Crow Busters Forum

Zeddicus · Senior Member

My red letter day....

Bob · Guru

Zedd,

It looks like you enjoyed yourself with your new partner. The terrain in that photo looks a lot like Kansas, no wonder so many krauts moved here in the 1800's.

Bob A.

nhcrowshooter · Guru

Bob wrote:
Zedd,

It looks like you enjoyed yourself with your new partner. The terrain in that photo looks a lot like Kansas, no wonder so many krauts moved here in the 1800's.

Bob A.

BUZZ · Senior Member

Thanks for sharing....looks like a GREAT day!!!!!

Bob · Guru

Aronsohn is German!

NGillespie10 · Senior Member

great pictures and report

Zeddicus · Senior Member

I'm glad you enjoyed the report & pics - it was a phantastic day for us. It was also important for me as I was there as guest...

@ Bob: Yeah, I read about the Newspaper adds & Pictures in the 1800s in Germany. They said: Come to Kansas, "There's no place like home!" :)

Next time out I need to take more pics of the landscape! In our area we have the Rhinevalley. It's very humid and boggy. The "Kaiser" used to send his troops here to be trained for the tropical colonies....

TexasMatt · Senior Member

Excellent hunt and photo's, I especially like this one:

The side by side, with the hand calls and the pipe, a variety of game on the strap, outstanding. I used to smoke a pipe when I duck hunted, it added a little warmth to cold wet mornings.

-- Edited by TexasMatt on Tuesday 18th of September 2012 03:16:38 PM

Bob · Guru

Hi Ulli,

My people came out of northern Germany in the late (1880's) 1800's. I'm part mick as well!

I was visiting some life long friends who still farm in Reno County where I live. There last name is Kiaser (more krauts) and I brought two of the neighborhood boys (13 years old) with me. They had fun shooting golf balls with a .22 cal semi auto.

The folks out here are still very friendly, thats why I got the hell out of New York almost 40 years ago!

Keep us posted on your season as it unfolds.

Bob A.

Lone Star Phil · Senior Member

Zeddicus:

Great report and images!

Sounds like the proper set up for your blind. Hiding in the shadows on a sunny morning is a decided advantage and I'll bet you and your friend were alerted to the crows who approached from the sunny side behind your blind by just watching the ground in front of you for the shadows! Not being able to use electronic callers is going to negatively impact your harvest - bummer. I'll make another wager and suggest you could have busted 100 with an electronic caller!

Bob · Guru

Phil,

For the most part I agree with you about the e-caller.

If a guy is a good caller with a hand held call and is in an area with plenty of activity he can do very well with out an e-caller. In very wet years where I can't get the 4x4 where I want to drive to I have just taken in a pair of hand calls (Mallardtone & Mincey) and done quite well. I remember one hunt in particular, it was a bitch waliking through the ankle deep mud for 150 yards to my tumble weed blind in some low trees. I carried in a flat of 20 gauge skeet loads and had to walk back to the truck for another flat within a few hours time. I shot up the second flat and could have walked back for more ammo but I didn't want to fight the mud anymore so I quit for the day with over 300 crows down. Any crow that came within 175 yards of my blind (down wind) I called in quite easily. I've had many shoots in the 150 to 175 range with just hand calls over the years.

Gadget Bob & Matt saw some of my e-callers that I used long before Foxpro was in business. They were hand made units and worked very well, much more reliable than the Johnny Stewart callers, but they were bulky and I ran them off a 12 volt marine battery. No way was I carrying all that 150 yards through mud! They were great if you could drive right to the blind.

Has the Patrol had any crow hunts yet this season?

Bob A.

TexasMatt · Senior Member

Bob wrote:
Has the Patrol had any crow hunts yet this season?

Bob A.

Gadget Bob and Phil have had a couple of small 'tune up' shoots, but we haven't gone all in yet. Not enough crows have shown up yet, but it won't be long.

nhcrowshooter · Guru

Bob wrote:

Gadget Bob & Matt saw some of my e-callers that I used long before Foxpro was in business. They were hand made units and worked very well, much more reliable than the Johnny Stewart callers, but they were bulky and I ran them off a 12 volt marine battery. No way was I carrying all that 150 yards through mud! They were great if you could drive right to the blind.

Has the Patrol had any crow hunts yet this season?

Bob A.

What went wrong with your J/S callers? As far as reliable I have never had a problem with a J/S machine other than an occasional dead battery and it's been a lot of years.

Zeddicus · Senior Member

Hi Phil, Matt & Bob,

Thanks for the praise of the pics & the tips.
In a way I am glad that e-callers are not allowed. This way I can talk with the birds.
The morning did not start that sunny, it was raining when we set up. The birds from behind were no problem at any stage. If anything they circled down. Some stayed on top and left after a while without being shot at, some came down to look closer or land, some came waaaaay down and stayed... :)

The season is well under way with results of:

1crow/1Magpie
7crows/1 Magpie
3crows/1Magpie
0 and 5 crows

As you can see, it's a small numbers game here...

I really enjoyed my mixed bag day in Ireland. All I did was walk the hedges, armed with Gun, calls and my pipe ;)
Happy days...

Regards,
Ulli

Ps: My two sons are half Bavarian, half Paddy! There's a mixture! I call them Bayrish ;)

Bob · Guru

NH,

When the heads would get out of alignment it would eat up the cassette tapes. This never happened on my home made units because they were much better quality than the JS units. The 612 units were better than the 512 units because they had auto reverse and you didn't have to take the cassette out of the machine at the end of play inorder to play the other side of the cassette. Some would argue that the 512 was a tougher machine, but I had less problems with the 612 unit over the years. The first models of JS callers ( on cassette tape) long before the 512 unit came out were worse than the 512 unit in regard to eating up your tapes!

The digital callers have no moving parts and no tapes, they are the new wave of the future.

Here is a great example of how things get better over the years. The photo to the left is one of my home made units that are over 30 years old. The photo to the right is a Snow Crow Pro unit that is all digital with far less bulk!

nhcrowshooter · Guru

Bob wrote:
NH,

When the heads would get out of alignment it would eat up the cassette tapes. This never happened on my home made units because they were much better quality than the JS units. The 612 units were better than the 512 units because they had auto reverse and you didn't have to take the cassette out of the machine at the end of play inorder to play the other side of the cassette. Some would argue that the 512 was a tougher machine, but I had less problems with the 612 unit over the years. The first models of JS callers ( on cassette tape) long before the 512 unit came out were worse than the 512 unit in regard to eating up your tapes!

The digital callers have no moving parts and no tapes, they are the new wave of the future.

Here is a great example of how things get better over the years. The photo to the left is one of my home made units that are over 30 years old. The photo to the right is a Snow Crow Pro unit that is all digital with far less bulk!

I guess I am lucky I have/had several 512/612 machines, plus a Lohman and a Redrock, never had an issue with any of them and seldom if ever had a tape "eaten". The digital callers are simply small computers I suspect they can fail even without moving parts. My understanding is if you want all day play with multiple speakers you have to bulk up with heavy battery packs. Batteries for the old J/S machines are cheap, $20 or less at electrical supply stores. If you watch Ebay during the off season you can pick up nearly new tape callers for a song. I got a new in the box Lohman with brand new batteries for $35 shipped and an essentially a new 612 for $43. I have not seen any digital caller worth a hoot anywhere near those kind of prices.

chip · Guru

Nh if you ever go digital you will never go back.................... wink

nhcrowshooter · Guru

chip wrote:
Nh if you ever go digital you will never go back....................

The question is why would I at this point in time? What advantages would be worth the extra cost? For all day all weekend crow hunting it seems one needs a CS-24 or Snow Crow Pro and those machines are $600 to $1000 before extra battery packs and additional external speakers. Double that cost if you want a 2nd/back up machine. Doesn't seem worth it from my perspective.

Bob · Guru

My partner Dick has 8 model 612 units in his pickup. Four are brand new still in the box and he runs the other four. He uses two and has two as a back up just incase. Last season he never used his units, we mainly used the CS-24 L unit all season and had the Snow Crow Pro as a back up unit. I still own 4 model 612 units myself and they still work just fine but have not used them in a couple of seasons.

As long as you don't have a low battery there isn't much else that can go wrong with the Snow Crow Pro unit. The CS 24 - L Unit will just go dead once the batteries go kaput. To solve this minor problem I run the CS 24 L Unit off the same type of battery as the Snow Crow Pro unit and it lasts all day using it hard. I keep spare batteries for both units just incase, there is nothing worse than to have a problem when you have birds moving.

Bob A.

nhcrowshooter · Guru

I see FoxPro offers a Sealed Lead Acid Battery and charger to provide extended calling hours, look like $70 to $120 depending on where you buy it for the SLA battery alone.

Gadget Bob · Guru

Hi Zed,

Great photo's! They warm my heart!

Hi Bob,

Not much crow action here, as Texas Matt stated... Headed out this morning for another tune-up with my new Maxus. I bought a spare yesterday at Cabela's. Back-ups can play an important role for the crow hunter, as you know better than most.

Hi Pete,

Battery life has never been a problem for us with our fleet of FoxPro callers. Our Fury's, Prairie Blaster and SCP II will generally run all day long for us. The Fury is the only one we have ever needed to change out batteries on during a hunt, and that is about 4 in the afternoon after calling steady since first light. We put the best rechargables in the ForxPro, usually Powerex's.

Regards,

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