A soaring tradition

ANDYKOZHAR BATYR,

KAZAKHSTAN

Under a cloudless sky on the Kazakh steppe, a hare scampers over the snow-dusted scrub, about two football fields from a young hunter in camouflage and the golden eagle he supports on a black gauntlet.

The hunter gently pulls off the eagle's hood. The bird's gaze swivels from one end of the horizon to the other, stopping momentarily to spy the hare. With a shout, "Hah!" he releases the eagle. It ascends with two flaps of its 5-foot wingspan, then swoops downward in a blink-of-an-eye glide that ends with the bird's 3-inch talons clutching the rabbit's head.

Later, at the top of a lone hill, the hunter, Ablykhan Zbasov, explains what tethers him to a sport practiced by his forefathers more than 3,000 years ago, a casualty of the Soviet era now gradually making its way back to the Kazakh plains.

"When you hunt with a rifle, this is not interesting," says Zbasov, 30. "But when you have the bird and your horse with you, you feel united with nature. It's really beautiful. You never forget the bird's grasp of your wrist, how powerful it is."

Zbasov and the rest of Kazakhstan's small but avid falconry community want their countrymen to know that feeling. At a time when an oil boom is endowing Kazakhstan with skyscrapers, SUVs and a budding middle class, Kazakh falconers are trying to revive their sport's stature as a pillar of national identity.

"We need to keep the tradition alive, for our culture and our country," says museum Director Dinara Cherepayeva. "Our children need to learn the sport to save it."

Like other pastimes associated with nobility, falconry has a lore and history that mold its mystique. Though no one knows exactly when the use of birds of prey for hunting began, the International Association for Falconry states that historians trace the sport's roots as far back as 8,000 to 10,000 years ago, to kings who ruled ancient Persia.

But perhaps falconry's most intriguing element is the improbable bond that emerges between a falconer and his raptor. Perched outside the front door of Zbasov's small brick hut in Andykozhar Batyr is one of his golden eagles, Konyrshker, Kazakh for "Brown Pilot." Zbasov strokes Konyrshker's neck as if he were one of the handful of dogs Zbasov keeps in his back yard. He gently runs his fingers through Konyrshker's tail feathers, looking for imperfections that can affect flight.

Zbasov has been hunting with Konyrshker for seven years. Never once has the golden eagle tried to escape.