Please share your ideas about best ways to put out quail for the put and take hunt.

Thanks for your replies.

Shooterwalter

Grab legs, spin around 5 times or so, gently place and walk away for a while.

I grab them by the body with the wings closed so they wont injure their self while im spinning them. The only thing you have to spin is the head...that's what makes them dizzy

We fly all of our released birds from the cage & then give them a little time to covey back up and/or move around. I don't want to train my dog to track my scent to a planted bird.

Good way to loose pricey birds aint it?

Out of the 100-150 birds we've released this year, we may have lost 10-15 total. Wouldn't you rather lose $50-75 worth of birds than train your dog to track your scent to and from planted birds? Seems like that would be counter productive to me.

It would feel more like real hunting with them flushing in coveys, but I don't know if everyone would want to pay for that large amount of birds to be put out. Hawks are bad in the fields I train in, and they love game birds for dinner.
I think if you plant 2 or 3 quail together you could get a little closer to the effect with a lesser amount of birds.

On my hunts, depends on a few factors: weather, size of "hunting" party and what they want, time between release and "hunt". You said quail, chukar and phez require different tactics. Let's face it, preserve hunts are really a shooting sport and not really a hunt. The goal of the group is to shoot birds not walk around all day "hunting". I release no fewer than two at a time and up to six. For two man groups, every stocking location gets two or three, three- four man groups, two to five birds etc. these guys want to see the dogs work, shoot birds and take some home for the table. They are normally out for a good time, some high quality teasing, and not a whole lot of walking. I grab the birds by their feet, two to six, spin them around a few times and tuck them in the brush. If it's windy, need to spin more cause the wind seems to wake them up faster and they head for thicker protection. If it's really wet or raining, I try to discourage the hunt, birds won't fly and hunters are not getting their shooting in. My goal is to deliver a good time, some good dog work and good conversation without wearing them out from walking hours on end. I want the hunters to get a shot a every bird, the hitting part is up to them. Training is a whole different ball game, requires different tactics depending on training goal at the time.

For training, I will usually dizzy them up by straightening their legs out & spin em a bit & stick them in some grass. Launchers are great too but we haven't invested in a remote launcher yet.

Several years ago, we had access to a great piece of property in central Texas that didn't have any wild birds, so we would buy 100 - 150 birds, drive around on an ATV early on a Saturday morning & just open the cage & let em out, an hour or two later, the rest of the group would show up & we would take off hunting them, we really enjoyed some of those hunts, was real close to wild bird hunting if you had good flyers, but birds were $3 each back then also.

I'd go with DoubleB. I do it differently for training, but I want to know the exact location for training.

Most NSTRA people want their dogs to be able to track. Someone joked about dragging a bag of birds behind the 4 wheeler.

I had guides bring in their dogs for weekend hunts and they never had a problem with it.. and -$ on the hunting report looked worse for me.

Amen! x2
I try to never touch the bird. Fly them out and wait 45 minutes to one hour and start. I call this "warming the birds up" and there is no human scent either on the bird nor on the ground.

your sent will be the least of the worries imo.... you think those pen kept birds smell like one in the wild?? I couldn't get that mess off of me for a week.. just like a chicken house

IMO, the less you handle the bird, the better. A dog's nose and sense of smell has been proven to be about a thousand times stronger than a human's and a dog can track you or a vehicle up to where you throw a bird down. A lot of dogs while on point are not as intense on throw-down birds as they are on wild birds. It is believed this is because the dog can still smell human scent on a bird and he is getting a mixed stimulation to the situation. But hell, if you want to pet every one of them (quail) and have last rights over them, go right a head.

Do I want to lol NO! I hated that part of the job... freaking things are nasty... but either way I wasn't about to loose a $4 bird if I could help it.. I had to completely wash off in scent killer before taking deer hunters out in the afternoon after messing with those birds during the morning

When you are limited on land size it's hard to just let them fly and hope they don't over the fence.

How does NSTRA put out their birds. They are on fairly small fields in ANNA.

They put them out while on a four wheeler.
I wouldn't look to copy a canned hunt after NSTRA.
Thirty minute competition, compared to a hunt.

May I ask how large are your fields?
The most enjoyable canned hunt I have been on was hundreds of acres of beautiful prairie land. Scenery makes a difference in drawing in customers, and getting repeat customers.

I have been let 'em fly out of the box for years, even on small pieces of land. They will call themselves back together, which makes for a decent "covey rise". If you are going to hunt the same spot over and over, start feeding the birds and maybe even use electronic call back birds. You will be amazed at the number of birds that survive in the wild and truly covey up. The longer they are out, the wilder they will become. We pre-release some birds every year and we put out birds throughout the season as well. We usually start the pre-release in October and then put out more as the season goes on and by this time of year we have some really good coveys running around. Most importantly, buy the absolute BEST flight birds that you can find. All pen raised birds ain't created equal.

I would also like to add, that I'm not implying that these birds will live until the following year, but a good percentage will make it thru the season.

The birds I put out and get left behind have a hard time making it past the Hawks for three days. I sometimes have Hawks hitting them while I am putting them out or after we flush them and they are flying.