EAGLE ON THE HUNT.

This article presents an excerpt from the book "Eagle Dreams" by Stephen J. Bodio about hunting with eagles in Mongolia. I am a falconer, among other things, and my love for birds has brought me to many strange places and shown me many strange sights. This day in Mongolia was not my first flight, nor my second, nor my 200th. I have hunted grouse with gyrfalcons on the high plains, and rabbits in industrial junkyards in the eastern cities, hawked on snowshoes in Maine and in sweltering heat in the Sonoran desert. I have corresponded about falconry with an Afghan prince and had an 87-year-old female "eagler" as a houseguest. But I had waited to see the eagle and the fox converge for a long time. Golden eagles are among the three or four largest predatory birds in the world, and perhaps the most biologically successful. We spent all day "hunting the eagle hunters," in Canat's phrase. One time, in a snowy pass, we struck a track: horses, a wolf and a fox, with blood in the fox's footprint! Then, with no warning at all, the eagle was off the glove, stroking, climbing forward.