Crow Busters Forum

A couple of days ago, I felt at the top of the world; as if I had reached a grand turning point in my otherwise abysmal Crowbusting career—Big Honkers asked me to accompany him on a hunt! Man, oh man! However…

…there were a few requirements. Y’all know out there how protective we generally are regarding our favorite hunting spots…well, ol’ BH is no different—in fact, he is a gentleman as well as a master of security. I humbly accepted his offer. Loaded up this a.m. and had my passport stamped at the border crossing checkpoint between Van Buren and Allegan Counties (“Your papers, please.”), and slowly proceeded to the small town location which BH had specified—a closed banking establishment. Kinda eerie. But hey, when you’re invited to shoot crows with a celebrity, you do what you’re told! Finally I arrived at the old bank and out of the gloom appeared a silver pickup full of what looked like…..pine boughs. It was rather like the final scene at the airport in Casablanca (Kids, that’s an old B&W Movie with Humphrey Bogart, OK? Look it up on YouTube), except this story was just beginning.

To ensure that I would not disclose BH's prime set-up location, I had to turn off my phone GPS and also go to the site blindfolded, from the center of this “big town” where we met in the dense fog, 90 minutes prior to sunrise. My friends, BH is a really discrete fellow, we all know that. How he arranged a pea-soup fog worthy of old London is beyond me. But, if I wanted to go shoot with a legend, I guess I had to follow the rules. Photo one is of the return trip, also blindfolded. No photo for the morning trip, as it was well before sunup and big-time fog when we left, so use your imagination. I think he expected the fog to lift in only a short time. Nope.

Anyway, we arrived at the site, I un-blindfolded, and we did the set ups. (Note: a couple of hours later when the sun was above the treeline and could see a bit, I saw that we were in what was indeed a great spot with several possibilities for different set-ups in the immediate 10-15 acres. But, when we began, nothing was visible. I immediately was reminded that there are usually ditches beside Michigan roads when we both went over our knees in snow when removing gear from his truck, when crossing the ditch—which was perfectly level (i.e., filled with Allegan Co. Road Commission snow plow debris). So, we “stovepiped” our way to the nearby site about 100 yards distant. BH had his sled, which (seriously) is a lifesaver in the snow. We both set up about 30 yards apart using his home-made circular instant blinds which he admitted were modeled on 8Fisherman’s design. Nice, except we had to dig through a foot of snow to the frozen ice-covered ground so BH (ever thoughtful) could drill a hole with his portable drill so the upright poles would hold--and they did. We then piled on the branches of white pine and oak which he brought with us.

Oh yeah, the crows. Almost forgot. They were sounding off 360 degrees around us, right on time, about 15 minutes prior to sunrise. We couldn’t see much except directly above us was almost visible blue sky. As it lightened it was as if we were wrapped in cotton from the ground up. Visibility was about 30-40 yards with zero wind. This permitted the crows that did move in from all directions in response to BH’s large and loud caller, to remain unseen, until they were almost upon us. This did not happen often. I managed to nail two. One spiraled down nicely, bouncing from the crater he made through the icy crust, with a lot of red splatter (photo 2). A second one, when hit, went “landing gear down” according to BH. I thought I had missed and took a second shot. I lost him but BH saw where he landed about 80 yards distant. He sat there for about 30 minutes and escaped. We talked about what had happened and agreed that the set-up/camouflage was good (I’d say excellent), but the thick fog and zero wind were big hindrances to, in BH’s estimation, what shouda/coulda been a 20-bird morning. Photos include BH doing set up (Photo 3); in his blind (photo 4), me in my blind trying to make crow noises (photo 5). Lots of lessons (re)learned today. Back into the blindfold and back to our respective Counties. Thanks BH! And thanks to all of you for reading this (mostly) tall tale!