The falcon teaches us to watch.

Like any predator, its success depends on patience and an understanding of the land. Stefan Wachs, a photographer based in New Mexico, began to understand this while on assignment capturing an ancient craft that may be the world’s oldest form of hunting.

A Harris Hawk with it’s prey, San Antonio, New Mexico, 2018 | Stefan Wachs

Wachs knew people still hunted with falcons in the Middle East and Central Asia but didn’t realize the practice was alive in the American West.

In these photos, Wachs documents a small community of falconers, many of them biologists or conservationists, who know the land with the intimacy that comes from depending on it.

Writer, falconer and naturalist Stephen Bodio with his peregrine falcon, Magdalena, New Mexico, 2016 | Stefan Wachs

To fly a falcon, they have to know where the quail gather and where ducks and teal pass, and how drought, pesticides and development have made hunting more difficult for predators. Most hunts end with nothing.

A bloodied falconer’s glove, San Antonio, New Mexico, 2017 | Stefan Wachs

The bird must be kept at exactly the right weight, and it can leave at any moment and never return. The falconer, Wachs says, is “more at the mercy of the raptor” than the other way around.

Many of us are far removed from the natural world, from the reality of predator and prey. We buy our meat in supermarkets, wrapped and clean, sanitized from killing and death. Falconry removes that distance, reminding us that blood is part of our story, as is death.

Falconer and Conservationist Paul Juergens with his peregrine falcon near Deming, New Mexico, 2017

Nature, we often forget, is unforgiving, and sometimes violent.

It is also startlingly beautiful, as Wachs’ work reminds us: a peregrine in mid-flap against a dusk sky, an old falconer’s face bent toward his bird, a hawk ready to fly across the open plains of New Mexico.

Young falconry apprentice Thomas, at the Falconer’s meet in Lubbock, Texas, 2019 | Stefan Wachs Pigeons, used in the training of raptors and for trapping, Magdalena, New Mexico, 2016 | Stefan Wachs Falconer John Coffman with his Irish Setters, near Lander, Wyoming, 2018 | Stefan Wachs Peregrine Falcon, Deming, New Mexico, 2017 | Stefan Wachs

This story appears in the November 2026 issue of Deseret Magazine under the headline “Into thin air.” Learn more about how to subscribe.