Quail Hunting seems rigged.
 

So I love watching the local hunting and fishing shows every Sunday morning but the quail hunt this morning seemed rigged. The place they were hunting was open with very little cover yet the birds wouldnt even flush with a group of people talking and 2 dogs less than 10 feet away. The guide was even pointing the birds out on the ground as he saw them. When the dog does flush them they fly perfectly making for easy shots.

Are these Quail retarded or something. I will admit I dont know much about Quail hunting but I have lots of Quail on my farm and they dont act like the Quail they hunt on TV. When Im out walking they will sometimes flush when Im 20 feet away. They damn sure dont let me get close enough to see them before flushing. Not to mention when they do flush they fly about 2-3 feet off the ground making it impossible to shoot safely. Also the places they are in are so thick theres probably Charlie in there. Dont know how a dog could even get in there to flush and then find the birds if by some miracle they fly high enough to get off a good shot. I just dont see how its sporting to shoot birds that seem mentally retarded.

they were probly raised on a bird farm. domesticated quail.never been hunted, fed their entire lives and have no fear of humans.

the pheasants around here are the same way. you can sometimes walk right up to them and kick them before they will fly. mights well just go shoot some trap.it is much more sporting

Sounds like the show was hunting per raised and planted birds. I've hunted a lot of natural wild quail and they are a completely different bird. Many of these hunting shows seem rigged now. How many of those huge whitetails you see hitting the ground do you honestly think are wild deer. I'm willing to bet a lot of them come straight from game farms. It's all about the $$$. No kill shot, no $$$ to be made selling the tape.

Agree with flags - definitely Pen raised. Wild quail don't do that as i hunt them with dogs and have used many pen raised birds to train.

JW

Wild quail (Bobwhite) are almost none existent here in northern IN. How are they doing in other parts of the country?

here in sw idaho we mainly have california quail and there are lots of em .pops are down from what they were 4-5 years ago but still plentifull. also have mtn quail but sightings are somewhat rare. some bobwhite in northern part of state

I do most my quail hunting along the river bottoms in eastern CO and western NE. Still lots of birds there. Problem is the hunting clubs buy a lot of the land and the outfitters lease up a lot too. Quality public hunting ground is getting hard to find. What public land there is gets hit pretty hard. Thankfully I have access to more than 10,000 acres of river bottom owned by either family or long time family friends.

pen rasied

I have hunted both wild bob white and early release bob white in GA and I have hunted regular pen raised bob white in several states as well as using them for dog training. I have see wild bob white act no different than early release or regular pen raised birds by holding very tight. I have also seen wild birds and pen raised birds flush wild. There may be times you can tell the difference sometimes, if you have lousy birds that will not flush and fly but there are times where it would be very hard to tell unless you knew for sure. We had quail on the farms I started hunting on as as kid, probably between 12 and 17 before they disappeared. We never shot any because my dad would allow it. There were many times we would come to an edge with good cover and while planning how we would hunt it, a small covey would flush withing two or three feet from us and scare the crap out of us. I will agree on the whole you can tell, but not all the time if the birds came from a good breeder who wasn't just interested in how many quail they could raise and sell. Remember,back when the south had lots of wild birds, the dog handlers didn't carry those flushing whips just for show, they carried them for tight sitting birds. I have also many times come to the end of a field while hunting wild pheasants where there was no apparent cover to kick out and while standing there there a pheasant or pheasants would flush within a very close distance to us or almost stepped on a pheasant before it flushed, this was in the 50s and 60s when we had lots of wild pheasants. Wild birds will sit tight.

Pretty much gone around here. They went about the same time the ring necks did.

ATB