Falconry is considered a symbol of this region’s civilization more than any other region in the world; 50% of the world’s falconers exist in the Middle East, which includes the Arab region.
In the philosophy of the region hunting trips teach patience, endurance and self-reliance and bravery can be learned from falcons.
We prefer natural breeding and we only interfere occasionally to perform artificial insemination or to pull eggs to increase our chances of a second clutch. Most of the eggs are bred within an incubator where the condition of the unborn falcons is constantly monitored. The newly born falcons are only raised by hand for the first couple of days and once they have survived this crucial period they can return to their parents where we let them grow up in a natural environment.
The process of wild hacking is very complex and it took us many years to perfect it.
Once the birds reach a certain age we have a highly selective process in order to chose which birds go into wild hacking and which ones go directly into big aviaries.
We have formulated a wild hacking process over the past 15 years. We emulate the natural processes which a wild falcon experiences to ensure a strong hunter. In their time in the wild the young birds will learn to fly, play in the wind, and perform hunting manoeuvres.
We release the falcon, so the falcon can do the flying, we try to put some energy and make his muscles strong to work good at the race,” It’s about two months until the falcon is really trained. We train them sometimes twice a day, but usually it’s once a day.
In the old way, we also train them with cars, chasing the car. I put my hand outside the window and the bird is following me. So, I go by two, three or four kilometres and it’s enough. Sometimes, a good falcon can go six or eight kilometres, just chasing the car at almost 90 kph. We say it’s about two months before a falcon is ready, but we keep on training until the last race, it’s almost six months. That’s a season for.