Training, Tryouts for the Air Force Academy Falconry Team

By Jared Ewy

Master Falconer Sam Dollar doesn’t want any credit, but he shares way too much incredible information not to be quoted.

“Ghengis Khan had thousands of falcons. They used them for hunting — to bring back food,” says Dollar casually as if he didn’t just blow my mind with perhaps the first ever food delivery service.

“Once we discovered the bow and arrow and black powder they went out of fashion,” he ends while overseeing a resurgence of falconry among weapons that are far more advanced.

He advises and trains the Air Force Academy Falconry Team in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The birds they train are the mascots for as many extracurricular events they can cover.

It’s no small deal to be on the team. There is training, tryouts, and you’d better be OK with butchering quail to feed the falcons their daily 10% of their body weight. Cadet Rebecca Hoffman is a rising sophomore and shares more about the process.

“It starts in January and they make selections of freshman cadets in March,” she says. While casually carving up a small bird, she also confirms that the process includes being tested on meal prep.

Like many of the cadets I talk to, she had not foreseen becoming an apprentice to a master falconer, but the Air Force Academy requires that you participate in extracurriculars. Once falconer hopefuls meet these birds and see all the places they get to go, they’re hooked.

“They’re the front-facing team for the Academy so they go out and do all of the publicity,” says retired Lieutenant Colonel Rochelle Kimbrell. She knows a thing or two about being in the public as she’s the first African-American female fighter pilot to fly combat missions. Now she simply wants to be referred to as a volunteer.

As you might expect, she knows her aviation history and explains the inspiration for modern jet airplane aerodynamics.

“The way that a falcon’s nose is designed, they’ve got inner coils that disperse the air so they don’t asphyxiate when they’re coming down that fast. Nature is fascinating and that’s where we get all of our designs from,” finishes Kimbrell as she scans the field for a trainee rocketing towards a cadet spinning a bean bag associated with food.

Falcons are fast. They own the record for fastest animal on the planet with speeds over 200 mph.

Today, however, they just need to be interested in a treat. As they train for the 2025 USAFA commencement ceremony, the falcons need only remember there’s a snack awaiting them if they fly onto the field without getting distracted.

You get the idea that it’s not too different for the cadets. When they do their best, both the institution and animal take flight. Their time and training together is a treat for everyone who sees it.

I asked Dollar if he thought any of the cadets would continue their falconry beyond their four years in Colorado Springs.

“Some of them are very good and you wonder if down the road it’s something they’ll do,” he begins before pondering their reality. “But right now their lives are very much planned out for them so they don’t have much chance to do it.” He laughs at the thought of trying to keep a raptor on whichever base the graduates end up next.

For now, though, the cadets seem to love the opportunity to wow the world with their air supremacy.

“She flew really well today,” says Cadet Katarina Schultz with Zeva, a hybrid Gyr-Saker falcon, perched on her glove. “She came to the glove, she caught the bag—overall she had a really good performance today.”

This article first appeared on The Daily Yonder and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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Previously Published on dailyyonder.com with Creative Commons License

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