Crow Busters Forum

"Old" shooter, new crow hunter.

Been looking at this site since late last year when I told myself, "That's what I need to do to increase my outdoor time and hunting seasons. I’ve been using a Mossberg 500 as my all-around turkey, deer, and crow gun. I have a FoxPro Spitfire, recently upgraded with a mix of Bob Aronsohn and FoxPro calls—it brings them in as if they’re on drugs. I made some decoys earlier this year based upon an old 30s Popular Science design.

I think they look pretty good and the crows seem to be interested. I also made a fake garbage bag to carry them in to setups. It has a couple of Wendy’s articles tied to it to appear as a garbage bag has split open. A friend jokes that this works on “city crows” that hang around garbage trucks, but not “country crows.”  Good reasoning, but the decoys seem to increase crow interest, as you can see on the photo where one "dropped in" on me to become an additional decoy. Still learning about camouflage/blind techniques and learning to wing shoot, as these crows don’t stand still at 50M like paper targets do. Couple of questions:

1. I’ve read that birds can see UV light well. How important is UV protection on clothing? That is, not using detergent with brighteners on hunting clothing.

2. We don’t have big flocks around here that seem to come in endlessly as they do for the lucky guys on U-Tube videos that I watch (with envy). Mine only come in twos or threes a couple of times and then stay away. Then I move on to another setup. I tend to not use camouflage gear and hide in trees until they are within range. It works, but is it better to use a portable blind? I’ll be trying one real soon.

3. Would UV paint enhance decoys realism (to crows)? Or, is it a gimmick and waste of money?

Looking forward to more reports of your hunts and to give a couple of mine later.

OA, welcome!

Question # 1. Just use earth tone colors (drab) and have plenty of cover to break up your outline, plus stay in the shade if at all possible.

Question # 2. Two's and threes are as good as it gets, ya can't kill em all anyway! As long as you have plenty of cover you don't really need a portable blind, later in the year yes when the leaves come off the trees.

Question # 3. I just use flat black spray paint on my crow decoys. Here is a photo.

Bob beat me to it. Yeah, what he said.

Hi again OA,

Look around Ebay and the Internet for the Johnny Steward Crow Calls Volume One Cd.  It is out of production but old copies can be found.  Those sounds can be copied directly to your FoxPro.

Your FoxPro will play .Mp3 and .Wav files, in addition to their .FXP proprietary format.  Glad to hear you bought a FoxPro, we use them exclusively after trying others over the years, and they cannot be beat!

Very interesting about your old Commander being a platoon leader on a "Atomic Annie".  Good old American know how, even if it did not prove practical.  That test shot was only the second American "gun type" detonation after "Little Boy".  Little Boy probably saved my Dad's life, as Operation Downfall could be cancelled.  Dad ran an mobile SCR 270 radar unit for the 5th Air Force in the South Pacific opposing the Japanese Imperial Army and friends.  His skills with radar operation were not going to be needed for the final invasion purposes - just another trigger puller was the plan of the day until the Japanese capitulated.

Regards,

OA:

You might want to consider a neat idea that Zeddicus introduced us to and that is, take a old black sock and stretch it over your decoys.  Its inexpensive, replaceable, durable, simple, offers a 'texture' to the surface and doesn't shine.  Zed uses it on his plastic decoys.  Your neat dekes are probably a little too large for a man's sock but if you could find Andre the Giant's old dress socks that you could pull over your wooden dekes, you could also provide some shaping.

Great idea on the trash bag!

NHCrowshooter:

No. When I cut them out of 1/4 plywood, I thought they would be too fragile to simply glue the "wings" on, so I drilled the wings to fit three shiskabob skewer pieces about 1 1/4" and the body at the appropriate places. Glued and pegged like this, they have proven very sturdy. I guess one could have made a cut in the flat body and kept the wings one piece, with a matching groove, making a two-piece decoy. Then at the setup, slide each piece together. The big black clips serve two purposes: as "feet" to stand them upright and also to clip them onto tree branches or cornstalks like this morning.

Thanks!