Hunting foxes with eagles

"The fun isn't in the killing but in watching the birds diving, tackling and wrestling prey." said Hasan Wormanbek [Photo by Erik Nilsson/China Daily]

Wolves are up to six times heavier than golden eagles. And they also thrash and gnash when clutched.

"Hunting with eagles is a science," says Wormanbek, a burkitshi (Kazakh for a person who hunts with eagles).

"You must follow nature."

He has raised four birds of prey since 1976, when his father passed the tradition down to him. He has since taught his son.

"Eagles and trainers form bonds," Wormanbek says.

"My eagle flies around me when I'm herding on the grassland. He always comes back."

Owning golden eagles is illegal, but ethnic Kazakhs are exempt. The hunting tradition has been sustained for all of recorded history and remains entrenched in their cultural identity.

They must register each captive bird with the government.

They don't breed them. Rather, they hunt the eagles they in turn hunt with.

Xinjiang's Kazakh nomads most often take eaglets from nests.

"I know every nest on the mountain," Wormanbek says.

That's how he got his current raptor.

Otherwise, nomads bait them with meat and nab them with nets. Or they find eagles gobbling carrion and wait until the birds overindulge. Bloated raptors are too sluggish to escape after excessive gluttony.

Golden eagles gulp about 2 kilograms of meat a day.

"Some herdsmen don't want to raise them because it's expensive," Wormanbek says.

Meat means money in nomadic communities, where livestock is the primary currency.

The birds molt from May to September and need more nutrition to grow thicker and longer feathers in autumn.