Howdy folks and greetings from the Great Plains of North Texas! Today's post is an entry for the amazing @keithboone and his #featheredfriday challenge. Even though it isn't Friday yet.
I was reading an article about a nomadic people in Mongolia, they are the Altai Kazakh of Western Mongolia, high up in the mountains. They've used Golden Eagles and also falcons to hunt for food and clothing in the form of mostly rabbits, fox and wolves but wolves are the highly sought after prize.
This has been a centuries old tradition for their people but has only recently been discovered by the outside world and Westerners. Now they hold an annual festival where the hunters, and huntresses, compete in competition with their eagle hunting partners.
The Kazakh people grow up with these majestic birds of prey, both falcons and eagles. They capture the birds when they are very young and still in their nests. Usually this means they have to scale cliffs in order to reach the nests, then the birds are raised as part of the family.
They don't keep the birds for the bird's entire lives though, because they believe the birds should be free so they set them free after some years, some as long as ten years.
I was astounded when I saw the amazing photos of the Kazakh people and their birds. Here are just a few of them starting with three different huntresses.
Here are a few scenes from the annual Mongolian Eagle Hunters Festival:
Here's a young hunter-in-training, notice the falcon to the left, they start the little kids out with the smaller birds:
source
Here are just some random photos:
Thanks for reading folks! I could go on with dozens of fascinating photos that I found and I hope you enjoyed these selected few. It's a world and lifestyle that most of us didn't even know existed!
-jonboy Texas
the gentleman redneck
PS- ya know...you might just be a redneck if:
Your parakeet knows the phrase "Open up; police!"
