The Week in Falconry: rules and recovery

A heavier week than most. Two Federal Register filings touch our work directly — one on falconers' standing in the broader hunting community, one on the paperwork that governs eagle permits. A break-in at one of California's biggest falconry schools released eleven birds the week before last; three are still missing as of Friday evening. And an older Garden & Gun feature on falconry in coastal Georgia has been circulating again — worth your time if you missed it the first pass.

Re-establishment of the Hunting and Shooting Sports Conservation and Access Council

April 21, 2026 — USFWS Federal Register

The Department of the Interior is re-chartering its federal advisory council on hunting and shooting sports access to public lands. Falconers are inside that constituency by law and by lineage — public access to trapping country is the work of every passage season. The notice opens a nomination window for council members.

What to watch: the closing date in the notice itself, and whether your state falconry association puts a name forward. The council's standing membership has long leaned toward big conservation orgs and gun-industry voices. A falconer's seat at that table is rare, and it is rare in part because we have not often fought for it.

Eagle permits — information-collection submission to OMB

April 1, 2026 — USFWS Federal Register

USFWS submitted to OMB its renewal of the paperwork burden for eagle take and permit applications. The move is administrative — no new rules, no scope change — but the renewal cycle is the right moment to comment on what the forms ask and what they fail to ask. Anyone who has filed a falconry-related eagle application has standing here, and the comments are read.

What to watch: the comment-period dates in the notice, and whether the forms continue to treat falconry-take as parenthetical to the larger eagle-take regime. (They do.)

Break-in at West Coast Falconry, Marysville — three birds still missing

April 16–17, 2026 — abc10.com (covered also by CBS Sacramento and Yahoo News; Fox40 update)

An intruder breached West Coast Falconry's facility in the Marysville foothills overnight April 16–17 and released eleven birds of prey. The barn owl has since come home; as of Friday evening, three remain missing — Walter, a great horned owl; Cubbie, a peregrine falcon; and Cora, a red-tailed hawk who is blind in one eye. The school is one of California's largest training centers and runs the Raptor Patrol public-education program. A community fundraiser is open for recovery costs and security upgrades. Send a kind word if you know them; if you are in the Yuba-Sutter foothills, keep your eyes on the wind. The recovery is the thing now; the lesson can wait until the birds are home.

Garden & Gun: "Falconry in Georgia: A Hunt Like No Other"

October/November 2018 — Garden & Gun, by Patricia Murphy

Not new — but circulating again in falconry circles, and worth pointing to for anyone who hasn't read it. Garden & Gun's long-form feature on the Sea Island and Broadfield falconry program follows master falconers Chris Kennedy and Steve Hein (the latter also runs Georgia Southern's Center for Wildlife Education), Sea Island's outdoor-pursuits director Jon Kent, and apprentice Paige Hansen. The framing is generous, the writing is careful, and the falconers are quoted as falconers — not as exotic-pet keepers or relics. Worth keeping near to hand for the next time someone at a dinner party asks what it is, exactly, that you do.

Hunting season has closed in most jurisdictions. Molt is underway. The mews quiets; the ledger turns to leather, bells, and the slow accounting of a season kept. The news pool will thin between now and the first hot weeks, and the Roundup will be lighter when there is less to lift. Until then.

Robert