This fall, Alabama will open several of its state parks to falconry, a sport in which trained birds of prey are used to hunt squirrels or rabbits – and a sport that can be controversial, as Get Out writer Sunny Montgomery learned in 2014.
That March, in an effort to better understand the ancient practice, which some historians believe originated 10,000 years ago, Montgomery joined one local falconer on a hunt in Harrison Bay State Park. Her story, which follows below, originally published in Get Out Chattanooga on May 31, 2014.
The falconer, Vivian Anderson, a high school senior at the time, is now a first-year medical student at Mercer University School of Medicine in Savannah, Georgia. She is also a raptor volunteer at Savannah’s Oatland Island Wildlife Center.
Yet the message she helped impart years ago still soars like, Anderson hopes, the red tail feathers of her former hunting partner, Onhekwensa.
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