Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. an older male homosexual with a preference for young boys; also attrib.

1964		Lavender Lex. n.p.: chicken hawk: – A homosexual who shows interest in youthful persons as sex partners for the insertor role.
1965		Guild Dict. Homosexual Terms 8: chicken hawk (n.): A homosexual who seeks young boys to pedicate.
1974		E. Wilson Show Business Laid Bare 30: The chicken-hawks, as the middle-aged customers were called, were so satiated that an eighteen-year-old was considered ‘tough,’or old. Much more desirable was real young stuff about twelve or thirteen suitable for raping.
1975		N. De Mille Smack Man (1991) 52: Vice raids had become as rare as hoedowns [...] You had to be running a S&M, B&D club catering to chickenhawks to qualify for a real raid anymore.
1986		C. Hiaasen Tourist Season (1987) 33: The Flamingo Isles was a dive for pimps, chicken hawks, and hookers.
1986		R. Campbell In La-La Land We Trust (1999) 10: The rain had washed all the baby prostitutes and twangy boys, the chicken hawks and queer bashers, the gonifs and petty grifters off the four corners of Hollywood and Vine.
1989		H. Rawson Dict. of Invective (1991) 79: This kind of chicken, often preyed upon by older men known as chicken hawks or chicken queens, goes back to the nineteenth century.
1992		Bentley & Corbett Prison Sl. 58: Chicken Hawk A bisexual or homosexual who seeks relationships with young attractive men.
1997		(con. 1970s) G. Pelecanos King Suckerman (1998) 112: Doe-faced chicken hawks eyeing little boys.
1998		R. Scott Rebecca’s Dict. of Queer Sl. 🌐 chickenhawk — an older person who likes the very young and seeks them out, most often an older gay male.
2000		M. Manning Get Your Cock Out 33: Sat in a darkened alcove with his court of mincing fags, chicken hawks and their little chicks all buggering and fellating away.
2004		J. McCourt ‘Vilja de Tanquay Exults’ in Queer Street 304: Give me an old geezer so long as he’s sweet / And not a candyman or chickenhawk.
2010		W. Ings ‘Trolling the Beat to Working the Soob’ in Int’l Jrnl Lexicog. 23:1 72: A K.F. [i.e. paedophile] on the street in the 1970s was also called a chicken hawk.
2015		J. Stahl OG Dad 166: I saw [...] that Phnom Penh was a prime chickenhawk destination.

2. an older man who prefers teenage girls for sex; also attrib.

1928		Jrnl Social Hygiene 9 68: A ride with a ‘gas-hound’ or ‘chicken-hawk’ [...] without very definite sex temptation which often ends in the choice between an assault or being put out of the car, miles from town.
1967		M. Anthony Green Days by River 55: Christ! I ain’t give her to you. I only lend you a dance, boy. You is chicken-hawk or what!
1994		J. Wambaugh Finnegan’s Week 30: Jules was in several adult magazine and book shops in downtown San Diego looking for chickenhawk and pedophile publications.
2014		‘Chelsea G. Summers’ in http://adult-mag.com 8 July 🌐 I’m not enamored of the cougar cliché. It’s as demeaning as the term ‘chickenhawk,’ and while there’s a long, florid history of men who only like very young women, there’s no real equivalent term for men.

3. in fig. use, a general predator.

1998

D. McKenna Amer. Hist. X [film script] You fuckin’ chicken hawk! [...] You prey on people Cam. I lost three years of my life for your fuckin’ phony cause.