BY TERI R. WILLIAMS
PHOTOS BY RUTH ENGLISH
Wild at
Heart
Falconer Greg Johnson doesn't try to control the raptors he trains. Instead he builds a partnership based on a bond of trust–one of love's greatest aspects.
Greg wasn’t going to take up knitting. He had no interest in singing in a community choir or learning to ballroom dance. He already had a dog. Two dogs, in fact. But he’d seen what could happen. Nothing to do and nowhere to go sounded great in the middle of an outage at Edwin I. Hatch Nuclear Power Plant, where he worked as a mechanical engineer. But without purpose and focus, retirement would quickly turn into isolation and boredom. Besides, Greg had not given thirty-two years of his life to a career just to sit around and stare at the walls. While searching the Internet for ideas, he came across a YouTube video on falconry. That was seven years ago. Today, Greg Johnson is one of the 219 falconers in Georgia and the only one in Toombs County. March 14, 2022: “I’m calling it a season. 2021-2022 has been my most successful season, and today we are ending it on a high note. I took Mary out this morning. It was sunny and cool. I could tell she was ready to hunt…. (Facebook post) If there is a redeeming quality to Facebook, in my opinion, Greg had found it in his ruminations about falconry and parallels to his Christian faith. I scrolled through post after post about the exploits of the beautiful redtailed hawk he’d given the name Mary. I stopped on October 24, 2021: This bird, who I named Mary, is mine. I have a special permit, a special license given by the State of Georgia Department of Natural Resources, which allows me to take her from the wild. She belongs to me. I feed her every day. I house her. I make sure she is safe. I even have a camera in her housing to keep a close eye on her. I trained her, and together we create a partnership. A bond built on trust. I love this bird. When you take care of something every day, you get attached. She knows the sound of my voice. She knows the sound of my call. I call to her. She hears my call and responds…. During the time of the above post, Greg had trained two red-tailed hawks he named Mary and Lazarus. Of course, I asked: “Where’s Martha?” Greg 24
TO O M B S CO U N T Y M A G A Z I N E
