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Post Info TOPIC: Another dose of Crow Therapy


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Another dose of Crow Therapy
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Almost the end of Michigan's FEB-MAR season and just had to get out once again. Took the easy set-up with natural camouflage, about 4 miles outside of town, where I downed 7 two weeks ago. Turns out that there were at least three bandits that did not get an education back then. I was in the same small but tight grove of pines that hid me well. I put the owl decoy out with my home-made “sock-puppet” crow in its “talons.” Just for laughs, I also placed my Fox-Pro Jack-Attack at the base of the tree, where it did its erratic dance. When the crows came in, they were making angry calls, as if they were focused on the owl and my fake struggling crow. In any case, they hung around and came back on and off for about 45 minutes, allowing me to get these three. Note that my one battle-damaged decoy got its revenge! It quieted down for a while and I figured that place had dried up.

About half way on the way back home, one friend, a snowbird who is still in Mississippi, told me to set up any time on his lot. His home is about ¼ mile east of the local Wal-Mart and in the township. So, I set up with almost no camouflage, placing the sentinel in a large tree in the yard and put the owl and 5 decoys out a bit farther. He had a couple of scrap pieces of plywood with which I arranged a hasty lean-to “blind” on the corner of the garage, allowing a bit of concealment. Now the best part: those sassy town crows started to come in, in twos and threes. The result: four of them took a dive in front of me. I nailed a fifth one, but as it plummeted downward, it recovered and flew off real low to the ground—he got educated, big-time. I sincerely hope one or two of these four bandits were the ones which mocked me whenever I was in the Wal-Mart parking lot. So, another good day with seven down with four of them being the accursed arrogant townies!



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Nice report Craig. I have a few groups of townies to the north of me that I'd love to educate a bit.

Seems like your decoys have done well for you.

BH

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Big Honkers wrote:

Nice report Craig. I have a few groups of townies to the north of me that I'd love to educate a bit.

Seems like your decoys have done well for you.

BH


Yeah, it's maddening. Sometimes you can drive up to within 10-15 feet of the townies and they don't even fly off. They're almost as annoying as the deer that come into town to eat all of your spring tulips and other plants.



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OA, looking at your pictures it seems you have much less snow and ice on the ground in Michigan than we have here in southern NH. This has been a VERY long winter. The cold temps and deep snow pack made crow hunting more difficult and crows more sparse in the early part of the season. Your home made decoys look really good in the picture, no doubt they are effective. Your sentinel in the tree looks great too. The NH spring season ends on 3/31 as well and to add insult to injury today and tomorrow are a washout with rain and wind. Historically the last week of March brings the best shooting as more migrants arrive. I closed out my spring season yesterday with a decent shoot for these parts taking down 26 with old 12ga double. It is good to get out and always a plus to have some success. I see what looks like one of your victims stuck in a limbs of a tree, that has always been an effective trick. One way to get a dead bird up high is take a piece of rope or baling twine and tie the crow to a stick with some slack between them. Toss the crow tied to a stick and they hang up easily. When your done you can just shoot it down.



-- Edited by nhcrowshooter on Sunday 30th of March 2014 10:22:34 AM

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NHCS:

You are absolutely right about the snow and cold hindering operations. You continue to get hammered up your way, it seems. Ours began to melt about two weeks ago and for the past couple of weekends, we've been able to get around a bit in the fields, except the mud is bad and lots of very soft ground in which to become stuck.

What I think you see hanging in the tree is my fake dead crow made of three old black socks. I sewed them together to resemble a limp crow and hang it from a cup hook I placed at the base of my crow and red-tail hawk decoys. I suppose it works because they don't flare away. In fact, yesterday, I heard many angry noises from the crows as they focused on it rather than me--at least that's what I'd like to think. One never knows.

As a test and just for some fun the past couple of weeks, I put the red-tail hawk on my driveway (in town) with two crow decoys sitting facing it just six feet away. I also put the sock crow at the hawk's feet (talons). I put the Spitfire on <i>Adult Crow in Distress</i> and <i>Dying Crow</i> and in a minute, both times, I had 20-25 crows swarming overhead making those angry noises. It was great fun to annoy the townies but also greatly frustrating for me to have a swarm of crows overhead only 30 feet up and no Model 12 in hand.

I might be able to make it out one more time on Monday to close out the season. 



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