n August of 2020, John Moran passed away after

a long battle with cancer.

Everyone knew John as a master hood maker. His

painted and designed hoods which he call “Dazzlers”

were inspired by Native American blankets and

beadwork. His hoods always had the impeccable reputation of

ﬁtting falcons perfectly and he spent his adult life perfecting the

patterns to insure perfect ﬁts. I spent many hours watching John

work on hoods while we talked about birds and life.

I met John in a ﬁeld west of Longmont, Colorado in 1978. John

was ﬂying a young tiercel falcon at a duck slip and I was ﬂying

an inter-mewed male Goshawk. I had just moved to Colorado

from upstate New York to be able to ﬂy falcons and his ﬂight

was the ﬁrst longwing that I’d seen ﬂy at wild quarry. It was a

start of a friendship that spanned over 42 years. He took me

under his wing and showed me how to train and ﬂy falcons. His

requirements for helping me were very speciﬁc. I had to pull a

Prairie falcon at approximately ﬁve weeks and chamber raise

it. Once it was hard penned, she was pulled from the chamber

and the training began. John met me every day in a ﬁeld in

Lyons, Colorado where we would train my Prairie and he would

train two Anatum Peregrines. John’s ﬁrst love was Anatum

falcons. Bill Burnham had given John a pair of Rocky Mountain

Anatums to ﬂy that season. We spent most of that summer

training and the fall ﬂying and hunting our birds together. It’s

was an act of kindness that I’ve never forgotten. And ever since

then, John and I spent time hawking together almost every year.

John had many adventures as a falconer. He moved to the

Middle East and worked for a Sheik for a few years training

birds and advising them on falcon breeding. He worked for The

Predatory Bird Research Group in Santa Cruz, California

{which was afﬁliated with the Peregrine Fund} for many

years. During this period, he was hired to train the

passage Peregrines used in the movie, “The Falcon and the

Snowman” and worked closely with Timothy Hutton and

John Schlesinger during the ﬁlming. In one of the scenes

where Hutton was ﬂying a falcon, Hutton was wearing

John’s hawking bag. John made that bag himself which was

covered with bead work and his carvings. The bag is on

display at the Archives of Falconry in Boise, Idaho.

The birds used for the ﬁlming were passage Peregrines

trapped in Mexico. Most of the Falconry scenes were shot

near Mexico City. Pigeons were used from a local pigeon

racer to train the birds. He told me that the owner of the

pigeons said that his pigeons were the best in Mexico City

and that the Peregrines would never be able to catch them.

It didn’t take long for the Peregrines to start catching

the pigeons. The pigeon owner was distraught about the

loss of his best pigeons

but he was being paid

handsomely for each

killed pigeon. John always

laughed when he told that

story because he knew

that the passage birds

would be lethal on tossed

pigeons.

His experience hunting

pigeons began in the 1960’s in the Los Angeles basin. He would

hunt large ﬂocks of feral pigeons with a passage Peregrine

named Maleﬁcent. He once pulled out his 16mm movie

ﬁlm and showed me some of that hawking. It was amazing

to see wide open spaces for hawking in the middle of L.A.

Unfortunately, the 16mm ﬁlm has been lost.

In recent years he lived in Hazelton, Idaho just outside of Twin

Falls. He and his two English Pointers were avid Pheasant

hunters. We hawked the area together many times and he always

showed me great sport and a great time. John was a great friend

and I’ll miss our long talks on training falcons, hood making

and life.

John was a great

friend and I’ll

miss our long

talks on training

falcons, hood

making and life.

JOHN MORAN

(1943 – 2020)

Falconer, Hood Maker,

and friend

Donors: James Eddy, Steve Duffy