50th Opočno Falconry Meet

This week I travelled to Opočno in the Czech Republic with four friends for the 50th International Falconry Meet. We drove the seven hours from Košice on Wednesday afternoon, ready for registration and the first day of hunting on the Thursday.

The opening ceremony was held in the castle and amazing to see how many falconers and birds there were in attendance with 67 Golden Eagles and a whole lot more Falcons and Hawks on top of that.

It was great to catch up with friends we've made at previous falconry meets and to make new contacts.

We spent two days with the Golden Eagles and one day out with the hawks; Goshawks and Harris' Hawks.

Bart, a Dutch falconers and friend of ours, brought his new male eagle for the meet and on their first day out hunting together they caught a Roe Deer.

It was an awesome flight as the eagle locked onto the backend of the doe and she ran around a tree trying to get him off. He had several flights leading up to it but to hold on gives them confidence which is great for training young birds.

At the end of each day we had a ceremony to pay tribute to the game, a tradition which is still carried out with horns playing, a small fire and pine branches put into the mouths of the game.