No, catching fish is not the primary purpose of falconry. Falconry is a hunting tradition built on training birds of prey to pursue wild quarry on the wing, and in nearly every regulating body's definition the emphasis lands on mammals and upland birds, not fish. The United States Fish and Wildlife Service, which administers the federal falconry permit system, defines falconry as taking quarry with a trained raptor in its natural habitat — a framework in which fish simply do not appear as standard quarry. Fishing with birds is a separate, geographically narrow practice, and anyone who conflates the two misunderstands both.
What Falconry Actually Is According to the Regulators
The Fish and Wildlife Service's falconry regulations sit in Title 50 of the Code of Federal Regulations, Part 21, and the agency's own permit framework treats falconry as a hunting method for birds and mammals. Under that system, apprentices start with a single wild-caught red-tailed hawk or American kestrel and must fly it at game for at least two seasons before advancing.
The International Association of Falconry and Conservation of Birds of Prey, the body that represents the practice globally, frames falconry as "taking of wild quarry in its natural state and habitat by means of a trained bird of prey." Wild quarry, in the association's usage, means free-living game animals — rabbits, hares, gamebirds, waterfowl, squirrels. Quarry species lists published by state wildlife agencies mirror this: cottontail rabbit, snowshoe hare, ring-necked pheasant, bobwhite quail, mallard, jackrabbit.
A hunt in the classic tradition looks like this. A falconer walks a hedgerow with a Harris's hawk on the fist, slips a spaniel into cover, and when a rabbit bolts the hawk launches. The falconer follows on foot, tracking the hawk's bells — small brass instruments strapped to the legs — and the telemetry signal until the bird is found on the kill. Nothing in that sequence involves water.
Falconry's purpose is also not simply "catching prey." The permit system requires hunting, but falconers describe the practice as a husbandry discipline: weight management, conditioning, training, and daily flying regardless of whether game is taken. A falconer who flies a hawk at game and comes home empty-handed has still practiced falconry. The kill is the byproduct the bird needs and the sport's ecological justification, not a fish count.
Why Fish Don't Appear on Any Quarry List
Quarry lists determine what a permit holder may legally hunt, and fish appear on none of them in the United States. State falconry regulations published by wildlife agencies from Arizona to Pennsylvania enumerate mammals and birds only. The reason is partly legal — fishing is governed by separate fish and wildlife codes — and partly physical.
Raptors that hunt over water take fish incidentally. Bald eagles, ospreys, and some large owls catch fish as a major part of their diet. But those species sit outside falconry's permitted bird list in the United States. The Fish and Wildlife Service restricts which raptors may be used, and eagles require an additional federal eagle permit under the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act before any state falconry permit can apply.
Even where a permitted hawk might plunge at a fish, the training tradition doesn't build toward it. Falconry training relies on a bird's natural pursuit of flying or running quarry and on the falconer's ability to recover the bird. A hawk that enters water for a fish is harder to follow, harder to recover, and outside the legal framework the falconer operates under. Practical hunting, in other words, follows the paperwork.
A water-adjacent hunt does exist, but the quarry is still not fish. Falconers fly Harris's hawks and red-tailed hawks at ducks and other waterfowl over ponds and marshes. The bird catches a bird. That distinction matters when someone describes a hawk "hunting over water" — the water is habitat, not the target.
The One Bird That Genuinely Fishes, and Why It Isn't Falconry
Cormorant fishing is the practice most people mean when they imagine birds catching fish. In it, a fisherman ties a snare around the base of a trained cormorant's neck, sends the bird into a river, and retrieves the fish from its throat when it surfaces. It has been documented for centuries in Japan, where it survives as a tourism spectacle on the Nagara River, and in parts of China.
Cormorants are not birds of prey. They're diving fish-eaters, and the training is a working-animal arrangement, not a hunting flight. Falconry's defining feature — a raptor pursuing wild quarry on the wing — is absent. Cormorant fishing also carries no raptor permit anywhere, because it isn't regulated as falconry.
A second near-miss appears in Central Asia. Kazakh and Kyrgyz falconers fly golden eagles at foxes and, historically, at wolves on the steppe. Those are the largest quarry any falconry tradition takes, and they are mammals. Even the most dramatic eagle hunts involve nothing aquatic.
For a real falconry fish story, the closest analogue is opportunistic. A wild peregrine will occasionally stoop at a fish near the surface, and a falconer may see it. That's a bird being a bird, not the falconry method. The tradition's recorded quarry across Europe, the Middle East, and North America has always been terrestrial and aerial game.
Five Real Purposes That Beat Fishing
Falconry serves several ends at once, and none of them is fish. Naming them makes the contrast concrete.
| Purpose | What it involves | Named authority or rule it rests on |
|---|---|---|
| Hunting wild game | Flying a trained hawk or falcon at rabbits, hares, gamebirds, waterfowl | State quarry lists under the federal falconry framework |
| Wildlife conservation | Raptor surveys, advocacy, and support for habitat protection | International Association of Falconry and Conservation of Birds of Prey |
| Falconry-based education | Public demonstrations and school programs with trained birds | State permit conditions for educational use |
| Raptor rehabilitation | Conditioning injured birds for release, often by permit holders | Federal migratory bird rehabilitation permits |
| Cultural heritage | Maintaining a centuries-old hunting tradition and craft skills | UNESCO recognition of falconry traditions across member countries |
Conservation deserves the closer look. Falconers were central to the recovery of the peregrine falcon after DDT thinned eggshells across North America. The Peregrine Fund, founded in 1970 by falconer Tom Cade at Cornell University, bred and released thousands of peregrines, and the species was removed from the U.S. endangered species list in 1999. Falconers supplied birds, techniques, and field knowledge to that effort.
Cultural heritage is the other documented purpose. UNESCO inscribed falconry on its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, with a multinational nomination covering the United Arab Emirates, Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Korea, Mongolia, Morocco, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Spain, and Syria — a list that grew as more countries joined. The practice is recognized as a living craft, not a fishing technique.
None of these purposes requires catching fish, and the conservation and heritage roles would work identically if fish didn't exist.
What Apprentice Falconers Actually Learn First
An apprentice's first season is spelled out in regulation, and it tells you what the tradition considers foundational. Under the federal framework, an apprentice must be at least 14 years old, pass a written exam, build or buy a mews (housing), and secure a sponsor — a general or master falconer who supervises for at least two years.
The training sequence runs in a fixed order: man the bird to the fist, teach it to accept the hood and the leash, condition it through careful weight management, and finally free-fly it at game. The first quarry most apprentices pursue is the cottontail rabbit with a red-tailed hawk — a pairing chosen because the hawk is hardy, widely available, and forgiving of beginner mistakes.
Fishing appears nowhere in that sequence, and the reason is structural. A falconer's skill is measured by the bird's response to the fist, the hood, and the lure — the feathered decoy swung on a cord to recall the bird. Those skills transfer to any quarry. A fish-catching bird would need none of them, because the retrieval happens by hand from water, not by a trained return flight.
Weighing matters more than most outsiders realize. Falconers track a hawk's mass to the gram on a digital scale because a bird flown too heavy won't hunt and one flown too light is at risk. That discipline belongs to flying a raptor at game, and it's what the apprenticeship exists to teach.
Where the Fish Confusion Comes From
Two very different practices get collapsed in casual conversation, and separating them clears the confusion. One involves a person, a boat, a trained diving bird, and a snare. The other involves a person on foot, a hawk on the fist, and wild game in cover.
The confusion has a linguistic root. "Falconry" gets used loosely to mean "using a trained bird to catch something for you," which describes a cormorant fisherman as well as a falconer. The regulatory definition is tighter: a bird of prey, a hunting flight, wild quarry. Under that definition, cormorant fishing is animal-assisted fishing, not falconry.
Translation adds another layer. Japanese cormorant fishing is called ukai, and English-language travel writing often glosses it as a form of falconry for Western readers. That shorthand is wrong. The trained bird in ukai is a fish hawk in the folk sense, but it's a diving bird handled like a tool, not a raptor flown at quarry.
Social media exaggerates it further. A clip of a cormorant surfacing with a fish in its throat, captioned "falconry in Japan," travels far and gets corrected rarely. If you're trying to settle the question for yourself, ask one thing: is the bird a raptor making a hunting flight at wild game, or a diving bird retrieving fish under human control? The answer identifies the practice every time.
Fishing With Birds Outside Falconry's Rules
Cormorant fishing has a regulatory life of its own, and it isn't falconry anywhere. In Japan, ukai on the Nagara River operates under the patronage of the Imperial Household Agency and is presented as a traditional fishery and tourist attraction rather than a hunting permit. The birds are handled by licensed fishing masters, and the season runs in the warmer months.
In China, cormorant fishing on rivers in Guangxi and elsewhere has been documented for over a thousand years, and it survives in places as a demonstration for visitors after declining as a commercial method. Neither country's practice is regulated as falconry, because neither involves a raptor.
The United States treats the two separately in law. Falconry permits come from state wildlife agencies with federal oversight. Fishing with any bird in U.S. waters falls under fish and wildlife codes, and using a protected migratory bird to take fish would require a federal permit under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act unless an exemption applies. In practice, no falconry permit holder fishes with a bird, because no permit authorizes it.
Here's the consequence worth knowing: taking fish with a trained raptor in the United States would likely count as an unpermitted take of both the fish and the bird. That's a legal boundary, and it's the reason "falconry fishing" isn't a shortcut around fish and game rules.
How Falconry Laws Treat Quarry Differently From Fish
The regulatory machinery makes the separation visible. Falconry is governed by migratory bird law and state wildlife regulation; fishing is governed by fish and wildlife codes and, in federal waters, by fishery management plans. The two systems don't share permits, seasons, or bag limits.
Migratory bird treaties underpin the falconry framework. The Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 implements conventions with Canada, Mexico, Japan, and Russia, and it's the act that protects most raptors in the U.S. and authorizes falconry permits as an exception. Fish fall outside that act entirely.
That means a falconry permit is a bird permit, full stop. It authorizes taking, possessing, and flying specified raptors for hunting — and the hunting it authorizes is defined by the quarry lists attached to the permit, all of them birds and mammals. The permit says nothing about fish because the statute it derives from doesn't cover fish.
For a reader checking local rules, the verification path is direct. Your state wildlife agency's falconry page lists the permitted raptors and legal quarry; the Fish and Wildlife Service's migratory bird permit program explains the federal layer. If a species appears on neither list, a falconer can't legally take it, fish included.
What a Real Falconry Season Looks Like
A season in the field makes the purpose obvious. In the American West, a falconer might fly a Harris's hawk at jackrabbits in open desert from October through February, following the hawk's flight with telemetry and a hunting dog working ahead. In the East, a red-tailed hawk is flown at squirrels in hardwood timber.
The visible details are specific. The hawk wears a leather jess on each leg, a swivel joins the jesses to the leash, and a bell on the tail helps locate the bird in cover. The falconer carries a lure and a bag of tidbits — usually quail or chick — to reward the bird after a flight, whether or not it caught anything.
Weight and weather drive the day. Falconers avoid flying in high wind, extreme cold, or heavy rain, and they check the bird's weight before every outing. A hawk flown at the right mass is eager; the same hawk a few grams heavy may ignore game entirely.
Nothing in that scene points toward water. The hawk is built to pursue, the dog is built to flush, and the falconer is built to follow. Catching fish would require a different bird, a different method, and a different law — which is exactly why the answer to the question is no.
What Falconry's Advocates Say It's For
Falconers themselves describe the purpose in terms that have nothing to do with harvest totals. In published accounts from organizations like the North American Falconers Association, falconers talk about the bird's health, the partnership, the craft of training, and the hours spent watching wild raptors work. The kill is the bird's meal and the tradition's ecological logic, not the falconer's trophy count.
Conservation arguments reinforce that framing. Falconers argue that their practice keeps them in close contact with wild raptor populations and gives them a stake in habitat protection. The Peregrine Fund's history supports the claim that falconers contributed real recovery work, and the International Association of Falconry and Conservation of Birds of Prey exists partly to coordinate that advocacy.
The cultural argument is the oldest. Falconry appears in records from ancient Mesopotamia and China, and it traveled with trade and empire across Eurasia. UNESCO's recognition treats it as a heritage practice to be transmitted between generations, which is why mentorship — the sponsor relationship — is built into the permit system.
Fish would fit none of those arguments. A tradition built on flying raptors at wild game needs no fish to justify itself, and the people who practice it describe its value in birds, habitat, and skill. That's the clearest evidence of what falconry is for.
FAQ
Is falconry ever used to catch fish anywhere in the world? Only in the loose sense that cormorant fishing is sometimes mislabeled as falconry. No country regulates a raptor-based falconry permit for taking fish. The documented bird-fishing traditions in Japan and China use cormorants, which are diving birds, not birds of prey, and the practice is licensed as a fishery rather than a hunt.
Do falconers need a separate permit to use eagles? Yes — in the United States, eagles require a federal eagle permit under the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act in addition to any state falconry permit. Eagle falconry is also restricted to master falconers with years of experience, which is why even the largest-quarry tradition among Kazakh eagle hunters involves foxes rather than fish.
Could a trained hawk catch a fish if it tried? A hawk might occasionally grab a fish near the surface, but it wouldn't be falconry. The behavior would be opportunistic and outside any permitted quarry list. Falcons stoop at birds in flight; a plunge at a fish would be a one-off, and the bird would be harder to recover from water.
How long does it take to become a falconer? At least two years as an apprentice before you can apply for a general permit, and the apprenticeship requires a sponsor, a passed exam, and inspected housing. Many falconers take longer. That timeline is built around learning to fly a raptor at wild game, and none of the required skills involve fishing.
What's the difference between falconry and cormorant fishing? Falconry uses a trained bird of prey to take wild quarry in a hunting flight. Cormorant fishing uses a diving bird with a neck snare to retrieve fish for a human handler. One is a hunting tradition with a permit framework; the other is a fishery, and the two have separate laws and histories.
Is falconry legal in every U.S. state? It's legal in most states, but each state sets its own falconry regulations under federal oversight, and a few states restrict or prohibit parts of the practice. Check your state wildlife agency's falconry page before assuming the federal framework applies unchanged where you live.
Can a falconry permit be used to take waterfowl over water? Yes — flying a hawk at ducks and other waterfowl over ponds and marshes is legal quarry hunting in many states, subject to season and bag rules. The bird is still catching another bird. Water is habitat in that hunt, not the target, which is the distinction people miss.
What does the UNESCO listing of falconry actually cover? UNESCO inscribed falconry on its Intangible Cultural Heritage list through a multinational nomination that began with eleven countries and has expanded as more nations joined. The listing recognizes the practice as a living tradition of training and hunting with raptors, and fish appear nowhere in its description.