Words and Photos by Tyler Sladen
Falconry, for me, is just the natural next step. It takes everything I already love — working dogs, wild birds, hiking through big country — and heightens it. It's not a replacement for anything. It's an evolution.
I've spent years behind bird dogs, watching them work a field, pin a covey, and hold steady until the flush. But with falconry, instead of shouldering a shotgun, you fly a hawk or falcon. You train them to hunt in tandem with your dogs, learning to read each other in real time. It's a different kind of teamwork — one built on patience, trust, and instinct.
The whole process pulls you in deeper. You're not just walking fields — you're thinking like a hawk, noticing wind, thermals, cover, escape routes. You start seeing the landscape not just as terrain, but as a stage for the hunt.
And then there's the predator-prey interaction. It's raw, honest, and unfiltered. You witness wildness in its truest form. Sometimes, you even find yourself rooting for the prey, not because you don't want your hawk to succeed, but because the escape demands more. It sharpens the bird. It raises the bar.
That's the heart of falconry. It's not just about putting game in the bag. It's about making the entire experience as fair, challenging, and visually rich as possible.
You're participating in something ancient, something that requires time, care, and deep attention to the animal you're flying.
Training a hawk isn't fast. It's not easy. You don't command them, you convince them. It's a conversation, not a command chain.
And when it finally works — when the dog pins a bird, the hawk blasts off the glove, and it all comes together in a flash — it's magic. That rare moment where everything wild, instinctive, and trained collides into one shared breath.
There's nothing else like it. Hawk, dog, and prey, all in one frame.
Unbeatable.
This story originally appeared in the Winter 2026 issue of Quail Forever Journal.
Tyler Slader has spent nearly a decade flying accipiters on upland birds over pointing dogs. Alongside his wife, Laine, Tyler runs a kennel of English setters and German shorthairs, all trained for falconry and gun hunting. Their current team includes two goshawks, MiG and Gulag. Tyler and Laine spend most of the year in New Mexico but also spend several months on the road chasing birds and living the life they've built around their dogs and hawks.