Minnesota Public Radio — When Pat Redig ’70 was growing up in Hibbing and Alexandria, Minn., birds of prey weren’t hunters.
They were the hunted.
“Raptors, you see, were targets,” said Redig, who retires Friday after 45 years at the University of Minnesota’s Raptor Center. “I remember my school classmates … thought the coolest thing to do would be to get out and shoot a hawk. Because it would kind of be a testimony of their ability to hunt.”
It appalled him. He learned to appreciate the birds from his dad and even got into falconry as a young man. It’s an ancient pursuit, and as he soon found out, so was the care available for the birds.
“Quite frankly the medicine had not advanced since the mid-1800s and it was pretty pathetic at that point,” he said.
So after getting a bachelor’s degree in biology at St. Cloud State University and enrolling in vet school at the U in 1970, he turned his attention again to birds.
