A flurry of feathers and talons, and a Harris’s hawk alights on my outstretched hand, plundering the bit of raw meat sandwiched between my gloved fingers. The surprisingly light bird tosses the morsel into the air and gobbles it down. Then with a turn of my arm, it’s gone, soaring back to the treetops. I’m left in awe of the magnificent, keen-eyed raptor native to the American Southwest.
“You can see birds of prey at other facilities, but you don’t get to handle them, and we really wanted people to have that experience,” says Jeff Curtis, master falconer at Biltmore.
Asheville’s historic home and resort attracts 1.4 million visitors each year, many of them drawn to its gilded architecture and lavish past. But I’m here to experience firsthand the art of falconry, a 6,000-year-old hunting tradition second only to hunting with hounds.
Curtis and his assistant, Samantha Bristow, have brought a couple of birds for our group to meet and learn to handle, before taking them to hunt in the woods above Biltmore Inn, set on the estate’s 8,000 acres. Sam Adams is their Harris’s hawk, a peculiarly social bird of prey that signals the presence of prey with a shake of its long, white tail feathers. Perched on my glove, its inscrutable gaze darts from me to the bushes and up to the sky, tracking the rapid flight of a tiny bird. It’s a fraction of his prowess. Hawks like Sam Adams can sense a mouse three football fields away. They shred with their beaks, but it’s the talons I have to watch out for. They are 10 times more powerful than a human handshake.
Bristow lets loose the second bird, a red-shouldered hawk. I raise my hand, meat firmly grasped between my fingers, and watch—breath held—as it swoops toward me. Falconry might be an ancient sport of kings, but it’s just as captivating to this 21st-century novice.
This article appears in the Summer 2024 issue of Southbound.
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