Inside the Ancient Mongolian Art of Hunting with Eagles

In the unforgivingly steppe lands of far western Mongolia—notorious for its arid climate, extreme temperature swings and limited natural resources—Kazakh nomads continue an ancient art whose exact origins remain unknown. It may have been here, more than 3,000 years ago, that their ancestors, or others like them, first trained birds of prey to hunt, a practice that evolved into present-day falconry.

But whereas modern falconry is known as the “sport of kings,” for the Kazakh nomads it is not a sport at all, but a vital—albeit threatened—part of their existence. And while falconers tend to use species such as peregrine falcons or red-tailed hawks, the nomads use golden eagles.

Archaeological evidence suggests falconry was practiced in Central Asia as early as the first millennium B.C., making the region one of the earliest known centers of human hunting partnerships with birds of prey. By the early centuries B.C., the practice had spread into Persia, the Middle East and China, where it became linked to court and military traditions. In medieval Europe, falconry developed into a royal pastime, giving rise to its “sport of kings” reputation. Among the Kazakhs of western Mongolia, however, eagle hunting retained its original, practical role, grounded in subsistence and life on the land.

The Bayan-Ölgii province of Mongolia borders China, Russia and Kazakhstan and is defined by the Altai Mountains, home to mountain goats and the elusive snow leopard. The region, which experiences short, hot summers and long, extremely cold winters, is inhabited by semi-nomadic ethnic Kazakhs, who herd sheep, goats, camels, yaks and horses, traveling from pasture to pasture over the course of the year. Traditionally, labor has followed strict gender divisions: The women cook and tend the homes, while the men herd and use eagles to hunt foxes and other animals for fur. These eagle hunters are known as berkutchi.

“Over 90 percent of the land isn’t arable, so they can’t do any farming,” explains Lauren McGough, a biologist, anthropologist and falconer. She first visited the region as a Fulbright scholar in 2009 and became one of the very few outsiders—and equally few women—to become apprenticed to the berkutchi and learn from them how to hunt foxes with eagles from horseback. “They’ve instead reached this ingenious conclusion that they must forge partnerships with animals—from domesticated livestock to … wild animals like eagles," McGough says. "The fact that they can get everything they need from those partnerships is really amazing.”

Not every male becomes an eagle hunter; choosing that path confers great honor.

“They’ll tell you that it’s got to be in your heart,” explains McGough, whose time with the berkutchi earned her a doctorate in social anthropology from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. “You’ve got to want that relationship. If you do, it’s a big point of pride. It’s a way to honor your culture. But they fully recognize that it has to be an unusual and a dedicated person that wants to pursue it.”

After all, she explains, it’s yet another time- and labor-intensive activity in lives already full of them—including herding, hauling snow or blocks of ice for water, collecting dung for fire fuel and keeping the fires burning. It is one reason, she says, why the most dedicated hunters tend to be “the older men that have sons that can do all the herding duties, so they can just fully focus on flying their eagles.”

The first step toward becoming an eagle hunter, McGough continues, involves helping care for a mentor’s eagle—by, for example, feeding it in the evening if it hasn’t hunted that day. The next is to become a “scare boy,” whose role is to flush out foxes for the eagles to hunt.

“If they show sufficient dedication in those tasks, then when the time comes, the eagle hunter will help them go and trap an eagle,” McGough explains.

Eagle hunters are almost always men, with some notable exceptions. But the eagles themselves are females, which are larger and considered better hunters. Hunters capture the birds as subadults during the fall as they migrate from Russia to China over the Altai Mountains, luring them with dead foxes and then catching them in nets.

Training an eagle can be surprisingly easy, McGough says. Eagle hunters rely first on the well-known falconry hood to soothe the bird; because raptors are highly visually oriented, placing a hood over their head renders them calm and relaxed.

“In the very beginning, you take them into the home in the evening, where it’s dimly lit, take the hood off and make sure you have a bunch of good-looking meat on your glove,” McGough explains. “It usually doesn’t take them long before they start bending down and eating from your glove. And it’s quite quick to build off that.”

From there, a hunter trains an eagle to hop onto the glove, then fly a few feet to it while tethered, and then do so from progressively greater distances.

“Once they’re flying about, say, 100 feet to your glove, then you’re ready to fly free,” she continues. “You’ve cemented your positive place in their life, so they’ll hang out with you. And when they put two and two together and understand that foxes will appear when you’re there, then they really don’t want to leave.”

A hunter partners with one eagle at a time and uses it to hunt during the cooler months; after foxes are caught, the hunters take the pelts and give the birds the meat. During summer, hunting pauses while the birds molt. During this time, the hunters keep them fat and happy by feeding them as much meat as they want, which helps ensure that their replacement feathers will be healthy and plush.

The relationship between eagle and human is close and mutually beneficial, but not anthropomorphic; the hunters do not give their birds names, McGough says. Respect for the eagle is paramount, and from the first day of the partnership, the hunter begins thinking about the moment when he must eventually let her fly free. Choosing when to do so—typically after several years—is, McGough explains, a decision each hunter makes when he feels the time is right.

“My mentor had an older female, and a wild male would approach while we were hunting and display to her, and that started to tug at him,” recounts McGough. “A couple times she flew off to indulge the male’s display. She did come back, but that got him thinking, ‘Okay, it may be time to release her.’”

There might be other factors in releasing an eagle. Perhaps the relationship with the hunter never truly gelled, or perhaps the hunter simply wants to capture a different eagle. Whatever the motivation, says McGough, “because it ends up representing so much of their life and effort, it is a deeply personal decision.”

Times are changing. Younger generations are increasingly eschewing the hard life of a nomad for an education in the nearby city of Ölgii or the Mongolian capital Ulaanbaater, after which many choose to pursue employment there or elsewhere. Today, only 70 or so berkutchi remain, though they attempt to keep their tradition alive with a festival for tourists each fall.

“To be an eagle hunter, you have to be a nomadic herder. You have to be out in that landscape, watching the eagles, watching the foxes; there’s just no way around it,” says McGough. “It’s such a rare, beautiful relationship. It’s a tremendously hard life, but it makes me sad that it’s declining.”