Falconry

The Ancient Sport

Falconry is truly an ancient hunting sport, practiced 2,000 years before the birth of Christ. The first record of falconry is a bas relief depicting a falconer which was found in the Khorsabad ruins (1700 BC) in Mesopotamia. Aristotle (384-322 BC) wrote of hawking in Greece. A mosaic in Argos, Greece (Villa of the Falconer, 500 AD) is the earliest pictorial documentation of falconry in Europe.

Falconry was practiced in England during Saxon times (733 AD) by royalty only. However, by 821 AD even monks and yeoman hunted with hawks. During his invasion of France, King Edward III brought over 30 falconers and 70 foxhounds with him to provide recreation for his knights between campaigns.

The office of Royal Falconer was created in the courts of the medieval kings around 900 AD. The Royal Falconer ranked 4th from the King himself, and after a successful hunt, the king was obliged to rise as the falconer entered the dining hall.

Trained hawks were considered so valuable that ransoms, fines, and rents were paid wholly or in part with them. Peace treaties and dowries for marriages often included trained hawks. Theft of a hawk was punishable by death.

In the 12th century, practitioners began to write about falconry in Spanish, Turkish, Arabic, and German. The first printed book on the subject appeared in Germany in 1472. In the 16th century, Cortes discovered that Montezuma, the Aztec king, had an assortment of trained hunting hawks. This is the first known documentation of hawking in the Americas.
 
Trained hawks were considered so valuable that ransoms, fines, and rents were paid wholly or in part with them.
Falconry was a method of hunting to put game on the royal table. The falconer was responsible for the maintenance of the hawks and the equipment. His primary duty to the king or Emperor was the capture and training of wild hawks. Many of the techniques and equipment used today were developed by the Master of Hawks- the Royal Falconer.

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Modern Falconry....