I’m thinking about releasing bobwhite quail onto my property. This is the first time I’ve bought the quail myself. How much should I pay for each quail? Also, how many should I buy? It will be me and two other people hunting them.
172 Sea Hunt Triton
1500 key west sportsman
You better hunt them quick. I have been told that pen raised quail won’t make it in the wild. Too many natural predators like Hawks. I asked this question years ago. There isn’t too many wild quail coveys left. If there was such a restocking program, it would have been done. Good luck though.
John
Depends on where you buy them. You need to get the birds from someone that has a netting type fly pen where they have hawks trying to get at them. I have had a good many survive and these type pens help. I would get at least 100.Just my 2 cents
libra
Cam, I’ve been hunting with a friend on 150 acre tract. We’ve got about 10 acres that we release birds on. We usually only release a dozen at a time. Over the last 4 years I would say 200 birds have made it to freedom. We have had Zero to raise that we know of and adjacent land owners have only seen a few scattered here and there shortly after the season.
In an earlier DNR meeting lack of wood burnings, feral cats, and fire ants were mentioned as reasons our quail population has all but died out.
Jaybird is right on having them raised with a flight pen, we learned that if you don’t you almost have to kick the birds to get them to fly.
If you’ve got a good dog, just release a dozen or so at a time in the area you will be hunting. If your going to get into it pretty heavy it’s a fun hobby to hatch and raise them. http://www.gqfmfg.com GQF out of savannah has any thing you could need to do it.
Take this for what it’s worth on getting them to raise in the wild. Business associate releases 3500 birds a year and has little to no birds make it through the year. With the hunts this plantation provides maybe a 1000 birds get taken.
< Evil is simply the absence of God >
If you have the right habitat you can build a wild bird population. Food, water, nesting area, cover, etc are all needed. Adult pen raised birds will not normally make it. Check out the link below.
http://wildlifemanagementtechnologies.com/Store/Product/15:Traditional_Surrogator
I might look into that brav302, I have 35 acres in cottageville and it has just recently (past 8-15 years ago) a wild fire where pretty much all my land burnt. It has a lot of young pine trees growing right now with little to no pine straw and ten acres of it is just knee high brush. What do you guys think, could I pull it off?
172 Sea Hunt Triton
1500 key west sportsman
That suregator thing sure would be a foxes best friend if you used that to try and establish a few covies.
Get you a pen raise a few hundred and turn a dozen or so out in that 10 acre area of knee high brush. That same area of knee high brush plant you some strips of Egyption wheat, some millet, and other grain crops so some of the released birds that don’t get shot have something to eat and a slim chance of raising. But don’t expect mush on the raising part.
If you want to get fancy build a long flight pen out of sight of any man made activity and have your kid go out everyday and scare the heck out of them. That way when you turn them out you don’t have to kick them to make them fly.
working hard and playing harder
If it was as easy as releasing pen raised birds and having them re-establish, everybody would have already done it. Pen birds don’t last long. They don’t even know what to eat outside of a cage, much less how to avoid predators. I’ve thrown crickets into a pen full of adult birds and they scattered like it was a bomb. Even if they can survive until spring, they do not know how to sit eggs or raise chicks.
My property is next door to a very big shooting preserve that releases birds for each hunt. The birds that make it to my property don’t seem to last more than a week or two.
If you create habitat that can support quail, they’ll come. All it takes it truckloads of money, aggressive predator control, good habitat, and time. I’ve talked to folks that have had some limited success with releasing young birds (6-8 week old) that were raised by bantam hens and fed crickets as chicks.
Check out talltimbers.org for a wealth of information and to get your hopes of doing anything on a small scale dashed.