Critter Geek

A few years ago, Steve and I attended several lectures about raptors by Alida Morzenti, in preparation for training to handle captive birds of prey. The lectures were fascinating, but one image stuck with me more than any other…the eagle hunters of western Mongolia.

Alida described how the hunters would travel out onto the steppe, on sturdy ponies, with a wooden prop for the arm that held the bird they used for falconry. But this was no ordinary falconry bird…this was a Golden Eagle. It sounded crazy…falconry is one thing, but Golden Eagles are huge, powerful, dangerous creatures. She told us they used them to hunt wolves, but I didn’t believe her. She explained that the eagles live with the families, until they are released back into the wild, a relationship that fascinated me.

I kept thinking about those eagle hunters, and found some photos of them that siezed me. They’ve lurked in the back of my memory, an image I’ve returned to often. Fueled by videos found on youtube and a growing interest in how people connect to nature through animals, I wanted to know more. Should I need to go to Mongolia or Kazakhstan to see for myself?

Fortunately, Stephen Bodio lets us visit them vicariously in Eagle Dreams: Searching for Legends in Wild Mongolia, an incredibly interesting and entertaining book.

Bodio had his own vision of the eagle hunters, a photo seen in childhood, and it stayed with him as he grew up and became a falconer living in the mountains of New Mexico. In describing the similarities between his home and the steppe, he expresses something I’ve felt very keenly:

I found something else in New Mexico that I had yearned for in my dreams, something that barely existed in New England: an unsentimental intimacy with, and a life lived among, animals; not a sentimental animal rights view of them, nor a reduction of them to utilitarian automatons, but a kind of familiarity with them that acknowledged that they were not humans but that they were persons…

Exactly what I wanted to see for myself by visiting the eagle hunters! Bodio, however, had real falconry and trekking experience to prepare himself for the trip. He even had some attempted work with Golden Eagles:

I became a falconer in the sixties, and made my first attempt to train an eagle in ‘71. She broke my hand.

Part 1 of “Eagle Dreams” has the full story of that experience, and is mostly background on how Bodio reached the point of boarding a flight from Beijing to Ulaan Bataar. In the authors note at the beginning of the book, he goes so far as to suggest that some may want to skip directly to Part 2…something I don’t recommend. Part 1 reads a bit slower, but is interesting background and includes some great stories of raptor obsession.

Admittedly, though, I really became engrossed in Part 2, with its stories of meeting the eagle hunters and traveling the steppes. And yes, they do sometimes hunt wolves and, incredibly, in some cases even snow leopards, but you’ll learn why my favorite eagle hunter doesn’t. And they aren’t ponies, they’re horses.

You’ll get some fascinating lore about falconry and Mongolian culture. There are even sources for information in case you want to go yourself…though you’ll be warned that “Food and toilets are not issues to take lightly.” The freezing cold of the Mongolian winter…that’s eagle hunting season…is enough to make me grateful for Eagle Dreams…by living the adventure vicariously, I don’t have to solve all the problems of travel, money, and discomfort myself.

Or do I?