Goshawk Training: A Guide to Patience and Precision

By Training Owls for Display and Education
Comments 35
21 Aug 2026

Goshawk Training: A Guide to Patience and Precision

A Hawk That Asks Questions of You

The goshawk is not a bird for the first-time falconer. She is fast, highly strung, and physically capable of doing real damage with those long yellow legs, and she has an unnerving habit of noticing every inconsistency in the way she is handled. Where a more forgiving hawk will shrug off a muddled morning, a goshawk files it away and remembers. That is precisely what makes her the most rewarding bird in British falconry: nothing is given, everything is earned.

The aim of the training is not obedience. It is a working agreement — the hawk hunts with you because hunting alongside you pays better than hunting alone. Get the foundations right and the whole season follows from them. Rush them and you will spend months patching up the consequences.

Mews, Perch and Kit: Setting Up Properly

Sort the accommodation before the hawk arrives, not after. A goshawk that is cold, wet or constantly disturbed will never settle, and no amount of patient manning will compensate for a poor setup.

A dry, draught-free mews with natural daylight, a bath she can use every day, and double-door entry so she can never slip past you at feeding time.
A broad, well-padded bow perch or ring perch, set at a height she can step up to without scrambling. Thin perches ruin feathers.
Two or three pairs of good leather jesses, a strong swivel, and a leash short enough never to tangle in the bath.
A properly fitted hood. Many austringers fly their goshawks unhooded, but a hood that fits well will save you a great deal of trouble in the car and at the vet.
Accurate scales and a notebook. Weigh the same way, at the same time, every single morning.
A creance, a padded lure, and a stout glove that actually fits your hand.

Goshawks are a protected native species and there are ringing and record-keeping requirements that vary across the UK. Satisfy yourself on the current legal position in your own nation before you take a bird on.

Manning: The Hours That Matter Most

Manning is simply the business of accustoming the hawk to the human world, and with a goshawk it cannot be hurried. Begin in the quiet of the mews, with the hawk on the fist and a bag of small tidbits — slivers of chick or lean beef — in your other hand. No radio, no visitors, no sudden movement. Feed her from the fist often and in tiny amounts, so that the fist becomes the place where good things happen rather than the place she is restrained.

As she stops bating and starts watching you rather than the door, widen her world gradually. Move to the garden, then a quiet lane, then somewhere with traffic and dogs and children. Each step should be small enough that she barely notices it. If she bates repeatedly, you have pushed too far; retreat and try again in a few days.

Introduce the hood early, in short sessions, and never fight it. A goshawk that learns the hood means darkness and rest will travel calmly for the rest of her life.

Flying Weight: Reading the Hawk, Not the Scales

Weight is the single most powerful tool you have, and the one most often misused. Weigh your hawk every morning before feeding, at the same hour, on the same scales, and write it down. Over a few weeks a pattern emerges: the weight at which she is alert, quick to step to the fist, and eager to chase the lure.

That is her flying weight, and it is personal to her. It shifts with the season, with the weather, and with the quality of her food. Learn to read the hawk herself:

Too high: bating constantly, ignoring the lure, looking up and away, reluctant to come to the fist.
Too low: dull, slow, no spark, standing hunched and fluffed, chilled easily.
Right: bright-eyed, still, watching everything, stepping across to you before you have finished calling.

Bring weight down in small steps of a few grammes, never by starving. A goshawk that has been taken too low is a veterinary problem, not a training one.

Entering to Quarry: From the Lure to the First Slip

Teach the lure thoroughly before you think about live quarry. Swing it, let her catch it, let her feed on it, and then call her from it back to the fist. Build distance on the creance, then remove it. When she will fly fifty metres to the lure with real intent, she is ready to be entered.

Choose her first quarry so that she cannot lose. A rabbit bolted by a ferret from a short bury, in cover she can reach in a stride, is ideal. Make the slip close, let the chase be short, and let her make the kill herself. Do not interfere, and do not take the quarry from her the moment she has it — kneel, let her eat, and offer a tidbit so that the fist and the kill are linked rather than opposed. Once she has killed cleanly several times, the pattern is set for the season.

In the Field: Hedgerow, Wood and Cover

Goshawks are short-winged sprinters. They need a slip, not a long tail chase, so walk your hedgerows, rough grass and woodland rides quietly and look for quarry sitting tight: rabbits, pheasant, woodpigeon, the occasional squirrel. Ferreting and a steady pointing dog both suit her enormously, but the slip must be quick and close — ten to fifteen metres is plenty.

Always end on a success, feed her up properly, and give her a rest day when she needs one. Overfly a hawk and you will undo weeks of careful work. When the season closes, raise her weight slowly, keep the food fresh and plentiful through the moult, and keep handling her daily. The hawks that fly best in October are the ones that were never forgotten in June.

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5 Comments

Robert Sonny says Jul 21, 2024 at 10:00am

I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system
Reply
- John Abraham says Jul 21, 2024 at 10:00am
  
  I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system
  Reply
  - Robert Sonnysays Jul 21, 2024 at 10:00am
    
    I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system
    Reply
Robert Sonny says Jul 21, 2024 at 10:00am

I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system
Reply

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