A History of the Georgia Falconer (From my perspective)
Talk Presented to the GFA
Saturday January 14, 2012
Pine Mt. Lodge, Callaway Gardens, Ga.
There are three propositions to this talk. If you reject any of these three premises this talk
has no validity whatsoever. And the truth be known, even if you do accept them it
probably still has no validity.
First, understand that this is about things that happened long, long ago in a land far, far
away. There are only a few of your club members still around who remember these days;
Joel Volpi, Bob Gordon, Stewart Farron and maybe a few others.
I am not saying these guys are old but I have a few photos of some of their early falconry
meets that I want to share with you. (Photos of cavemen) I think the young guy on the left
is Joel Volpi.
I also dug through my archives and found copies of some of their early falconry logs…
(Photo of cave drawing) This photos is from the falconry log of Bob Gordon and the
inscription below it reads, "November 23 - Overcast and windy, 38 degrees. Took my
tiercel RT hunting for the first time today. Flew at 32 ounces. Missed on the first slip but
connected on the second and eventually completed the day taking 1 bison and 4 wild
horses… Maybe he will to better tomorrow."
Which brings me to my second premise: All falconers are liars. Which in turn leads us to
this very simple and logical syllogism: All falconers are liars: Roy is a falconer, therefore
what Roy says in this talk very well may be a lie. You can decide for yourself what is true
and what is distorted.
I am pleased to say that the current crop of falconers is doing a great job of keeping this
second premise alive and well. One of my recent apprentices, George Waldrop, recently
told me that his bird "took a squirrel" while inside the mew. A few days later George told
me that the bird got a second squirrel while still in the mew. I asked him, "How do you
think it is happening?" George said he did not know but that he planned on putting up a
video surveillance system and find out what was going on. George, who was an avid
fisherman before he degenerated into a falconer, called me a few days later saying that
the mystery had been solved. "My bird" he said, "is caching acorns in his mew along with
a piece of string. When no one is watching, the bird ties an acorn to the string and is
trolling for squirrels."
Before we get into the actual history there is just one more thing I want to say. Just in
case there is anyone here who has a sworn duty to enforce the laws, please remember the
events described in this talk are just hearsay, told by a liar AND it all happened so long
ago that I am sure the statute of limitation has expired.
With this understood and agreed upon, let get to the meat of the matter.
The History: The Proto-club
There is no definitive date that I can find as to when the club was first formed. I think it
evolved more than was instituted. According to sources that were there, 5 falconers in
GA held birds prior to the 1973 Migratory Bird Act. Their permits were issued by the GA
DNR. They were Tim Dobbs, Don Nixon, Joel Volpi, Malcolm Edwards, Standing: Don
Ball. After the MB Act was passed permits had to be issued jointly between the state and
the USFWS. Thirteen people took and passed the test on the same day adding Don
Nixon Chris Dugan, Chris and Greg Dobbs and 6 others to those original five. This group
of falconers came to be known as the first club.
I personally made my first contact with the group through Malcolm Edwards (photo) in
early 1978. I had just graduated from college, had read everything the library had on the
subject (two books - As the Falcon Her Bells and A Hawk for the Bush) and contacted
NAFA. NAFA referred me to Malcolm. I asked if he could connect me with some
falconers and he politely side-stepped the request. For all practical purposes the club was
a closed fraternity who got together and flew birds occasionally and held "meets" in the
vicinity of Americus and Gay, GA and near Macon at Oaky Woods. I never attended any
of those early meets
Before I talked to Malcolm I did not know that there was any such thing as falconry
regulations and there was very little enforcement of the Migratory Bird Act in GA at that
time. Hawks were still considered vermin and were shot and hung on fences as "scare
hawks". Before talking to Malcolm I had received from a logger an imprinted Cooper's
hawk. I expected it to behave like the one Hobby Glasier described in his book, but it
didn't. One day it would sit the glove and even fly to me and the next it was trying to
claw my eyes out. I was a falconry failure, and still have the scars to prove it.
I released the Coopers and moved to SC where one of Malcolm's friends, Kent
Nickerson, agreed to sponsor me and I received my first permit. I flew birds for two years
in SC and then returned to Atlanta. I immediately contacted the DNR for my state permit
and they put me in touch with Dr. Bill Hammonds who was acting as the unofficial
liaison between the DNR and the falconry community. We became great friends and the
two of us, along with Jerry Gafford, hunted together regularly. Through Bill and Jerry I
reconnected with Malcolm and we met, along with Bob Gordon, Tom Blackburn and Joel
Volpi, at Gafford's home in Conyers, GA for a reorganization of the Club. Malcolm was
elected president of the reorganized club and we officially took the name of the "old"
club. They asked me to be the secretary/treasurer. Malcolm's first official act as president
was to give me a box full of patches and an overdue $300 bill for them.
As Jerry Gafford said at one of the meetings, we "were a hedonistic club" here to have
fun hunting hawks. And, that is what we did. We held mostly unorganized hunts in the
Atlanta area with an occasional trip to the old haunts near Americus, GA. The club began
to add new members, like Stewart Farron.
All of this took place in the middle of the USFWS sting operation known as Operation
Falcon. Just in case you don't know, Operation Falcon was a sting the USFWS conducted
to catch falconers trafficking in the international sale of birds of prey. At that time most
falconers were obsessed with following the saga.
Anxious to get the club going I invited everyone to my home in Jonesboro, GA for dinner
and a meeting. I sent the following letter to the falconers (photo of letter) on Feb 14,
1985.
"Tom Whorton, law enforcement officer of region four with the
USFWS and participant in "operation falcon", has agreed to
address our group. He will be giving his side of the story.
I assure you that we do not have to agree with him but we can
offer him a fair hearing. There are always two sides to any story.
We will be better off if we know both.
Mr. Whorton will be at my home at 7 PM on Saturday the 2nd of
March. This is not to be a hunting meet - there will be no need to
bring birds."
I spoke to Dr. Bill Hammonds last Tuesday and ask him to give me his account of that
meeting. He was there as was Malcolm Edwards, Allan Sikes, Jerry Gafford and a Vet
student from UGA whose name was Woods (I believe) along with others I cannot
remember. Bill's account of the meeting proved the interesting character of that band of
brothers. Bill related the story much the way I remembered it.
After dinner, the falconers began to question Mr. Whorton about the facts of Operation
Falcon. Whorton was defensive to say the least and did not like the questions we asked or
the fact that we were aware of some of the questionable practices of the USFWS in the
raids. Bill said the agent became more and more belligerent saying that "every falconer
makes a mistake sometime" and turned to me saying that he knew where I lived and that
he had a "badge and a gun". That was more than Jerry Gafford could take. Bill said that
Jerry responded to Agent Whorton with, "What are you going to do? Shoot the preacher
in the church parsonage?"
Operation Falcon eventually passed into the annals of failed bureaucratic policy but the
Club stayed around.
Not long after that meeting Malcolm said he did not want to be president any longer…
(maybe he was afraid he would get shot, too) and asked me if I would accept the
presidency. I agreed.
About that time, I finished the course work I was taking at Atlanta Christian College and
moved to Antioch Christian Church in Oconee, GA. The hunting was good there and I
had access to a lot of land. The club had a lot of official and unofficial meets in Oconee
with falconer friends showing up on weekends, dutifully attending church with me on
Sunday morning and then hunting with me on Sunday afternoon.
It was during this time that I really got to know Malcolm Edwards. To this day Malcolm
is still my example of an intelligent, conscientious and effective falconer. He was also a
gracious gentleman. My correspondence folder is full of the thank you letters he sent me
and my wife after his visits. His counsel was always that that of a humble wise man and
in my opinion the GA falconry community owes more to him than any other individual.
That is not to say that men like Stewart Farron, Joel Volpi and Bob Gordon were not
around… and they did have their own kind of influence. Joel was our long winger. He
and I along with Bill Hammonds rode down to Statesboro and visited with a young
falconer named Shane Venable. We secured an invitation from Shane to host the meet the
next year. The Club meet was held in Statesboro at the Holiday Inn for several years
following. Bob Gordon had suggested in correspondence to me earlier that we should set
aside MLK weekend as the official date for the meet every year and we did so.
Malcolm was our HH guy and Joel was our longwinger. Malcolm would say, "A
peregrine does a good job at getting itself killed" but Joel loved the Merlins. At one of the
early hunts, Joel brought his little Merlin to my house in Jonesboro and we went to a field
looking for Vesper sparrows. I did not know what a Vesper sparrow was. Joel explained
it to me and then showed me. A few minutes into the hunt one got up, but instead of
going to cover, as I expected, the sparrow started ringing up in a classic flight not unlike
the Larks in the British Isles. Sparrow and Merlin circled in ever tightening circles
straight over our heads. Just when the little falcon finally managed to equal the sparrow's
pitch, the sparrow instantly turned head down and dove toward us on the ground with the
Merlin right behind it. The Merlin failed to catch the sparrow but its flight captured my
interest in flying long wings.
Jerry Gafford lived just east of Atlanta in Conyers and had always flown big female RTs.
One was named "Big Girl". It was a love/hate relationship. Jerry loved the bird and in
return the bird hated Jerry. The bird was afraid of nothing and big enough to take on
anything. One day, Jerry and I were hunting squirrels in Oconee. Big Girl got after a
squirrel and it bailed. Big Girl hit the ground just behind the squirrel and chased it on
foot. The squirrel ran up into the closest hollow tree. Big Girl walked over to the tree,
looked up into the hollow space and then shot a ninja-like foot up into the hollow and
pulled out the squirrel by the tail.
Jerry enjoyed the RTs but wanted to try long wings. One day at lunch after a hunt with
me and Bill Hammonds he made me a proposition. Jerry had made contact with a
falconer in Salt Lake City who had experience locating Prairie Falcons, but since Jerry
was deathly afraid of heights he knew he could not rappel the cliffs to take the birds. He
said, "If you will go down the cliff and take the birds, I will pay all your expenses." I had
never rappelled before so I went to the library and checked out a book on the subject and
borrowed a rope. There were no cliffs in Atlanta, so I "practiced" off of the back of the
gym at Atlanta Christian College.
Jerry was good to his word and took me, a borrowed rope, and a library book to the Red
Desert of Wyoming. I came back with 2 eyasses. I have to admit that I did not have that
much success hunting that first falcon, but as Bob Gordon (who eventually ended up with
one of them) said, "We sure learned to be good at telemetry tracking."
I am not sure that I was ever "elected" as president of the GGH but merely inherited it
through Malcolm's abdication. While I was President, Bill Boni served for a short time as
Editor of the Blue Darter while Don Wilson served as Secretary/Treasurer. Later Bob
Gordon became the editor of the Darter and upgraded it from a single sheet of paper to a
slick publication. We drew up bylaws for the club but decided to not incorporate. We did
a lot of hunting and a lot of lying about the hunts over dinner. We swapped birds and
helped each other build mews and were there for each other in difficult personal times.
And we did accomplish a few "un-hedonistic" noteworthy things.
After reading through my correspondence file, I believe that we may have had an impact
on the USFWS decision to allow falconers to do educational programs for the general
public. As the club became more active, we began to get requests from schools and civic
groups to speak and do educational programs with our birds. Somehow it came to Burma
Campbell's (the 1980s counterpart to Carmen Simonton) attention that we were doing it
and… well, as Bob Gordon said, "Burma was the meanest white woman God ever made"
and besides that she just did not like falconers (especially Joel Volpi).
I wrote her office asking for the official policy and received a letter from Jim Scharnagle
saying that it was probably illegal but they probably would not "come after you" for
doing it. Well, after Operation Falcon we were a bit leery of that. Bobby Kennedy, Jr.
was a falconer at that time and had written several articles in the Hawk Chalk on legal
issues so I wrote Mr. Kennedy asking his opinion and suggestions. I received a personal
note from him saying that he supported the idea. Later I received from him a package of
letters to Senators and Congressman where he asked for their support and letters to the
director of the USFWS saying that he supported falconers using their birds for
educational purposes. When the regulations were revised, "educational use" was allowed.
Looking back on the people who have been associated with the club, I am impressed with
how many have gone on to influence the broader falconry community. Matt Mullenix
was just a kid when Rick Schomburg brought him to the meets. Now he is recognized as
a pioneer in micro falconry. Bill Boni is today a prolific writer for the Journal, Hawk
Chalk and the author of "A Tale of Passagers". Steve Hein is a renowned wildlife artist
and the director of the Wildlife Center at Georgia Southern. Eric Edwards is another of
those boys who went hunting with us and now, just this last month, completed a term as
NAFA's southeastern region representative. Don Wilson was instrumental in the
establishment of the Falconers and Austringers of Alabama. Dale Arrowood has
contributed heavily to the education program here at Callaway Gardens and elsewhere. I
am sure there are others I don't know about.
I said in the beginning of this talk that there were three premises. The first one was that
all this happened long ago and far away… the second was that all falconers are liars.
Now for the third one: The best thing that has come out of the GA falconry club is the
friendships it has established. Researching this talk required me to think about and
contact friends I had lost touch with. In doing so I realized what real friends they are.
Even after years of neglect the friendships were still strong and real.
We all know how that falconry can get in your blood and become a passion that dances
around the fringe of insanity. For that reason, I always encourage my apprentices to keep
their priorities straight. Those priorities should be in this order: Faith, Family, Friends
and Falconry. I have learned from preparing this talk that in reality, there would be very
little, if any, falconry if it were not for the friendships.
I hope you will be as blessed by the friendships you have here and that you will cherish
them as much as I have learned to.