Working Life is a monthly column in which Texans talk about their jobs. Steve Oleson, who is seventy, is the owner of the Austin-based company Winged Victory. The lifelong falconer uses raptors to scare pest birds away from storefronts and parking lots.I started training hawks when I was in seventh grade in San Antonio, back in the sixties. A pet store had a couple of little falcons called kestrels. My friends and I put jesses—leather straps that help control the birds—on their legs and got them used to being handled. There ended up being about ten falconers at my high school, if not more. Those of us who were serious stuck with it. I worked as a photographer for the state attorney general’s office for a long…
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