Hello Everyone - Advice about Kestrels

[Falcon Boy]

I would do the waiting on flights, but where i'm moving the only real source of consistent slips would be urban stuff, not anywhere where the bird could take a pitch to get a slip. If opportunities for open field flights were available, honestly I would pick a bird better suited for it.

Michelle- I know that is a common thing for some birds. To prevent this, as soon as the birds are hardpenned they will be flown on wild quarry. I think the mistake people make is waiting too long to expose the bird to quarry. A bird that is just getting hardpenned is still pretty dumb, but a bird that is 6 months old has developed a "what a food should look like" mental image. I also will NEVER throw a handtossed quail. I think that causes problems as well. Any quail would be tossed from a launcher, pointed by a pointer.

Thanks for the advice guys. Should I go through with this, which i am going to try my best to, I will try to keep a log like I did with Goose.

[Falcon Boy]

Jeff,
What problems did you run into with the cast?

[GyrXPeals]

None Noah, the birds worked well around each other. We tried to slip them at the same time initially and never caught a bird. What we found to be a successful combination was to slip one Kestrel, if that bird caught a starling it's buddies would stick around and mob the Kestrel with the catch. That's when we would slip the second Kestrel, it wasn't always successful but the more we did it the better they got and it almost always ended with the second bird being caught in the air if one was caught.
That was car hawking of course and I'm not sure how that would translate to quail.
ATB,
Jeff

[Falcon Boy]

Thanks for the info. Any idea why they didn't catch when slipped together?

[GyrXPeals]

Thanks for the info. Any idea why they didn't catch when slipped together?

The starlings always noticed them when they went out together and would flush long before the Kestrels got there. We never even came close to catching them that way.
ATB,
Jeff

[Falcon Boy]

thanks