As a passionate hunter and…

As a passionate hunter and knowing a licensed falconer personally, I am aware of how important our roles are in the conservation of our respective animals and also how often our roles are over looked or twisted negatively when connected to words such as "killing" and "trapping" versus "capture" or "harvesting". Many people unfortunately are uneducated in the actual conservation of animals and are more focused on how an animal might feel in the moment. For a falconer their Bird is their passion, they must apprentice for 2 years before hand just to be able to gain their license. With knowing how much time and effort they put into caring for their birds I fully support allowing all licensed falconers to have a chance in attempting live raptor capture. In addition Falconers may only capture hatch-year birds, (birds that still have not experienced winter). This will increase the chances for many of the hatch-year birds to survive their first winter as most of them will die from starvation due to inexperience in hunting for themselves. When a falconer captures a hatch-year raptor in the fall they not only care for it but also teach it how to hunt game through out the winter. When the raptor is released in the spring it will now have a much better chance in it's over all survival.