Crow Busters Forum

Pa Hunter · Member

decoy set up

Mike27 · Senior Member

Pa,
Owls can be hit or miss. But one thing ,get your crow deeks above your owl.

M12Shooter · Guru

Owl deeks IMO offer little to the crow hunter at this time of the year. Also, a couple well placed crow decoys are much more effective than a bunch of poorly placed deeks. Get a few decoys high into a tree top where they can be visable by the crows from a good distance.

Ted

Pa Hunter · Member

Most of my hunting is in freshly cut fields. Its been my usual habit to put the owl on a post in the field with 3 d decoys around the outside on the ground. You telling me not to do this but putting crows up on anything in a cut field....if I use long stakes for the crows with out moulded in "feet" would make it seem like they are levitating. Or do you mean put them all in the trees I use for a hide? I use a sling shot to put a lead ball over the branch and then use a old fishing reel to hold the line, attached to a short broom stick "rod", to which I attach the decoy too, then hoist it up. I leave the line on the reel and use it to retrieve the line after removing the lead weight. The weight should be substancial as the line will catch in the branches....A maxi ball works fine from a 50 cal BP gun. Plenty of weight! Putting the owl on the ground, never thought of it....always seen them on top of something. I use owl and crow fight as well as raspy crow distress calls. A friend used to have feeding crow call but he has passed on and had sold everything to buy booze... Ivy poison has my left eye swelled not shut but pretty gruesome looking. Wife says that ought to curtail crow hunting.....my reply was you have a better chance of seeing God before I quit crow hunting.

SHANEDOG · Guru

Mike,is right on that!! I have watched many of these encounters while yote huntin,most of the time the crows stay above the owl in the trees and just scream thier heads off hoping he will move on,its only when a whole bunch show and the elders cajole a few of the young dumb crows to attack that you may see some swooping,but rarely a dirrect attack. I dont use owls any more,I dont want to carry it and because I mainly hunt farms and use feeding set ups,this works for me. That said I do use a lot of owl and hawk sounds as comeback and frenzy sounds to get the youg dumb birds riled up in the fall shoots.They come in and you can see them moving thier heads backa and forth looking for the raptor,while I put a bead on them!! biggrin

The reason for the crows being higher is they seem to like to lean off the branch and swoop down past the owl or hawk.then they catch the wind and ride back up to the upper branchs,it save them valuble energy. smile

-- Edited by SHANEDOG on Sunday 28th of August 2011 12:11:57 AM

Mike27 · Senior Member

Pa ,

Don't put the owl on the ground. That does not look natural. Nix the owl and do a feeding set in the field or if you want your owl working , put it the tree line with crows above it. Another trick is to put a dead bird atached to the feet of the owl.

Mike

SHANEDOG · Guru

Ya,I believe Jon or Puppy has a Buster mounted to an Owl,that will sell them!!But they dont have the wide open farms we have. smile

But Mikes right for way open farm land,feeding set ups rule,I think its because crows are greedy,and thhey dont like strange birds feeding in thier area,even during the fall migration. smile

-- Edited by SHANEDOG on Sunday 28th of August 2011 12:37:58 AM

Pa Hunter · Member

Ok then in answer to you all, thanks again and now I will have to find a feeding tape to play as all I have are hawk or owl fights. A few yrs ago I managed to hit a migrating flock of 300 or so and called in a ton to kill 34 and run out of shells...I was side stepping falling crows...I left for another guage and more ammo...when I came back with the 16 guage they were mourning their deed and I got some more...not a 200 or 300 shooting day but I would take it again....anytime around here.

Pa Hunter thanks again

trenchcrow · Member

Pa hunter Here's what I would do. Nix the owl. Go to Agway and get a plastic hawk that has a resealable hole in the bottom and put some rocks in it so it is stable in the wind. Set him about 50 feet out and off to the side. Put a dead crow in front if him with the wings spread nice and wide so the incoming ones will get a good look. Put a few dekes off to the side but about out the same distance the same distance so they look like they are feeding. Put a few up in trees as attention getters. Now take your caller speaker and put it near the feeders and camo it with an old head net. The crows will come to the speaker so get it out there. Radio Shack should have speaker extension cords. Get back just into the woods. Stay in the shadows, don't move when theyr'e coming, get the gun up before they see you, give them some tunes when they leave as some may well come back for another go. Read the books too. Good shooting Pa.

Lone Star Phil · Senior Member

PA:

Great advice from the Brothers! I will simplify it to: if you are going to use a predator deke, work a call that vocalizes the situation and keep your predator decoy down low (maybe on a short pole) and sentry dekes at least twenty feet higher. A dead crow in the predator's talons is icing on the cake and will boil the blood of any airborne crowrats.

You'll know you're hurting them when you snap on an empty chamber!

Pa Hunter · Member

That may explain the reason the crows do not make it over the tree line where I am hiding..I have the speakers in the treeline and not out at the deeks. I was thinking the deeks were not far enough out. So at 63 I am still learning. A good thing. I will put the loud speakers out at the deeks next time.

I have had hawk come to the crow and owl tape. One hawk tried to pick off the owl, and just brushed the owl with his talons and said...what the?? and banked off. That happened again just the other day. I will try the hawk approach next time. I still need a feeding type tape to make the feeding set up. I use two 9-10 inch loud speakers set up to broadcast in two directions, opposite each other and on the top of a hill. Man they really reach out and bring em in. I have the 5 inch loud speaker that come with the set up but never used it. Am I sending out too much volume with those large loudspeakers? Do I just need one and not two? any help is greatly appreciated. I just want to learn how to get crows...OFTEN!! Thanks in advance!

8fishermen · Guru

My opinion is you can't be too loud. I have a homemade caller that will make your ears bleed. I start out a little soft so as not to bring too many in at once then crank up the volume a little at the time. Made the mistake of starting a little after daylight one morning while running late. Crows already in the field behind me and I turned it on full blast. Next thing I knew I had over a hundred in the air at once. They were so fired up and there were so many that when I started shooting they just hung around. I shot several before they left.

As a suggestion... Go back on the forum to around Nov, Dec, and January of last year and look at the post. There are many in that time frame that will show decoy spreads and setups. You will get lots of ideas from them.

Good luck.

jonthepain · Guru

SHANEDOG wrote:
Ya,I believe Jon or Puppy has a Buster mounted to an Owl,that will sell them!!

Pa Hunter · Member

Ok will do and thanks for the responses. The next post shows a wooly owl, the one I use is plastic. That one sure looks more real. And when I mention deek's in my previous posts I mean the plastic full bodied kind from Flambou (I think it is spelled that way) not paper cutouts like I have seen. Carring the decoys, shotgun and recorder plus ammo some 2-3-400 yds from the truck up hill most times here in Pa is about all I can manage by myself. Recorder and speakers go into a back pack, shotgun is slung, decoys in an old army laundry bag on a hobo stick. ammo in a belly bag and or the back pack. Adding some sort of blind would really load me down. I do have a camo net but it is fall colors and not good for this time of yr, unless there are a lot of round bales of hay around.

Thanks for the advice. smile

M12Shooter · Guru

Pa, my crow pole which I employ only in the spring of the year. First crow I shoot gets the honour of being set below the owl. Hook the dead crow onto owl base by a fish hook screwed to the base.

Also break both wings on the dead crow so as they dangle and move with wind action. Drives crows nuts and many times during a lull in action I get spooked when crows identify and pick on the owl with no calling to attract them.

This is the only setup where a crow deek is set lower than the owl. Be sure to have any other crow decoys set above and much higher than the owl setup. Again, tons of decoys are IMO not neeeded. Just a few well placed ones work well for me.

Further, IMO the best crow decoys are dead crows. I tie them together by the necks with a short piece of baler twine. Toss this up into the tree tops to the rear or both flanks of my cover and let the games begin. biggrin

Ted

Pa Hunter · Member

Thanks M12 I'll try that on the next go round...possibly this weekend if the office lets me alone. I'm a road traveler, electrical industry. I'm not at the house much but when I am I try to get as much in hunting as I can..ground hog and crows....deer when I am home at that time.

I just read and acted on the post about using coat hangers and telescoping pole to set decoys in the tree.....real nice and simple....thanks to the inovator of this idea.

Now to find a feeding tape for my western river player confuse

chip · Guru

PA You can never go wrong by listening to this bunch!!! No matter how old you get. I Think every year I'm a real crow hunter biggrin But then I learn something in the field or on this site that is new and works. You said something early in the post that caught my eye. You said that some birds come in, but most flare or fly high. What you have basically is educated birds. The ones that don't come in are the ones that have had thier asses burned up the line somewhere. I only use my owl in the woods now, and that is rare. The best way to kill the the educated birds is a flyway shoot. These birds have to roost and they have to roost with a crowd. I've shot flyways and dumped educated birds that knew dam good and well I was down there. These birds stay high but will swoop just low enough for my jellyhead simply because they know they have to go with the rest of the crtowd. Do what they tell you and make some minor adjustments in your spread. I would try it without the owl for a couple of sets. I think too many people depend on the owl crow fight thing. Just remember that the ones that are smart and fly by you will breed and make stupid young birds biggrin Hang in there, try some things that are different and you will have a decent body count...... By the way Jon nice owl decoy!!!! Did puppypopper or Shanedog build that for you???? wink

Bob · Guru

PA,

Go to the Advanced Section when you become a member. Look for "Being Prepaired, Part 2" in that article you will see the type of brass shell knocker I am talking about.

Bob A.

jonthepain · Guru

lol built it myself, by gum.

don't use it anymore, tho. pita to carry around.

chip · Guru

Exactly why I don't take mine!!! Plus the birds hear way to much of that stuff......

-- Edited by chip on Wednesday 31st of August 2011 02:58:10 AM