 Ulan sits astride his horse at the mouth of a rocky ravine in the Zayiliiski Alatau range of the Tien Shan Mountains in Southern Kazakhstan. On his arm, which is protected by a thick rough suede glove, sits a magnificent six-year-old golden eagle (byerkut). Ulan removes the small leather hat protecting the eagle's eyes. She shakes her head from side to side, ruffling the feathers on her neck, and then trains her piercing eyes on the countryside beneath her.
Zhanbulat is some fifty metres further along the ridge. He beats a thorn branch against his thick felt-lined leather boots and makes small whooping cries in a rapid Kazakh fashion. On the other side of the ravine, silhouetted against the skyline, stands Abulhaq Turlibaev, father of Ulan, best friend of Zhanbulat's now deceased father, and like Zhanbulat's father, a famous eagle hunter and trainer. On his arm rests a second, even larger, golden eagle.
Zhanbulat's cries bring forth no game, so he jumps off his horse and hoists up a small boulder. He lobs it over the side of the ravine and it bumps haphazardly down the mountain. The hunters are quiet. All of them look for some sign of having disturbed their prey. Silence echoes back. Zhanbulat throws a larger rock, which shatters into pieces at the bottom. Ulan cries out. He gestures excitedly and lets go of the two strings attached by leather bands to the eagle's legs. On the opposite side of the ravine a light coloured fox is skirting up the mountain. The eagle climbs slightly into the air and swoops down towards the fox.
Nobody knows exactly when eagle hunting came to the Kazakh steppe, or indeed when humans first hunted with eagles. The Greek historian, Herodotus, mentioned it in the V century BC, and later falconry was certainly a well-known sport across Europe and Asia. In fact, there are various pieces of archaeological evidence in modern day Kazakhstan that suggest that two of the great tribes of Central Asia: the Scythians and later the Huns, may have trained eagles to catch prey for them. Other sources suggest that the sport was introduced with the dramatic arrival of Genghis Khan to Central Asia in the XIII century. Certainly its origins are obscure, yet there is no doubt that the Kazakhs, nomads who populated these lands from the XV century on, have a unique tradition of hunting with golden eagles.
Abulhaq learnt the art of falconry while living in China. His father was one of the thousands of, or possibly million, Kazakhs who fled to China around the time of the Bolshevik Revolution. In a historical reverse, Abulhaq himself returned to Kazakhstan then a Soviet Republic in the late 1960s, fleeing the Cultural Revolution in China. Crossing the border illegally landed him a sentence in a Soviet prison camp outside Moscow, followed by four years of living in confinement in Karaganda.
Until the 1920s the Kazakhs were a nomadic people. Land had no borders other than natural borders defining their pastoralism such as mountains and rivers; and human borders, or more explicitly, hostile neighbouring tribes. The thought of being imprisoned for crossing an imaginary line would be inconceivable to Abulhaq's ancestors. In fact, Abulhaq likened the Kazakhs to the eagles he trains and hunts with. 'Today this eagle could be here, tomorrow in Pakistan. We Kazakhs are the same. Borders mean nothing to us.'
What was originally but a hobby, became his full time occupation: training falcons and hawks. He only worked with golden eagles after returning to his native land. Since Kazakhstan gained its independence in 1991, the importance of such a national custom has been magnified. It exemplifies the noblest aspects of the Kazakhs' nomadic tradition: a tradition that had all but been lost amongst Stalin's sedentarisation and collectivisation campaigns of the late 1920s, and the subsequent sovietisation of the Kazakh people.
However, even within the context of Kazakh nationalism (the golden eagle is a powerful national symbol and is even portrayed on the Kazakh flag) the tradition is threatened by lack of government funding. Today there are only a handful of real hunters left. Thankfully though, in Kazakhstan, the United Nations (UN) funds a small grants golden eagle project in the southeast of the country. This is a community based project which both aims to build a conservation and rehabilitation model of the golden eagle populations whilst also recognizing the importance of the ancient Kazakh national falconer's traditions.
 The intimacy of hunter and eagle is captivating to behold. Abulhaq has trained these two birds from their youth. Both bird and human sit quite happily within inches of each other and the rapport between them can only be described as a friendship, or as Abulhaq likes to put it 'a working partnership'. There are two methods of catching such birds of prey: from the nest, as with these birds; or by catching adults with a piece of meat, a felt protected metal trap, and a net. Neither method is harmful to the birds and despite intensive training there is never any sense of ownership implied in the relationship. The birds are free to leave the hunter at any time when they are in flight.
Training can take anything from one to six months. With a string attached to their legs, and a hood over their eyes, the eagle will not be fed for three days. The hunter then gives the bird some meat. He makes sure he talks to the bird the whole time so that the bird becomes accustomed to the sound of his voice. The next step is to attach the meat to a string, which is lengthened with time, and which the hunter swings in a circular motion. In this way the bird learns to dive for its food. The third step is to drag a fox skin along the ground with the aid of a horse so that the eagle gets used to a fast moving target. The final stage is to hunt for real animals. The hunter does not allow the bird to eat its prey, so when it goes out hunting, the bird needs to be hungry enough to want to hunt, but no hungrier.
Back in the mountains, and to the hunters' chagrin, the fox is too fast. He dashes behind a bolder and runs to ground. 'Unlucky' says Ulan, 'unlucky' says Abulhaq, 'too bad' says Zhanbulat.
The hunter rests his arm in a wooden fork shaped stand attached to the saddle. The stand and the glove are fundamental. A fully-grown golden eagle weighs between six and 6 and 6.5 kg, and the eagle holds on by gripping with its lengthy (2”) talons. Around the eagle's ankles are leather rings attached to strings which the hunter holds in his hands. The hunter has a leather pouch strapped across his chest in which he carries meat with which to call back the eagle once it has been released.
In the afternoon the sun appears and the hunt party climbs up through birch groves and pine forests to the heights of the foothills. Crossing the snowline, the snowdrifts occasionally graze the horses' bellies. From the highest ridge the views command the whole of the steppe. Gently rolling mounds give way to desert flats which meet with ochre coloured hills in the distance. To either side melting snow falls weightlessly from the pine trees and all around a host of small birds herald the coming of spring.
 Underfoot, various animal tracks cut through the snow, but still there is no response to Zhanbulat's cries. In the distance saiga small antelope are visible, but they gain a ridge and disappear into impenetrable forest. At one point a pale shaggy wolf races down the immediate hillside but the eagles are not sent after it. Abulhaq has lost three eagles to wolves and no longer hunts the adults. Hares, foxes, antelope, and young wolves, however, are natural prey for the eagle who kills them with his ferocious looking claws. Hunting necessarily takes place in winter when the prey is both less difficult to catch in the slow-going snow and has a thick winter coat which makes it easier for the eagle to get hold of and, of course, makes the pelt more valuable to the hunter.
In the absence of prey, Abulhaq loosens his grip on the strings around his eagle's legs. The eagle opens his wings around Abulhaq and takes off. He gently climbs and circles tentatively overhead. Once he sees he is not to be called back he continues to ascend. From the south, two smaller birds of prey race towards the golden eagle. Unaware of his status as king of the skies, the smaller birds dive-bomb him, hitting his wings in an aggressive attempt to clear him off their territory. The eagle is unperturbed, the tips of his wings stretch upwards as he angles his tail to turn in circles and guide himself ever higher: master of steppe and mountain and all that he surveys.
Photo Andrea Leuenberger by Lucy Kelaart |
