Crow Busters Forum

Island Shooter · Guru

Return To The Dove Field

Old Artilleryman · Guru

Looks as if the "crow" in charge of that formation in front of you just gave the command, "REST." And boy are they resting biggrin !

Nice work--made even more memorable by the crummy conditions smile .

Mitch · Member

Good hunt! Most I have ever killed in one day was 7. The birds down here like to land on the opposite side of the field and watch for an hour before they leave.

Skip · Guru

Demi: That is definitely one HIGH fence!! Personally, I think dropping 34-36 birds 5 weeks after you masacreeeed 128 in the same place might be better than "par". Crows do not forget, at least not in 5 weeks and I have often felt they never forget. Impossible to know for sure since they do not wear numbers, but once educated, I am not sure they ever forget the experience and being 10 yards or farther out of range is typical for the crows with Ph.D's. But, I bet you agree, you are pretty happy with the 34+.

I killed 141 late last year, returned 4+ weeks later, killed 26! As Bert Popowski said " if we were all changed into birds according to our intelligence, only a few of us would be crows!

Skip

Bob · Guru

Demi,

Your not kidding about the cold!

Dick & I shot in "minus 3 degree weather" with a 10 to 20 mph northwest breeze the other day! The following day it was 11 above and the day after was 4 above! Your just slow in that kind of weather! Our shooting averages suffered as well!

Island Shooter · Guru

Skip, et. al. Question on crow memory: How much of their memory is relative to the specific field vs. the neighborhood? Pete has another high fence dove field about 1.5-2 miles down the road and they have shown up there since we shot last time. I'm assuming they are the birds we pushed out. Will they remember my calls or will they act like fresh birds in a different field? Demi

Butch · Guru

IS,

Well done and congrats, great to see a hunting report. Been busy deer hunting here but hoping to get after Mr. Crow this Sat.

Butch

Skip · Guru

Demi: If they are the same birds...same consequences. Knowledge travels! I would hope you would encounter some fresh birds a mile or so away. Worth a try in my view!!! Good luck.

skip

Bob · Guru

Dick & I shot 236 crows in that northwest breeze but our average plummeted in that 3 below zero weather. I fired 255 12 gauge trap loads for 120 crows! Dick shot 116 his average was about the same as mine. We spent a total of 4 hours (including setting up the blind) that afternoon enduring that weather. The Beretta's held up, just kept spitting out the empty hulls on the ground.

Dick kept saying "I'm having trouble loading the gun, I can't feel my fingers" I said "you just have to toughen up" that was no help to Dick. We still had a good time but would have killed a lot more birds in decent conditions.

nhcrowshooter · Guru

Bob wrote:
Dick & I shot 236 crows in that northwest breeze but our average plummeted in that 3 below zero weather. I fired 255 12 gauge trap loads for 120 crows! Dick shot 116 his average was about the same as mine. We spent a total of 4 hours (including setting up the blind) that afternoon enduring that weather. The Beretta's held up, just kept spitting out the empty hulls on the ground.

Dick kept saying "I'm having trouble loading the gun, I can't feel my fingers" I said "you just have to toughen up" that was no help to Dick. We still had a good time but would have killed a lot more birds in decent conditions.

Less than 50% kill rate for you is unusual and should tell you something. Given those temperatures I am not surprised, your shells were working at no where near their advertised performance as extreme cold weather causes a loss of chamber pressure and velocity. You were surely hitting more crows than you think but you didn't have enough velocity to get the job done with the small of target size shot. You ever take a portable propane heater into the blind with you. They can make the difference between comfort and suffering.

Old Artilleryman · Guru

nhcrowshooter wrote:
Less than 50% kill rate for you is unusual and should tell you something. Given those temperatures I am not surprised, your shells were working at no where near their advertised performance as extreme cold weather causes a loss of chamber pressure and velocity. You were surely hitting more crows than you think but you didn't have enough velocity to get the job done with the small of target size shot. You ever take a portable propane heater into the blind with you. They can make the difference between comfort and suffering.

You would also know about cold, being in NH. MI is catching up: -11 here yesterday a.m. a balmy 17 this a.m. Your use of the propane heater is also good for bringing the rounds back up to temperature to perform to near normal. of course that doesn't help those in the tube and magazine, but it could if the gun were also warmed.

Powder temperature is always measured for cannon artillery, with the appropriate corrections included in the gunnery solution, as even a small difference in temp with those much larger powder capacities would result in significant muzzle velocity (and thus, range) changes. I once read that our snipers in Iraq and Afghanistan would place their rounds in the sun on occasion to bump up the temp to boost range a bit.

Bob · Guru

Pete,

We were dressed right, the only thing that bothered Dick was his hands, even with gloves on. I would keep my hands in my sweat shirt pockets until I saw a crow coming. I would only take them out to shoot, load the gun, and hit the counter if I got the bird.

I used to keep a 5 gallon bucket filled with 10 pounds of charcoal under similar conditions in past years. The heat caused the snow to melt and freeze again inside the blind and it turned it into an ice skating rink! With the better outdoor clothing these days I just go without because I very rarely hunt in those extreme conditions. Dick was all hot to go kill some crows so I went against my better judgment.

In your opinion what do you think the velocity was down too in those conditions? At the muzzle under fair weather it is supposed to be 1200 fps.

Dick got a photo of me holding up a pouch of Beachnut Chewing Tobacco with no gloves on in that 3 below zero day. When I post up the photo (when I get time) you will see I'm dressed for that harsh weather. Right after that photo was taken I stuck my hands back in my pockets to get warm.

nhcrowshooter · Guru

Bob I don't know how much velocity you lose as I think cold weather testing is usually at temps closer to freezing than below zero. According to Tom Roster the cold weather reduces velocity and opens patterns up, as much as 15% from an Improved Cylinder, which means the pattern may be worse than a standard Cylinder barrel in warm weather with an IC in the cold weather.

A couple of decades ago when I was actively shooting registered trap, the old timers would set 4 boxes of shells in the sun for a couple of hours before the Handicap. They told me the heat will make them hotter than the 3 dram (1200 fps) limit that was imposed by the ATA. I thought it was old wives tale at the time but appears they knew what they were doing. I do know in the real cold weather I see more squib and blooper loads on the trap and skeet fields.

The portable propane heaters are night and day easier to carry and use than a bucket and charcoal.

Tom Roster on cold and shotgun shells.

www.shotgunlife.com/shotguns/tom-roster/why-winter-requires-ammo-changes.html

nhcrowshooter · Guru

Old Artilleryman wrote:

You would also know about cold, being in NH. MI is catching up: -11 here yesterday a.m. a balmy 17 this a.m. Your use of the propane heater is also good for bringing the rounds back up to temperature to perform to near normal. of course that doesn't help those in the tube and magazine, but it could if the gun were also warmed.
Powder temperature is always measured for cannon artillery, with the appropriate corrections included in the gunnery solution, as even a small difference in temp with those much larger powder capacities would result in significant muzzle velocity (and thus, range) changes. I once read that our snipers in Iraq and Afghanistan would place their rounds in the sun on occasion to bump up the temp to boost range a bit.

Yesterday morning it was 6 below and 20 below wind chill here in the warm part of NH. I never knew artillery men had to concern themselves with temperature for it's effect on the big guns. Makes me wonder how the big guns and tank guns worked at the Battle of the Bulge or the Choisan Resevoir were temps were 40 below. Then there were the 50 cals on B-17's and B-24's that were in 40 below temps at altitude. I saw old time trapshooters do the same thing with their ammo before shooting in a Handicap in competition as the snipers.

-- Edited by nhcrowshooter on Thursday 15th of January 2015 04:52:16 PM

Old Artilleryman · Guru

nhcrowshooter wrote:

Yesterday morning it was 6 below and 20 below wind chill here in the warm part of NH. I never knew artillery men had to concern themselves with temperature for it's effect on the big guns. Makes me wonder how the big guns and tank guns worked at the Battle of the Bulge or the Choisan Resevoir were temps were 40 below. Then there were the 50 cals on B-17's and B-24's that were in 40 below temps at altitude. I saw old time trapshooters do the same thing with their ammo before shooting in a Handicap in competition as the snipers.

-- Edited by nhcrowshooter on Thursday 15th of January 2015 04:52:16 PM

Variables in accurate gunnery include: powder temperature, accurate location of both gun and target, difference in elevation between gun and target (angle of site"), earth's rotation, earth's curvature, drift (tendency of the projectile to drift to the right because of the R-hand twist), tube wear on a particular gun, air temperature, air pressure, projectile weight (different types, and also weight variances between projos of the same type but among different lots of the same type), and probably a couple of more I've forgotten. Now, having listed all of these variables, if one can make all of these corrections ahead of time, then in theory, one could shoot and achieve "First Round Accuracy" - the holy grail of field artillery - and also achieve a degree of surprise.

Now, if you don't have all of these data or time to do all of it, and have to shoot "cold" then you really need a forward observer out there, downrange, close to the bad guys, to make corrections to the observed fires. In fact, it is rare to have "unobserved" fires at all. Modern tube artillery such as the 155mm M109A6 have all the bells and whistles to do most of these calculations using an on-board computer and GPS. I learned to do it all by hand and with manual charts. Big difference nowadays!

A lot of this should sound familiar to you guys out there who shoot benchrest (any snipers? you know this stuff already) and also must account for many of those same variables listed above, to once again achieve a first round kill or a winning group.

Bob · Guru

OA, that is fascinating to read about.

Pete,

With the loss of chamber pressure in extreme cold I'm surprised my semi auto cycled as well as it did? I'm surprised I did not have any trouble with the breach bolt going all the way back so the spent round would clear the port in the receiver for the next live round.

The AA batteries in the remote for the e-caller did not last four hours in that cold weather. We always carry more, I had to dig inside my pocket for a quarter to use to get the batteries out as my finger tips just did not have the same feel in them as in warmer temps.