You have to train on pen raised quail when you compete with your dogs. I keep my quail in a Johnny house, and have for the last 20 years or so. I'm having my worst year on re-calling. What do you guys uses?

I sure miss Gene Hill's writing.

+1

What size funnel are you using? Are there are large amount of ground / air predators around? Would there happen to be a wild covey around? This is where I woukd start.

I had to order a chukar funnel, cause the quail were too big to get through the quail funnel. I've had them go feral in the past. One year they raised two clutches.

I just completed a Quail Recall Box that I'm going to place at the deer lease this weekend. Never done this before, but based on some reading, I plan to leave them (about 15 quail) in the recall box for 2 weeks before releasing/hunting them. I'm getting them from a guy who says they are flight ready so they should be hardy enough to survive.

Y'all think this will work...any pointers?

Also, what do you feed them? Do I need to buy quail feed or will bird seed, corn work?

Advice from me would be like getting advice about fighting indians from Custer, but I'll give it a shot anyway. I built a recall box years ago and it worked fine. Leaving it unattended for two weeks could cause problems from vermits.

Are you getting them from Bennie in Columbus?

I'm getting them from Barrett's Quail Farm in East Houston. Closest place to me that I could find that sells flight ready quail. Never used them before, so I'll see how that goes.

Also, my plan is to check on them weekly to keep the varmits in check. The two week time frame is how long I plan to leave them in the recall box before releasing a few. Hope that will be enough to acclimate them to the box and recall them.

What do you feed your quail Bill?

I just get a sack of whatever they're using when I buy them. Bennie is 47 miles from me. I ran out of feed and had the local feed store order me a bag of Purina Flight Conditioned Gamebird feed.

It has a pretty short shelf life. I carried over a half bag from the spring, and it had weevils this fall.

I was over there this morning to work my dogs, and had a possum in my Have A Heart trap.