Alan Sims was responsible for hiring the trained hawk that swooped down and attacked Neelix. The fact that the bird was filmed on location became problematic during production, however, as the hawk did not do what was required of it. "Instead," recalled Alan Sims, "the hawk spotted a crow and went off after it in the opposite direction. It took hours to find him. The delay was a nightmare."
Although Chakotay's home world is left unnamed in this episode (as with the rest of the series), Star Trek Monthly issue 10 refers to the planet as Dorvan V. This planet, which appears in Journey's End (1994), was indeed originally intended to have been Chakotay's home world.
This episode explains the origin of Chakotay's facial tattoo.
This is the second of three Chakotay-centric second season episodes, the others being Initiations (1995) and Maneuvers (1995).