Bob Martin, Falconer

I'm saddened to report the death of my old friend Bob Martin, who passed away last week at the age of 73. Bob first took up falconry in the late 1950s when he was in his early teens. He and his friend Mike Arnold, who lived in the same neighborhood in Burbank, California, were absolute fanatics about the sport, reading everything they could find about falconry and tirelessly searching the nearby hills for raptor nests. Their efforts took a quantum leap forward when they met Bob Klimes, president of the Southern California Falconers' Association, and Bob McCallum, who were both avid game hawkers and provided the two boys with help, advice, and stellar examples to follow. 

    A recent picture of Bob with one of his peregrines from a 2018 article by Brent Frazee.

I first met Bob when I was 14 years old, in the mid-1960s, at a meeting of the old Santa Ana Valley Falconers' Association, which met each week at Jack Hagan's house. I remember Bob had a fresh-trapped passage tiercel peregrine—one of the first tundra peregrines I'd ever seen—and I was absolutely awestruck. Fortunately, Bob wasn't stuck up about having such an impressive bird. Then, and throughout his falconry career, he was always generous, freely sharing his vast knowledge about training raptors. 

He was an excellent hood-maker, and some examples of his work can be seen at the Archives of Falconry. His craftsmanship showed in everything he created, from hoods, blocks, and falconry bags to the log house he built nearly singlehandedly in Montana. He was also a talented musician, playing and singing with his wife JoAnne in their bluegrass band. 

Bob was always a staunch game-hawker, flying first-rate falcons in spectacular style. Last season, he went on the road with his two intermewed peregrines, Salt and Pepper, flying them at sage grouse, prairie chickens, and other challenging quarry. He had planned to do the same this fall. Sadly, it was not to be. He will be greatly missed.

                                     Bob Martin with his peregrine in the 1960s. Photo by Mike Arnold

               Bob Martin (at right) and Bob Mechsner in La Verne, California, in the 1960s. Photo by Dan Fenske

On the death of my friend and mentor, Jack Hagan

In Memoriam

John W. Hagan

(1930 – 2013)

I just heard that my old friend Jack Hagan passed away earlier this week, on Monday, August 19. I first met Jack at a meeting of a newly formed club, the Santa Ana Valley Falconers’ Association, when I was in my early teens, and he became a great mentor to me in falconry as well as in wildlife photography. The club met weekly at Jack’s home in Santa Ana, California, and later at Jeff Sipple’s house in Cypress. Recently divorced, Jack was a professional photographer and also a collector of various reptiles and amphibians (which might explain the divorce). I remember he kept live rattlesnakes in aquariums in his garage and rare turtles in his bathtub. His house was often sweltering inside, to accommodate the tropical turtles.

Jack took some amazing photographs in the late 1940s of a Peregrine Falcon nest in Laguna Canyon. When he came back from the Korean War, though, the nest was empty, and the peregrines never nested there again. This was but one of the California peregrine nests he knew off that had been abandoned during the DDT era.

Jack was in his mid-thirties when the club formed, with thinning dark-brown hair and a pipe he puffed on constantly. He had the most calm, unflappable nature of anyone I’ve ever met. The younger guys in the club called him the “Old Man,” which always made him smile. He had certain catch phrases he would use in conversation. If you asked him a complex question, he would puff thoughtfully on his pipe and say, “This I do not know,” but would then go on to expound in great detail his theory on the topic at hand. He drove a classic Mercedez 300 SL sports car with gull-wing doors and usually flew goshawks.

Jack had an extensive collection of old falconry books, as well as some beautiful framed 19th-century falconry prints on the walls of his house. He told me I was welcome to come over anytime and read his books, which I often did.

Jack would later become the first president of the California Hawking Club, which, in some ways, sprang from the ashes of the Santa Ana Valley group, using the same logo, which artist Jeff Sipple designed.

The last time I saw Jack was in 2001 at the 30th annual field meet of the California Hawking Club, which was held that year in Bakersfield. I had moved to Upstate New York about a decade earlier and didn’t get to California much anymore. We—and several other charter members of the club, such as Jeff Sipple, Bob Winslow, and Mike Arnold—came to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the club’s founding. 

It was great to see Jack. He hadn’t changed much. His hair had gone gray, and somewhere along the way he had given up the pipe, but he was the same affable, good-natured Jack. I will truly miss him.