Eagle Hunters of Kyrgyzstan

I happen to be from Kyrgyzstan (but now live in the SF Bay Area). While eagle hunting is fascinating, it's not unique to Kyrgyzstan and is often practiced in Kazakhstan and Mongolia (possibly Tajikistan and Uzbekistan). There was a fascinating documentary about a Mongol girl who went into this sport that is traditionally considered a man's sport (The Eagle Huntress, 2016)

I spent a month in Kyrgyzstan last year and also went to the world nomad games. You do see quite a few eagle hunters around the place offering their birds to pose with tourists for tips. People seem to be pretty into it. They put the bird on the person&#x27;s arm, blindfolded, and encourage them to we their arm up and down so the bird has to flap its wings to maintain balance.<p>Overall I really liked Kyrgyzstan. Definitely a simpler kind of place but just well enough developed to feel comfortable. Amazing opportunities for hiking if you&#x27;re comfortable just making up you own route with no trail to follow.

Like others mentioned, this is mostly an ethnic Kazakh tradition, not something specific to Kyrgyzstan. I visited the eagle festival in Ölgii (Mongolia) a year ago, a teenage girl won. They represent their village. There were a lot of participants, and the event ran long. It’s clearly grown in popularity, especially thanks to tourism, and doesn’t seem like a fading tradition anymore.

There&#x27;s a music video by Ummet Ozcan, &quot;Kayra&quot; that shows videos of these eagle hunters: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=n21YEsQy67E" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=n21YEsQy67E</a>

Related: Eagle Huntress movie<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;The_Eagle_Huntress" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;The_Eagle_Huntress</a>

Nice pictures, but everthing else was a bit disapointing, so I am going to nitpick.<p>For example I did not learn, what they actually hunt. I initialy assumed by the title they hunt eagles, but they hunt with eagles, but no word of their prey or anything of how they hunt or where the eagle helps with the hunt.<p>I assume by letting the eagle fly to go look for bigger prey and then circeling around that area so the hunter goes there with his rifle.<p>But nothing about that.<p>And one of the titles broke the long word of outdoorsmen into<p>&quot;outdoorsm<p>en&quot;<p>Not sure if anyone think that is cool(I assume a bug, on desktop it is not broken), but I literally cannot read like this.

From the title I thought they were hunting <i>for</i> eagles, not <i>with</i> eagles.

A lot of training of the birds, by modern standards, would be illegal just about anywhere, amounting to animal cruelty.