TETHERED TO TRADITION
V
ietnam vet Richard Lindekens is not an eagle hunter, but he has lived with, eaten with, slept with (in the non-biblical sense), and
photographed a number of people he now calls friends and who can indeed be classified as eagle hunters, or more accurately:
men who hunt with eagles.
Lindekens, a former U.S. Army pilot, flew medevac helicopters in Vietnam during that long U.S. engagement; upon his release from the
Army, he attended Cal State Long Beach before heading up to Alaska for work. A couple years after that, he took a job flying helicopters
in the Peruvian Amazon region in connection with the oil business. When he returned to the United States after three years in the jungle,
he found work with the Fluor Corporation, a multinational engineering and construction firm, and for the next 10 years he flew senior
management around the world piloting their helicopters and airplanes. “Flying their Gulfstream 2s and 3s was the best job in the world,”
he says during an interview at our Coast Village Circle office. “We were the third airplane to fly into China after Nixon opened it up,” he
adds. When that work ended, he became a pilot for Air Cal (American Airlines) and retired from there.
KAZAKH EAGLE HUNTERS MAKE THEIR WAY ACROSS THE ALTAI MOUNTAIN
REGION OF WESTERN MONGOLIA WHERE WINTER TEMPERATURES
CAN DROP AS LOW AS 30-DEGREES BELOW ZERO (FAHRENHEIT); THEIR
CLOTHES, ALL OF WHICH THEY MAKE THEMSELVES, ARE HEAVY AND
MADE OF FOX, SHEEP, OR CAMEL. HUNTERS ALSO MAKE THEIR OWN
SADDLES OF WOOD TOPPED WITH LEATHER, AND THEIR OWN BRIDLES.
THEIR HORSES ARE SMALL, STRONG, SMART, AND DURABLE. SOME ARE
SHOD, BUT MANY AREN’T. IT’S ROUGH TERRAIN. THESE ARE THE SAME
TYPES OF HORSES THAT ATTILA THE HUN AND HIS GOLDEN HORDE RODE.
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