I know this topic is about birds of prey and associating a bad experience with the falconer, but let me chime in here with an off topic example to confirm the belief that it helps to avoid associating a bad experience with the animal's new handler.

When taming mink I have often had the internal battle of how to put a harness on a mink with out holding them down. With a falcon you can avoid the negative association by not letting them see you when you cast them to put on their equipment. With a mink, however, they see more with their nose than they do their eyes,and there is nothing you can do to block their sense of sell. So throughout the years I've struggled to find a way to put a harness on a mink in the least stressful way possible to avoid that negative first impression. Years later when I finally found a way to do it (I created a little device they run through and it basically puts the harness on for me) I found that the mink did tame down MUCH sooner than the ones that had to be stressed out to put the harness on.

Avoiding that negative association could save me a week or two in the training/taming process with a new mink, and save me a few unexpected bites when I decided to take the glove off.