The Harry/Harriet line

Contact: Toby Bradshaw <baywingdb@comcast.net>

Harry was a passage tiercel Harris's hawk flown in the 1970s, and Harriet was a first-generation captive-bred bird from Don Beery's breeding project in Washington.  Len Eisenzimmer was the first person to produce progeny from Harry and Harriet in 1979.  Harry and Harriet were then given to Larry and Karen Cottrell of Klamath Falls, Oregon, where they continued to produce fantastic young Harris's hawks in the 1980s.  Pacific Northwest falconers beat a path to Larry's and Karen's door (no mean feat if you've ever been down their so-called driveway) when word got out about the quality of the Harris's hawks they were breeding.  The outstanding trait of the Harry/Harriet line is their single-minded dedication to killing game of all shapes and sizes.  Birds from this line are the best pheasant hawks I've seen among Harris' hawks -- they are persistent in the chase.  Hawks from the Harry/Harriet line have the typical Arizona look, long and lean with a small head, large feet, and thin legs and toes.  Most females seem to fly at 920-1000g, with tiercels 620-650g.

Some of the fine game hawks out of Harry and Harriet include Babe, Fritz, Vesta, and Yiko.  The Harry/Harriet linebreedings include matings between Salem and Phoenix (both grandkids of Harry and Harriet), who have produced a lot of great eyasses for Dan Pike for almost 20 years.

Larry Cottrell flew Babe, a daughter of Harry and Harriet, more than 20 years ago.  Larry still says that Babe is the best hawk (not just Harris's hawk) that he ever had, and the memory of her catching 54 jacks her first season is still fresh!  Karen Cottrell hunted with Fritz, Babe's brother, and in the same year caught 36 jackrabbits with him.  Down in Oregon they don't even keep track of all the cottontails they catch!  Karen sent Fritz to Jerry Fraulini, and Jerry flew Fritz in a cast with a passage female named Dolly, then later put them up for breeding.  Fritz and Dolly produced one of the hawks now used in Dan Pike's breeding program: Foxtrot (paired with WD-40) and Phoenix (paired with Salem).

In 1983, Harry and Harriet produced two more fabulous game hawks, Vesta and Yiko.  Lee Mann and Dan Pike slew a pile of rabbits with Vesta, but Jerry Fraulini's Yiko is the most effective game hawk I've ever seen.  After producing many fine offspring, Yiko was killed by Hurricane Katrina at the Coulsons's in 2005.

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Last revised: 28-May-06