods, regulations, and husbandry. You’ll also need to have your housing facility (called a mews) inspected and approved before you receive a bird.
The apprenticeship lasts a minimum of two years, during which you must be sponsored by a General or Master Falconer. No falconry school or course can shorten that timeline. During each of those two years, you’re required to maintain, train, fly, and hunt with a raptor for at least four months. Your sponsor will eventually sign a document confirming you’ve met those requirements before you can apply for a General Falconer permit. Depending on the game you hunt and where you hunt it, you may also need state hunting licenses or a federal Duck Stamp.
Choosing a Beginner Bird
Most apprentice falconers in the U.S. are limited to Red-tailed Hawks or American Kestrels. Peregrines and other longwing falcons are reserved for General and Master Falconers because they demand more skill and experience. Red-tailed Hawks are the most popular apprentice bird for good reason: they’re calm, forgiving of handling mistakes, and capable of catching real quarry like rabbits and squirrels over a variety of terrain.
Harris’s Hawks are another widely recommended species, particularly valued for their social temperament. Unlike most raptors, Harris’s Hawks naturally hunt cooperatively, which makes them unusually tolerant of people and other birds. Both Harris’s Hawks and Red-tails don’t require daily flying to stay manageable, though more frequent hunting produces a better bird. They’ve largely replaced the traditional Goshawk in many regions because Goshawks are notoriously difficult to breed, harder to handle, and far less forgiving of errors.
Building a Mews
Your bird needs a secure, weather-protected enclosure called a mews. For a Red-tailed Hawk, Harris’s Hawk, or Peregrine Falcon, the suggested minimum interior dimensions are 6 feet wide by 8 feet deep by 7 feet tall. Smaller species like Kestrels and Merlins can be housed in a 6-by-6-by-6-foot space. Each bird needs its own compartment separated by a solid wall.
Walls can be wood or fiberglass. If you use chain link, it must be fully covered with lath, screening, or netting to prevent feather damage. Windows should have vertical slats or dowels mounted on the inside rather than chicken wire, which can injure feet and feathers. For flooring, wood shavings work well. Natural surfaces like sand or dirt are acceptable but need regular turning and disinfection. Concrete is durable but stays damp and is hard on talons. Bury the base of the walls or lay horizontal chicken wire around the exterior perimeter to stop predators from digging in.
Essential Equipment
Falconry requires specialized gear, most of which you’ll need before your bird arrives:
- Jesses: Leather straps attached to the bird’s ankles, giving you a secure hold when it sits on your glove.
- Swivel: A small metal connector that joins the jesses to a leash while preventing tangles.
- Leash: Ties the bird to your glove or its perch so it can’t fly off unexpectedly.
- Hood: Covers the bird’s eyes to keep it calm during transport, in unfamiliar environments, or while resting.
- Glove: A thick leather gauntlet that protects your hand and forearm from talons.
- Telemetry: A radio or GPS transmitter attached to the bird so you can track it during free flight. This is non-negotiable once your bird is flying loose.
The Manning Process
Manning is the foundation of all falconry training. It means getting the bird comfortable with you, your movements, your home, other people, dogs, cars, and every other element of human life it will encounter. A well-manned bird sits calmly on the glove in chaotic environments. A poorly manned bird panics, bates (thrashes against its jesses trying to fly away), and never progresses.
The process starts the moment you bring the bird home. You carry it on your glove for hours each day, initially in a quiet room, then gradually introducing new stimuli. The bird learns that your fist is a safe, stable platform and that food comes when it steps onto the glove. Over days and weeks, you increase the complexity of the environments: walking outside, driving in the car, encountering strangers. The bird is never forced. Every session ends before the bird becomes overstressed.
Captive-bred birds raised from hatching (called eyasses) that are imprinted on humans require a particular approach. For roughly three months, the young bird is kept in near-constant visual contact with people but is never allowed to associate the arrival of a human with the arrival of food. Some falconers place food in a separate area for the bird to discover on its own, mimicking foraging rather than hand-feeding. This prevents “screaming,” a behavior where food-imprinted birds shriek and lunge at their handler whenever they’re hungry. The imprinted eyass is then allowed to wander freely at what’s called tame hack, where it learns to fly, build muscle, and handle wind, all while staying close to its human.
Weight Management and Hunting Condition
A falcon’s willingness to work is tied directly to its weight. Falconers carefully monitor their bird’s weight daily, adjusting food intake so the bird is hungry enough to be motivated but never so depleted that its health suffers. The target is a narrow window where the bird is keen to hunt and responsive to the glove. Falconers call this state being “in yarak,” an old term meaning the bird is sharp, focused, and eager to pursue quarry.
This is one of the most skill-dependent aspects of falconry. Too heavy and the bird ignores you, flies to a tree, and refuses to return. Too light and it becomes weak, lethargic, and vulnerable to illness. Your sponsor will teach you to read your specific bird’s behavior at different weights and find the right flying weight through careful daily observation.
Feeding Your Bird
Raptors eat whole prey. Common food items include day-old chicks, mice, rats, quail, and pigeons. The whole animal, including organs, bones, skin, and feathers, provides a nutritionally complete diet. The indigestible parts (fur, feathers, small bones) are compressed in the bird’s crop and regurgitated as a pellet called a casting. Producing castings is a normal and necessary part of digestive health.
Avoid prey with disproportionately large bones, which can cause obstructions that prevent casting. Even with a whole-prey diet, adding a small vitamin and mineral supplement is recommended, especially when the bird is under stress from training, molting, or travel. If you’re feeding organ meat rather than whole animals, calcium supplementation becomes essential. Birds fed primarily on fish need additional thiamine and vitamin E to prevent deficiencies.
Common Health Problems
Three diseases account for the majority of health issues in captive raptors.
Bumblefoot is an infection of the foot pads caused by constant pressure, abrasion, or puncture wounds. It shows up as swelling, redness, or open sores on the bottom of the feet. Poor perch design and unsanitary surfaces are the main culprits. Prevention comes down to providing appropriate perches with proper padding and keeping the mews clean.
Frounce is a parasitic infection of the mouth and throat caused by an organism commonly carried by pigeons and doves. If you’re feeding your bird freshly killed pigeons, you’re exposing it to this parasite. Symptoms include white or yellowish lesions in the mouth and difficulty swallowing. Freezing prey before feeding can reduce the risk, and your avian vet can treat active infections.
Aspergillosis is a fungal lung infection caused by inhaling mold spores from the environment. Goshawks, Gyrfalcons, and Red-tailed Hawks are especially susceptible. It’s an opportunistic disease, meaning it typically strikes birds whose immune systems are already compromised by stress, poor nutrition, or another illness. Keeping the mews dry, well-ventilated, and free of moldy bedding is your best defense.
Feather Repair
Broken flight feathers directly affect a bird’s ability to hunt. Falconers repair damaged feathers through a process called imping: the broken shaft is cut cleanly, a matching feather section from a molted or donor feather is fitted to it, and the two pieces are joined with a small needle or peg glued into the hollow shafts. A well-imped feather restores full flight capability until the bird naturally molts and replaces it. Keeping a collection of molted feathers sorted by species and position is standard practice.
Weathering and Daily Routine
A trained falcon isn’t kept locked in its mews all day. “Weathering” means placing the bird on an outdoor perch in open air, where it can feel wind, sun, and rain. This is important for the bird’s physical and psychological health. A typical daily routine includes weighing the bird each morning, a period of weathering during the day, a training or hunting session, feeding, and returning the bird to the mews at night. During hunting season, you’ll be in the field several days a week. Outside of hunting season, you maintain the bird’s fitness and continue reinforcing its training so it stays responsive.