It’s December 1982 on the frosty Western Idaho prairie.  Morley Nelson stands silhouetted against the early morning’s purple-orange sky.  The wind is cold on his face, but he hardly feels it; his skin is tough and leathery from 66 years in the sun.

Morley releases Thor, his prized white gyrfalcon, the largest and most majestic of these birds.  At just over two pounds and roughly the size of a football, the powerful raptor is one of the most efficient flying machines on the planet. 

Thor explodes vertically, catching an updraft and quickly ascending to a hunting altitude of 300 feet.  He circles above and follows Morley and his 125-pound German Shepherd, Ringo – named after the famous Beatle – as they stalk through the soft, brown clay.

Ringo wags his tail, indicating hidden pheasants nearby.  Thor soars with his five-foot wingspan and comes into the wind overhead.  Morley lets out a gravely “go,” and Ringo leaps as Thor begins his downward attack.  The pheasants, flushed from the brush, focus on Ringo and surge upward.

Thor flashes his half-closed wings and then rolls into what’s called a stoop, an aggressive inverted dive.  Unlike other falcons, Thor, much to Morley’s delight, pumps his wings while in the stoop to gain speed, reaching up to 160 mph.

Seconds later, with a closed talon, Thor delivers what should be a death blow.  But his few extra ounces – Morley’s soft touch led to overfeeding – get the best of him.  He strikes the pheasant too late, too close to the ground, and it gets away. 

Morley swings a long rope lure several times over his head like a lasso.  Thor makes a low pass, and while still in flight, captures the end of it with his talons, slowly flapping his wings as Morley brings him to his arm.  Morley pets him and offers a treat:  a fresh mallard’s head.

Morley Nelson is arguably the country’s most prominent falconer, and no one has done more than he has to change the way birds of prey – including eagles, falcons and hawks – are treated.  He pioneered power-line nesting platforms and championed the country’s 1972 ban of the pesticide DDT, which led to dramatic increases in raptor populations.  Because of the 30 films he’s made about birds of prey, including seven with Walt Disney, dozens of countries instituted shooting bans and awareness campaigns about the plight of endangered eagles.  While working with Morley on the film The Eagle and the Hawk, John Denver was inspired to finish his hit song of the same name.

Morley developed his appreciation of – or obsession with, as his ex-wife says – birds of prey early, but it didn’t come naturally.  He was raised on a North Dakota ranch with a typical rancher’s attitude:  Birds of prey were varmints, and the bigger they were, the worse they were.  As a youth, Morley shot a red-tailed hawk out of the sky. 

At that time, the U.S. government paid people to kill birds of prey.  Bounty hunters shot them from small planes, and state Fish and Game departments killed them, arguing that the birds competed with humans for food. 

But one summer day on his grandfather’s North Dakota ranch, 12-year-old Morley had a revelation.  While watering his horse, he looked up as a teal duck – a bird he thought to be the fastest around – exploded into a cloud of its own feathers.  A falcon had hit it at 100 mph and then looped under to pluck it from the sky.  Morley’s natural fascination with speed and power, fueled by the growing prominence of manned flight, drew him to the bird.  He’d never seen anything travel that fast, not even a plane. 

The next day, Morley walked out on the ranch, reached up into a nest, captured a baby hawk, and taught himself, with the aid of books, how to raise and train it.  Since then, except for his service in WWII, he’s always had a major bird of prey, becoming one of their greatest handlers and staunchest advocates.

To Morley, birds of prey are anthropomorphic, but it cuts both ways.  Morley holds his head high, like an eagle.  His hands are coarse, speckled and strong, like talons.  He’s lean from physical work, not play.  His words are short and clipped. 

But his most impressive qualities are a keen, wide-ranging intellect and an intuitive ability to sense big problems early and head them off.  His battles against pesticides, illegal shooting of eagles and raptor habitat destruction were fought well before they were popular issues.