Katie, a female passage American Kestrel, scanning for Starlings and House Sparrows at a fast-food drive through in Virginia in September 2024. Photo by Corine Hagan.

What to do Before Finding a Sponsor

A Rabbit Dragged RT into a Briar Patch : Brian, Apprentice Jacob and Pre-Apprentice Bruce Extricate It From a Great Bundle of Thorns.

Falconry is Overly Romanticized

Falconry is a sport that is rarely practiced in the USA. About 120 falconers are licensed in Virginia (as of 2022, per Randy Francis DWR), many of which are licensed but do not have a bird. That leaves at most 100 flying falconers in Virginia.
So, the general public does not get exposure at all to real falconers. The public’s perception of falconry is often merely the romanticized form shown through the press and media.
​In reality, falconry is hard. On any given hunt, the falconer can stumble over a downed fence, get poison ivy, trip over barbed wire, fall in a creek, get footed, and worse, lose the bird. A heartbreak. The ups and downs of flying a raptor make falconry an amazing  sport that is difficult to participate in.​

To Do List

Here is a list of tasks you can do before asking for a sponsor:
Go visit other falconers and look at their mews. Compare the types, pros and cons. Also, NAFA has a Video Archive with virtual mews tours you can view. Then, build a mews that keeps your bird safe and comfortable.
Get proper hunting clothes. That includes briar pants, falconry glove, sturdy shoes, jacket and brush beating stick. Nothing says more about a prospective pre- apprentice falconer not being ready to become an apprentice falconer than showing up in dainty clothing.
Learn to butcher an animal. If need be, buy local roosters off craigslist and butcher them humanely. Ask for help if you need to learn. Falconry is a hunting sport, and often prospective falconers cannot process game. Maybe falconry is not for them; maybe it's wildlife rehabber, avian vet assistant, trainer, a.o.  Explore.

Go Hunting 

A falconer is a person who hunts with a raptor.
​The pre-apprentice needs to go hunting with a falconer dozens of times to actually learn and  convey their serious intent to participate in the sport.
There are steps you’ll have to take on your way to learn to hunt before getting permitted. Get your Virginia Small Game Hunting License. Visit, read, learn and print-out the online DWR Falconry Regulations, Facilities & Equipment document. It will instruct you on the legal parameters we falconers are bound to work within.

Your Initiative Will Be Your stepping Stone

Also, become a member of your state club and NAFA and absorb their literature. Learn the vocabulary of falconry. Practice the falconry knot until it is effortless. From the time this author had an incling to becoming an apprentice, two years of daily pillow reading magazines and going out weekly during the hunting season was the order of learning. The two meets and picnic are essential to networking: inability to mingle there sets you back, both in inability to network and demonstration that falconry is not a number one priority.
These are but a few preliminary steps. Completing these steps will show prospective sponsors that you are 1) able 2) serious and 3) determined enough to already have put in some blood and sweat to achieve your goal.

No step is easy. Falconry is hard.

​Proceed with determination one step at a time! Then you’ll go the mile.

Page in Hawk Chalk, the publication of the North American Falconry Association, about Sponsorship

Pre-apprentice Ryan and Corine Holding Apprehensive Cleopatra After a Hunt by Manassas