Neverwinter Forest he was growing in my garden and i pulled him out by his hair like a weed

Not a hawk but something else? Hm. Well, he figured he'd see the bird eventually, he was probably forgetting something else obvious.

This couldn't be too hard to figure out, right? He figured it out on his own (eventually) with a bit of luck and being able to go back and take from Elysium if stuff got bad, so giving Phillip pointers probably meant he'd figure it out way faster than Mal had. That's how it went in theory at least. So maybe two things, but we'll start with the whole getting close enough thing -- that might be the only problem right there anyway. So let's see what we can do. Now if the issue ended up being he tripped over his own paws too much like he'd so recently shown, then that might be  bit more work.

He nodded to have Phillip follow as he turned back towards the tracks that had been left from the failed hunt. Ok, show me where the mouse was when you saw it, and where you were. Do you know if you were upwind or downwind from it? Like if maybe it could have smelled you before seeing you. Hopefully the positions of them both would answer that even if Phillip didn't know what Mal was talking about.