Depredation permit was put to full use today. One of our landowners contacted us two weeks ago to shoot this 100 acre orchard. Last weekend was a total washout so today was the day. We were very sceptical of a hunt this early as the pecans were still green but to our surprise he was really covered up. Noah (age 11 now) was able to down 40 + birds. Skeetshooter and I cleaned up the rest. This bested our previous record of 188. Too much fun. We hunted from 6:30 till 12:00.
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"If money can fix it, it ain't broke" The great theologian and my crow hunting partner AW.
Yep, he's a lefty. Caught him trying to peek over the gun stock to get his left eye lined up on a .22 when he was about 6 or so. He is right handed. Made the switch immediately and he has never known any other way to shoot. It is very natural for him now.
Craig,
The only time this orchard was EVER shot was this year back in Feb. We killed 105 on that trip and there was not a single pecan left when we did so. We did not have any educated birds. Not even one bird flared while inbound. I would say we easily saw twice this number of birds. One cool thing that happened on this trip was having 5 dead birds in the air at the same time. We had birds approaching from opposite ways. I had three crossing over head set perfectly and killed all three as fast as I could point and shoot. Skeetshooter dispatched 2 on the other side that were inbound to him. This happened at the same time and all were dead in the air at once.
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"If money can fix it, it ain't broke" The great theologian and my crow hunting partner AW.
Well done, Very well done!! What type of set up did you use? Decoys with "e" caller distress / fighting? Or duck hunting method with decoys feeding call etc....
Years back when I was first getting started I remember one hunt in particular, I was solo and shot 196 that morning, half of them with a model 42 Winchester 410 gauge the other half with a Niko 12 gauge O/U bored F & M.
The more success you have in the future the more spoiled you will become in regard to not being satisfied with anything less than 100 birds per hunt per man. I know that you are thinking "no way" but just wait and think about what I have just said perhaps 10 years down the road.
I wish you much success in the future.
Bob A.
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To listen to this radio talk show go to episode 12, Bob Aronsohn
Well done, Very well done!! What type of set up did you use? Decoys with "e" caller distress / fighting? Or duck hunting method with decoys feeding call etc....
Mark
Mark,
If you look in the pic with the birds spread out you can see the decoys very close to the blind. The only decoy off the ground was the one on the pole 25' from the center blind. This was a close quarters shoot so decoys in the trees would have been useless. As soon as we started shooting the dead birds covered the holes in the setup. The calls we use are the JS calls. I used Audacity to create a couple of sequences that use Crow Come Here, Fighting Crows, and ending with Crow and Owl Fight (Owl sounds removed) The sequences are one half to one hour long and go from less aggressive to more aggressive. We NEVER follow the fighting or feeding setups that everyone talks about. We set our decoys in the manner we feel will give us the best opportunity to kill the most birds and play the music they want to dance to that day. We try to keep it simple.
Nick Saban of Alabama Football is fond of saying that that they NEVER focus on results. He says if you prepare very well and work very hard and let the results be what they are then you will usually get what you want. I think this is true of crow hunting as well. Scouting, blind prep, shooting skills, calling techniques, and hunting awareness are all skills that are developed and honed. I have been hunting crows serious for 4 seasons now and am just starting to understand how much I don't know about this sport. My partner Skeetshooter always says "you never know what is going to happen when you turn the caller on". I scouted and set the blinds according to what I determined would be the best for us to shoot but I would have never dreamed there were that many birds working this area.
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"If money can fix it, it ain't broke" The great theologian and my crow hunting partner AW.
Greg, Again excellent work!! Any tips on setting up the 25' pole. i.e securing it vertically.. I plan on using a crow on a pole this WE.. Thank you, Mark
Sound Wisdom On swapin him to left that young, most guy's would never have caught that. Sounds to me like the old man is on top of his game and wants to raise a shooter
Sound Wisdom On swapin him to left that young, most guy's would never have caught that. Sounds to me like the old man is on top of his game and wants to raise a shooter
After 30 minutes of swattin' him in the back of the head I finally realized I was the one that didn't know what we was doing!
Oh well, we both survived.
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"If money can fix it, it ain't broke" The great theologian and my crow hunting partner AW.
This is one of the cheap full body decoys with the plastic peg. I cut the Acme threads off the end of the paint pole and took the cap off the but end. This makes the pole an open ended hollow tube that extends 16'. I use 1/2" conduit driven into the ground. The base of the pole slips over the conduit and stands upright. The decoy peg slips into the other end. If I need more height I use a 1/2" piece of conduit to connect another section of paint pole to the 16' pole. This gives me 24' plus my height so I can hang them about 30' off the ground.
Here is the decoy.
Here is the 1/2" conduit I use to connect the two. I drilled a hole in the center of a 30" piece and put a short length of wire through the hole then wrapped the wire around the pole. This keeps the conduit from slipping inside the paint pole. Sorry. Terrible pic but you get the idea.
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"If money can fix it, it ain't broke" The great theologian and my crow hunting partner AW.
Cool. Wish you lived closer. They're cleaning us out this year more than usual for some reason. I make my rounds in our orchards but they've gotten a little call shy. Great pictures... keep up the good works. : )
Hopefully so.. There is no shortage of birds here, thats for sure. And this cool snap has them hungry. Shooting crows for sport is a new idea for me. Its always been more of a necessity for early season pecans for as long as I can remember. Never had kill rates like the ones i've seen on this site but could benefit from it. My style is more of a hit and run focused on running them out rather than calling them in. 5 or 6 in this orchard and move to the next, 2 or 3 there, etc. I'm interested in removing more birds and want to learn more calling technique.
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