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Dr. Lauren McGough is the world\u2019s foremost female falconer\u2014 and it\u2019s high praise indeed, coming from the esteemed eagle trainers of Mongolia. It was on the ancient steppe near Russia that the Kazakh tribe first developed the art of falconry, which has since spread to nearly every continent. By training golden eagles to hunt for foxes on the desolate landscape, the nomads feed and clothe themselves. McGough spent a year living amongst the nomadic tribe, apprenticing herself to learn their ancient ways. She earned their respect–in a culture where only men do the hunting.<\/p>\n
An award-winning television segment on CBS\u2019s 60 Minutes introduced McGough\u2019s skill to America. Not only was she handling a wild, ten-pound bird in sub-degree temperatures, she was bolting up and down steep rocky slopes on horseback, despite having no horse-handling experience.<\/p>\n
Of course, McGough isn\u2019t one to back down from a challenge. She also skydives and is currently working toward her pilot\u2019s license. \u201cIt\u2019s empowering to conquer fears. Being in a plane\u00a0or parachuting also helps me feel the consequences of wind conditions, and that helps me feel more patient when my eagle doesn\u2019t chase a jackrabbit like I expect. It\u2019s added some finesse to my falconry.\u201d<\/p>\n
After leaving Mongolia, McGough, who has degrees in both biology and anthropology, spent two years in South Africa\u00a0studying the Taung Child, the ancient skull of a child that was killed and eaten by an eagle. \u201cI wondered what it would be like to hang out with an African crowned eagle,\u201d McGough said. \u201cI had this esoteric idea to forge a relationship with this monkey-eating bird and see it hunt naturally to see its application to the history of early hominoids.\u201d<\/p>\n
What McGough learned was a lesson in humility. \u201cThe eagle mostly eats vervet monkeys. I tried to give the eagles I worked with a chance to hunt, but the monkeys figured me out. They heard my car and disappeared. The monkeys broke into my house and ate my food. Nothing hurts your ego like being outwitted by monkeys, but it was a great adventure. While I was hunting in the wilds of Africa, I never knew what animals I would see. I saw aardvarks, aardwolves, mongoose, jackals, meerkats, and hornbills.<\/p>\n
The laundry list of African animals took McGough back to her childhood, when she loved watching birds. \u201cI became a junior curator at the Oklahoma City Zoo so I could watch them up
\nclose and see more than a fleeting glimpse of a bird of prey.\u201d She also discovered a life-changing library book about falconers. \u201cIt seemed like something only medieval knights did until I found out about falconry in the United States. The president of the local Falconers Association became my mentor. I didn\u2019t know anything\u00a0about training birds, but I was infatuated with the idea that I could have a relationship with a wild bird.\u201d At the age of fourteen, McGough became a falconer.<\/p>\n
Although McGough has worked with birds of prey around the world, she\u2019s now back in her hometown of Oklahoma City. Her most recent project is rehabbing golden eagles to release back onto the prairie. \u201cYou can\u2019t just heal these birds and chuck them back into the wild,\u201d McGough said. \u201cThe young birds are clumsy and slow-developing. If a parent had not taught them to hunt, their mortality rate is almost 100%, so I train them to fly and catch rabbits before releasing them.\u201d<\/p>\n
McGough is always seeking local landowners with open space who will allow her to train with the birds.\u00a0She’s also working to study golden eagles in the American west, where an alarming number have been found shot. She\u00a0wants to know why they’re being shot, despite fines and prison times. She is hoping to find positive interventions.<\/span><\/p>\n Once that study concludes, McGough is unsure what her next adventure will be, but admits that a decade of seeking grant projects and competing for funding is an insecure way to live. \u201cOf course, if you pick a place no one else wants to go, like Mongolia, it\u2019s not as competitive!\u201d No matter what comes next, McGough is a falconer for life.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s magical to watch them hunt. It\u2019s something primal that has happened every day for millions of years. I love watching these crazy aerobatics happen right in front of me, which are normally hidden in the wild. It\u2019s like watching a modern-day velociraptor as the eagle swoops in, but the rabbit is amazing, too, jumping in the air, even flipping over as the two try to outwit each other. It all happens in a few amazing seconds, and I love it.\u201d<\/p>\n To learn more, visit laurenmcgough.com<\/a> or okfalconersassoc.com<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Studying the ancient relationship between humanity and birds of prey<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":54,"featured_media":32202,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"Issue":[365],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edmondoutlook.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31424"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edmondoutlook.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edmondoutlook.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edmondoutlook.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/54"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edmondoutlook.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.edmondoutlook.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31424\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edmondoutlook.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edmondoutlook.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edmondoutlook.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edmondoutlook.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31424"},{"taxonomy":"Issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edmondoutlook.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/Issue?post=31424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}