To hell with deer. A hawking I will go...

Apologies for my recent inactivity. Our deer gun season opened last weekend and I've been trying to squeeze in as much hunting as I can between work and other useless activities.

For someone who said he was going to do more meat hunting this year, I've passed on any number of bucks, but sitting in the blind this morning I spied movement on the ridge opposite me and put the binos on what turned out to be perhaps the largest buck I've personally ever seen with a rifle in my hand.

I watched him make his way down the ridge into a heavily-wooded draw running perpendicular to the ridge I was on. All he had to do was come back out of it. Of course he never did.

If I was smart, tomorrow morning, well before dawn, I would slip into that draw and set up on him. But I'm not.

Instead, I'll be watching my betters hunt. Peregrines, gyrfalcons, goshawks, red-tails, perhaps even a golden eagle.

The North American Falconers Association annual meet is in Woodward this year and tomorrow I'm tagging along with a group of falconers and their birds.

It's a rare opportunity to watch something I've always been fascinated with, but never quite thought I had what it took to actually do.

So as much as I want to shoot that deer, I want to watch these birds fly more.

I mean, just look at him. Who wouldn't drop everything to watch that?