Cooper's hawks are known as bold and aggressive predators. Given their dietary habits, these hawks bore a poor reputation well into the 20th century, with one account describing the species as "noxious," an “avian outlaw" and "a relentless tyrant and murderer of small birds." Another describes the species as a “bloodthirsty” “villain." Early accounts underestimated the opportunistic nature of the Cooper's hawks’ hunting behavior and provided little insight into the actual effect the hawks have on their prey. The maximum hunting range was estimated at in Michigan and in Wyoming. In another Michigan study, most Cooper's hawks were found to be flying from their wooded nests to hunt on agricultural ground. Males in New York usually covered more than , sometimes up to , during hunting efforts when flying away from the nest area. Due to scattered prey availability in North Florida, females were nearly nomadic, wandering anywhere where food could be accessed (i.e. chicken farms, feedlots, bird feeders, etc.), while males were more typically devoted to hunting on their regular home range. During hunts, Cooper's hawks rely on agile, twisting flights between bouts of perching and scanning, their flight suddenly picking up speed upon approach to the prey. Hunting hawks typically utilize forest edge, open woodland and fencelines and such while hunting. In southwestern Tennessee, the preferred hunting habitats in the non-breeding season were forest, then woodland edge, then lastly open country. Near Stevens Point in Wisconsin, males prefer to hunt in quiet woods while females preferred to stay within of the nest making males a more common sight. This differed strongly in Tucson where hawks while hunting mostly in manmade environments such as residential areas, regional parks, and golf courses more so than they were prevalent in the environment, though usually where there were large (albeit usually non-native) trees. The Cooper's hawk does attack birds attracted to bird feeders with a fair amount of frequency. However, data from Indiana showed that birds using bird feeders were at no greater risk of attack than those in random transects, and the effect Cooper's can have on feeder birds may be at times exaggerated.