Earlier this week, a couple of Forum comments from M12shooter (use a freshly dead crow in the talons) and Lonestarphil (stretch huge black sox over my home-made decoys) made me think of how to handle getting that first crow to come in to check out the red-tail hawk decoy that I received yesterday from Ace Hardware.
As I had some old black sox that were about to go into the trash, I threw this together last night while watching some RNC Convention speeches. Stuffed some bubble wrap into the sox with binder clips holding it together as a body and two wings. I hung the fake carcass up on a small cup hook screwed into the hawk's base=field expedient dead crow that will not go bad. I'll dress it up better to get rid of the clips by threading them together using some black yarn my wife will provide. If this contraption works/doesn't work, I'll follow up with a report.
I use this style myself. I like your ideas here. However-try to dull the shine on your hawk decoy. They sell some kind of hobby spray or something that will dull the shine except for the eyes....of course elave them alone. The only thing i don't like about this decoy is it is not excatly a red tailed hawk but close enough. The breast is too brown. Red tail adults have little brown arrow heads near the upper breast. juveniles have more white or off white. Otherwise still effective.
