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A photographer who snapped
what could be the world's only girl hunting with a golden eagle says
watching her work was an amazing sight.
Image copyrightAsher SvidenskyMost children, Asher Svidensky says, are a little
intimidated by golden eagles. Kazakh boys in western Mongolia start
learning how to use the huge birds to hunt for foxes and hares at the
age of 13, when the eagles sit heavily on their undeveloped arms.
Svidensky, a photographer and travel writer, shot five boys learning the
skill as well as the girl, Ashol-Pan. "To see her with the eagle was
amazing," he recalls. "She was a lot more comfortable with it, a lot
more powerful with it and a lot more at ease with it."
The Kazakhs
of the Altai mountain range in western Mongolia are the only people
that hunt with golden eagles, and today there are around 400 practising
falconers. Ashol-Pan, the daughter of a particularly celebrated hunter,
may well be the country's only apprentice huntress. Image copyrightAsher SvidenskyThey hunt in winter, when the temperatures can drop
to -40C (-40F). A hunt begins with days of trekking on horseback through
snow to a mountain or ridge giving an excellent view of prey for miles
around. Hunters generally work in teams. After a fox is spotted, riders
charge towards it to flush it into the open, and an eagle is released.
If the eagle fails to make a kill, another is released. Image copyrightAsher SvidenskyImage caption
Bahak Birgen is renowned as Mongolia's youngest male eagle hunter
The skill of hunting with eagles, Svidensky says,
lies in harnessing an unpredictable force of nature. "You don't really
control the eagle. You can try and make her hunt an animal - and then
it's a matter of nature. What will the eagle do? Will she make it? How
will you get her back afterwards?"
The eagles are not bred in captivity, but taken from
nests at a young age. Female eaglets are chosen since they grow to a
larger size - a large adult might be as heavy as seven kilos, with a
wingspan of over 230cm. After years of service, on a spring morning, a
hunter releases his mature eagle a final time, leaving a butchered sheep
on the mountain as a farewell present. "That's how the Kazakh eagle
hunters make sure that the eagles go back to nature and have their own
strong newborns, for the sake of future generations," Svidensky says. Image copyrightAsher SvidenskyImage caption
Irka Bolen is one of the male apprentice eagle hunters photographed by Svidensky
Svidensky describes Ashol-Pan as a smiling, sweet
and shy girl. His photographs of her engaging in what has been a male
activity for around 2,000 years say something about Mongolia in the 21st
Century. "The generation that will decide what will happen
with every tradition that Mongolia contains is this generation," says
Svidensky, who showed Ashol-Pan's family the photographs on his laptop.
"Everything there is going to change and is going to be redefined - and
the possibilities are amazing." Correction, 17/04/14: This story has been amended
to make clear that three of the photographs depict male eagle hunter
Bahak Birgen and apprentice eagle hunter Irka Bolen. Asher Svidensky spoke to World Update on the BBC World Service. Follow @BBCNewsMagazine on Twitter and on Facebook
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