I am sitting here anxious like a little child on Christmas Eve. Perhaps it is my age but in one hour I will be heading out to hopefully shoot some Crows even thought I have the opportunity to skip the hunt and enjoy the company of a lady friend. Unlike how my mind worked in my teens I have spent many an hour planing and thinking about what I will do when I get to the hunting fields.
To add to my lust for this new found activity, last night I got home and found a small box on my porch. YES, it was my FoxPro caller returned to me and in working order. I got home late from work last night so I had to wait until today to try and reprogram it with the crow call sounds I have found at different sources. Some of the calls were short so I just merged them into a longer file and even tied several files together so that it sounds like different birds. I just got done and my caller is all set to go. OH, I guess I owe Foxpro a word of recognition because I mailed my caller to them on Friday afternoon and I have it back before the next Friday, repaired and cleaned up, not that it was dirty but I thought they sent a new one.
I also have more time to spend in the field so I can be far more patient. Oh I also found another Crow caller that I had at my house hanging on my gun cabinet. At some point I probably got it as a Turkey locator and when I used it, I have to say it has the most authentic sound of all my calls. I guess people here understand but several times this week I stopped by my car and listened to the crows that seem to congregate near one of the grocery stores I visit. I also live not to far from a small river where from time to time Crows hang out so I get to listen and hopefully learn.
I really am optimistic that tonight or maybe tomorrow morning is the day I finally get on the scoreboard. I am not all that competitive about it and honestly, if I only get a few birds to call back I know I am at least in the game and while not what I hope is the extent of things, it will keep my interest enough so I feel like I am doing something. For me I guess the anticipation is the part that keeps me coming back no matter what it is and the instant I pull the trigger is kind of where the fun ends. yes I like to see the bird drop but that is the end of my pursuit of that bird and no I must find another one. Can you tell that I cant wait to get out of here?
If you bothered to read this far perhaps you might give me an opinion about ground blinds. I found that Killzone has one on sale that is less than everywhere else I looked. Sitting on the ground is getting harder and harder to do and toss in the near certainty of picking up a few ticks the thought of sitting on a chair with only my feet on the ground and my pants and shoes sprayed up with pesticide to kill ticks sounds much more comfortable. I think it would be pretty good for deer season too although my nature is not to sit in one spot.
A good friend of mine (I should say late friend) used to be a deer hunting fanatic. He would drive a nice Olds Cutlass or Chevy Impala all year long, but right before deer season opened, he would trade his "dating car" for a Jeep CJ to haul his brother , dad, and buddies, to their deer camps. His girl friend would get so mad, she would dump him. Sometime after the first of the year, he would call her up and talk for days until he broke down her defenses, and had to promise to give up deer hunting. This went on for 4 years that I know of. The girl finally dumped him for good, and married a mining engineer that insured her well being for the rest of her life. My buddy got to play the field after that, and continued to deer hunt. I guess what I'm trying to say is, women come and go, but you always have hunting. As far as ground blinds, I have never bought any, as I have always constructed mine on site from natural materials from fencerows. Make sure your ground blind will fool a crow from an elevated viewpoint, and a very comfortable seat is one of the dark green resin, stackable lawn chairs available from most big-box stores.
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"When you have shot one bird flying, you have shot all bird's flying. ...the sensation is the same, and the last one is as good as the first." E. Hemingway "Fathers and Sons"
Even though I started hunting a little later in life than many who started as a child, everyone who knows me now met me when I was a hunter and fished and quite a few other things. My view is if you were OK with it at the beginning then you better be OK with it now.
Well I got to the field early enouigh. The weather was beautiful but perhaps too nice because even in some of the small properties where I normally see crows there were none. So get the decoys out get cozied up to a tree. and start calling. Not a sound for 15 minutes and then far off I hear one. Then nothing. Then without a sound I caught one flying towards my location. Again it was pretty high but I raised my gun to shoot thinking that the bird was going to go on by. When it was as close as I thought it would get I fired. It kind of looked like I might have hit the bird but it continued to fly. But banked towards me, shot number two through the leaves of the tree so who knows what if anything that did and the bird moved away from me towards the way it came generally and I could see it clearly. Shot number 3 and it came down with a thud. All I could think was that I finally got on the scoreboard.
Then for over an hour nothing. Could not hear one, see one, nothing. I decided to drive to a game land closer to my house. All the way down I noticed how few crows were out and about. Every day as I go down the highway I see lots of crows in the median of the highway and in some of the fields. Today nothing. Got to the new game land and The fields were not really in a shape where I could hunt them. I stopped at a few and did not see anything. When I came to the last one, I decided to make a few calls. Nothing and then a call back and very shortly there after two crows come right towards me standing next to my car in the parking lot and right on by they went. Kind of funny but made me think that maybe I should go to the area you could hunt and give a few calls. So I did and I did not see or hear anything over the next hour.