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Training the birds to whistle feeding is handy when your trying to draw them away from the pens/established woods and up into the more remote drives. Cover crops will attract their own birds but a small lonely wood on top of a hill will never hold many birds well, but is an excellent place to drive them from. So you use Whistle training to get them up there.

As has been said it's a ball ache of a job and if you don't have to do it then don't!!!

 

As soon as the Poults are in the pens and left to relax for the first day/night (with feed/water already down for them) we then used to start whistling them whilst feeding first thing in the morning. We never hand fed twice a day, just laid it down fairly heavy all at once and just stayed on top of any vermin in the pens. This way they were a bit hungry in the morning and are more likely to come to the whistle. (after all it's announcing that theirs food down for them).

We used to only ever hand feed the pens but would have Hoppers ready for them on the edges of the Woods, coverts, game strips etc. for when their flight feathers grew back and they started leaving the pens.

 

 

Try and make it a clear single tone whistle that you can do for a while though as when your lugging bags of feed and drums of water about with you the last thing you want to be doing is trying to whistle a 'Duelling Banjos' tune!!

Also depending what type of bird you buy, some seem more wild than others and would be over the wire and off down the hedges pretty quick so get someone to walk them back to the pen for you whilst you whistle them in (Don't forget to open the pop holes for them to get back in). They don't need much encouragement to come back to the pen in the beginning.

After a month of Whistle feeding they should be running into the rides behind you when you start whistling.

 

Once their whistle trained then to get them feeding in certain spots (a small wood/covert on top of the hill above the pen for example) then it was simply a case of heading there first thing in the morning and whistling your lungs off! within minutes you'll have the first birds arriving so make sure there's food down for them. Stay their whistling and occasionally throwing a handful of feed about and every day you'll be getting more and more birds coming in to feed.

We used to clear a zigzag shaped feed ride in the wood and run a topper over it to keep it short to start with so they could get straight on the feed then gradually spread the feed into the cover either side of the ride or lay down straw on the ride as this makes them work for their food and keeps them in the area for longer.

Once we started feeding the drives then we'd stop feeding the pens and then slowly remove the hoppers from the surrounding area (still leaving Water/Grit down for them though) so although they still roosted in the pen and surrounding woods, at first light they'd be off to the drives/coverts to feed.

We never whistled them in on shoot days though.

 

Hope this helps a bit, I'm sure theirs loads of other ways of doing it but that's how I was taught.

 

78% return is VERY good, I guess you must be pulling birds from neighbouring shoots to get that amount of birds back, so whatever your doing, it's working well enough already! lol

We used to get low 60's and thought we were doing exceptionally well! lol

 

All the best.

 

Edited to add, when hand feeding watch out for rats/mice, their population can explode with all that food laying about so make sure you keep on top of them or it can get out of hand.

I agree...very well written informative post but i just wonder about a few things. When you say you let the poults settle in for a night when they arrive does that mean you dont go and check them before dark... :icon_eek: I'd be shitting myself that they were all out the pen? And second why dont you whistle the birds in on shoot day, isn't it the whole point in whistle feeding to get the birds into a cerain drive at a certain time... :hmm:

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I agree...very well written informative post but i just wonder about a few things. When you say you let the poults settle in for a night when they arrive does that mean you dont go and check them before dark... :icon_eek: I'd be shitting myself that they were all out the pen? And second why dont you whistle the birds in on shoot day, isn't it the whole point in whistle feeding to get the birds into a cerain drive at a certain time... :hmm:

 

The birds were clipped, so not that many would get over the wire even if they wanted too, and the pop holes were closed up so no way through. We used to hammer the ground for vermin so that it wasn't really a huge concern. The only thing we suffered from in a big way was Buzzards. They'd kill 4-5 poults a day in every pen and probably more around the area that we didn't find.

But to answer your queston no, we didn't really keep checking them. The first day they were left to settle and we tried to kept away from the pens.

 

The idea of whistle training is just to get the birds to a remote area for feeding in the first place. You then feed those birds there every day.

You could probably stop whistling them after a while of feeding one area as they get in the routine of being fed in that spot at that time but it becomes habit more than anything!

I'm sure there are keepers that whistle the birds in to drives to be shot, it's just not something we did.

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