F  L  A  U  N  T

 [Lauren McGough](https://www.laurenmcgough.com) is an Arizona-based falconer and anthropologist, committed to the practice of hunting in partnership with eagles. Her dedication to the skill is unmatched, as she learned how to hunt with eagles through her settlement as a Fulbright Scholar with the nomadic Kazakh berkutchi of Mongolia. She has been a licensed falconer since age 14, graduating from the University of Oklahoma with two degrees in Zoology and International Studies. She has used her developed knowledge to rehabilitate golden eagles in South Africa.  McGough boasts an impressive presence in cinematic art for her practice, featured on 60 Minutes in a segment called “[Fly Like an Eagle](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/lauren-mcgough-how-an-oklahoma-woman-learned-to-fly-like-an-eagle-in-mongolia-60-minutes-2020-02-09/),” in [BBC World Service](http://bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3csv0d0), and in numerous documentaries like “[OVERLAND](https://www.falconbridgecollection.com/),” “[GoPro: Eagle Hunters in a New World](http://gopro.com/news/burkitshi-eagle-hunters-mongolia),” and “[Buck the Cubicle](https://buckthecubicle.com/stories/2018/7/26/a-relationship-with-an-eagle-is-a-equal-one).”  _Flaunt_ chatted with McGough over Zoom regarding the relationship between man and bird, the training process of falconry, and her interest in flight. Her expertise is also [featured](https://flaunt.com/content/so-you-want-to-make-it-in-hollywood-but-youre-a-bird) in the latest issue of _Flaunt Magazine_, [The Dawn Chorus Issue](https://flaunt.com/store/issue-174).   **What have you noticed about the relationship between man and bird from all of your interactions?** What I love about falconry is that it gives you a window into the wild and natural world. A hawk catching a rabbit happens untold thousands of times every day in the wild. You would never know it, and you never see it. To have a bird of prey hunting partner, you get this front row seat into a predator-prey dance that goes on, and it’s incredible. It makes you respect the rabbit, who 9 times out of 10 outwits the hawk, and it makes you respect the hawk for their athletic prowess and how hard it is to get dinner at the end of the day. Even if it’s on the outskirts of town, it all melts away, you’re focused on your bird and that patch of the wild, and the same goal of looking for a rabbit or something to chase. It’s a strange partnership, but one that I adore. **What do you wish people knew about falconry?** Falconry has existed for several thousands of years. I wish people knew that all we do is get out of the bird’s way. It lives its life just like it would in the wild; it flies, it soars, it chases, it hunts, it eats what it catches. The only difference is that it has this crazy ape partner that it comes home with at the end of the day. I don’t make the bird do anything. I simply let it exercise its natural instincts. What makes falconry difficult is that you have to convince this wild animal that you’re worth hanging around. A bird of prey isn’t a social animal, so it doesn't understand negative reinforcement and has no desire to please you. You can only train it through positive reinforcement and through slowly convincing it that if it sticks around, it gets to chase things, and it’s all a positive experience. It has improved my communication skills in general, with people even, because of how much care you have to take to take care of a bird of prey. **How does the relationship between you and the bird change over the training process?** When it begins it’s all food related. The only way you start to win over their trust in the beginning is through using food, fresh tidbits of meat. You start with a totally wild hawk, and as its familiarity with you increases and its appetite increases, eventually it'll take this nice little tidbit of meat that you're offering it, and the great psychological leap when you’re training is when they hop to your glove for food, when they come to you, even though it's a very short distance, just to hop. That's the big psychological leap. It’s the “this person isn't going to hurt me, in fact, I get food when I go hang out with it.” In the beginning, I would say first several months definitely, it's the food based relationship they're starting to see that you're okay, but it's mostly because they get food at the end of the day. Over years something really magical happens where they want to be with you “just because.”In that, the need for appetite completely goes away. My eagle now, I don't have to weigh her or watch how much food I feed her. She just wants to go hunting with me, and she wants to come back when she misses a rabbit. And that's that's a pretty cool thing once the routine takes place, and a positive relationship transcends food, and they just like being with you. It takes a while, but it's well worth it.   **What is the best thing you feel you get out of the relationship?** So, it is that window into the wild. It’s very addictive to want to go out and fly my bird, because there's no room in your brain for anything else. You can’t think about taxes or your job or someone that made you mad. You really have to live in the moment, and the way that I hunt with my eagle is that I have her on my glove, and we walk across the prairie, and I can feel her. She's like this coiled spring on my glove, and she's super alert high, with her neck arched and watching every little blade of grass move, and I'm super alert with her. You don't know when but all of the sudden a jackrabbit might appear. Before I have time to process it, she's exploded off my gloves, and I see her pumping hard after it, and I see the jack rabbit running really fast, and all I can do is stop and stare with my heart in my throat like wondering what's going to happen next. I've had the jack rabbit jump 10 feet in the air right as the eagle comes in, and the eagle skids across the ground and the jack sails away. I've had the eagle come in, and when the jack tries to jump, she flips over and puts her feet out and grabs it. If the jack rabbit gets away, you applaud the jackrabbit, because whatever it did was amazing. If it doesn't, then you sit there with your eagle while she eats, and they’re really content. They're happiest when they've just caught something, and they're eating this fresh warm meal, and you can just sit there in nature with them and enjoy it. I think sometimes, in Disney movies or other movies, people forget how hard the life of a predator is. A predator is often the bad guy, but it's a hard way to make a living even when you’re a 10 pound eagle with a 6 foot wingspan, it's really difficult to catch your own dinner. Some of the Eagles that I fly are rehab birds, and the last part of the rehab process is hunting with them. If their parents didn't teach them how to hunt, it is such a slow process. They are fooled by every trick in the rabbit's book. I've seen Eagles that can only fly in a straight line that still haven't even figured out how to turn yet when the jack rabbit turns. It's just being friends with a creature that's totally different from you and lets you into their world.  **What is the most interesting behavior you’ve witnessed or learned from birds?** The hunting is how you bond, because that's what they truly enjoy doing. From that, I've had an eagle fly off my glove and land by a pond and then just take a bath in the pond, which is a really neat behavior. They bathe just like a sparrow in a birdbath. It’s just this 10-pound bird doing it instead. In the spring, once you've developed a deep bond, and if it's a female eagle, they want to nest build with you, which makes you feel good. So I would leave like branches and sticks in her aviary, and she'd start to arrange them in a certain way, and I’d go in there and help her, but it's quite cute, invariably you do it wrong to them. So if I put a stick in the nest area, she'll look at it and pick it up and throw it out or move it to a different spot, or they clearly don't understand exactly where the stick should go. Through hunting, you start to see playful behavior and other kinds of behaviors.  **I saw that you like to skydive as well. What compels you about flight?** It does in a weird way, which is hard for me to explain. Your bird is flying away, and you feel like you're there with it. Your eagle can be hundreds of yards away in flight, and it kind of carries you there. You feel like you're still there with her. In skydiving, I just wanted to experience, in some kind of way, what flight was like without a whole machine around me, like an airplane, and then just to get over the obvious fears that come with it and learn to enjoy myself in the moment. I'm just a baby skydiver, I only have 65 jumps, which is not many at all, but it was really cool to have learned, so far, that you can fly kind of like Superman, depending on how you move your body. So you can slow down, you can speed up, you can flip over, and there's a lot of joy in it. The other cool thing about skydiving is the freefall part is really chaotic and you open your parachute and it’s very peaceful and quiet and there’s no rushing. That’s what I imagine it would be like to soar. It helps me understand my birds better and do things I’m afraid to do. **What are the best characteristics for a bird of prey to have to be successful at hunting?** When I lived in Mongolia, they liked to say that an eagle is like a mirror, and it brings out the best and the worst in you, and it accentuates your best traits or your worst. I like to think all birds of prey can be good for falconry, it’s your job to communicate with them. I would say a gutsy bird that’s going to really do the crazy thing to catch that rabbit, that doesn’t show that much fear to you in the beginning, that sizes you up and thinks ‘what do you want’ and isn’t afraid initially. It’s a lot easier to mold a bird that isn’t fearful. They’re all individuals, which I love. Even though it is hard to let them go, and they revert to their wild state really quickly, the better I train, the better I communicate with them. Once they’re in the wild for a few days, your relationship totally disappears. If I released an eagle and saw her a few days later, she would probably fly away or show no reaction to me whatsoever. It makes you appreciate what you have in the moment.