Once my master Falconer, VanWormer, and I were hunting ducks with a Jerkin ( male) Icelandic (pure white)Gyrfalcon on a 19,000 acre ranch in Happy,Texas, when he caught the North Wind and started his long journey back to Canada.
 
We went back to the Amarillo Airport and rented a plane and pilot to track him with his radio telemetry to another ranch about ten miles from where we lost him.  After returning back to Amarillo, we drove to this other ranch ( 40 miles - got there about midnight) and David hiked about three miles from the road to where the radio signal was coming from only to find that the Falcon had chewed off his transmitter and continued on his way back to the Artic.
 
This was the second time David lost a bird with me ( the first was a Harris Hawk he had for 11 years)- he cried both times....
 
Ray