Crow Busters Forum

I would just buy a half dozed or more 3D crow decoys.

Or forget the coat hanger and carve some out of balsa wood if you like to tinker.

Bob A.

chip wrote:

---

It might do ok for the very young ones at the first of season. But I have seen educated birds flare from live crows!!! And that is a fact!!!

---

 Well there you go, they are not that smart, they are just nervous wrecks after getting shot at

Just invest in a buster 2 as I use done once-I had more decoys but I was experimenting-and you'll be amazed at the results, so long as  you have crows. But you got to kill that shine. I used flat black paint available at any hardware store or  Wal-mart. I think a hunting partner used something to scrub it down on his.

 There are crow decoys on E-bay...someone is selling those silhouetted ones for about $25.00 before shipping and handling and you get a dozen.Just go to sporting goods and type in crow decoys.

 Me? I would probably just put up a very conspicuous owl or hawk decoy  near where the crows gather (Not the roost now-don't want to be driving the roost away-it's not fun chasing down a roost at all. One day it's ten minutes away and the next an hour away. You too can get pretty ticked off if that happens!)and get well camouflaged and  whatever amount of ammo you think you'll need. Running out of ammo is mighty frustrating-I guarantee you most of us have experienced that!

I squirmed when I saw that Bob. I remember you said that before...when times were good here you had to have over a hundred rounds which is pretty skimpy for your neck of the woods and I was a lousy shot. All I managed to do was to educate migrating crows.
In any case i vowed to never run out again. This means if I could help it to take all my ammo into my blind with me. often 4 boxes but here again-it's the old Granite state when things were hot. And hot has become cold so now I will have to try the motel week end idea where I locate a new shooting area and scout it all out and then plan on going there in that states' season and hope not many local crow shooters get too ticked off. Used to have several areas to hunt here but they all dried up being replaced with $500,000.00 homes or all grassed out...I am looking at neighboring states right now. I could be happy with 50 to 100 crow kills if i could do it. Used to get 50 on opening day and 12-13 every week end after that-the epitomy of the granite states' shooting and if someone was there before? maybe 2 or 3...see? This area stinks.
In Bert Popowskis' book he called 15 a "new England' something or another...compared to when he was getting 500 a day or more I guess at the time. I no longer have that book but it was really old when I read it.
Years ago you'd step outside your door and hear a crow year round. You'd see crows along the highway virtually everywhere and always in the early mornings strutting around the parking lots looking for and finding scraps here and there. raiding dumpsters but that was then. We even had a rookery of about 30 birds nesting up the road aways where no one could see their nests hidden in the pines. Come August it looked like the migration started early a s there was a local roosting population of nearly 150 birds!
But soem people didn't know you could shoot crows so next thing we knew we had competition and then later on the land available dried up and pheasant hunters and gosoe hunters and no trespassing signs and houses and the whole area is in a crow drought.
Th eamateur crow shooters would haunt whatever farms were left and I'd see the crows staying far away and hugging the highway where they would n't be shot. If they heard ashot they'd all fly to the tallest trees look around and then go back down to the area they were eating before-would carry on all day long doing that. The "novice' would be there in his blind and i could easily see him and his partner trying to get more crows in who'd ignore him and fly to the ones eating near the road.
basically when things started to slip as well, a huge flight would move steadily south wards and not be there the next week end at all. they were not hanging around like they used to.

Hi Tom,

Bert Popowski only had two shoots over 500 during his hunting years. Both were with either one or two other shooters during these two shoots. One was 556 crows (page 130 in his book Crow Shooting) and it was an afternoon shoot. 1:30 P.M. to 5:45 P.M. In "The Varmint and Crow Hunters Bible 1962" on page 23 Bert mentions his two best shoots, 556 and 527. He mentions his best one week kill (only hunted 5 days that week) of 884 crows. This was with him and one other shooter, Bert never liked to hunt alone; my dad was that way as well.

Bob A.

I saw the decoy and I remembered I had this Wire hanger decoy in a set a guy gave me some time back. I don't know if it ever saw any action. 

Yeah NH crowshooter-it has dried up. Unfortunately the new people with their $500,000.00 homes are voting the same way that made them move away from Connecticutt; New York and of course Massachussettes. (And posting every last inch of land even if you couldn't hunt it due to safety concerns to begin with!)

 And believe it or not not a few from California and Vermont!

 By the way watch out for those English moving over here too. Think they suddenly became Blue coats? Think again! If i hit the lottery it's "Bye Bye New England"....they've been(the liberals so called) trying to get NH in lockstep with the other New England states and by God they are a hair away from doing exactly that!

 Good luck in March!

I think we need to change the crow season here again. The crows are coming down later and later and we aren't doing that well at all. that August season ought to be  for those above Concord I think. it's useless down here; there's no place to shoot them with a rifle any more-no available fields of the 22 center caliber .22  and above....

 In your neck of the woods have a different beginning season there with an earlier spring season to get the kills.Have the season begin the week you get your big kills. I dunno'. No one can agree on that anyways.  The fish and game like sot keep things somewhat simple regarding crows. But our crows do not migrate into Mexico at all. just those Texan White necked ravens if even that in San Antone way.

 Another argument to be made for longer seasons is the depredation by crows on the rare songbirds and rarer hawks.The ever decreasing black duck which nests in thickets often a little hike from water in which the mother has to lead her young down a very treacherous couple hundred yards to water! And there are not that many crow hunters in the whole state-10(?) including you and your partner the other 10 gauge man..? And how many of your caliber? Even the f&G wanted more crows to be shot which is quite the herculean effort given what we have to work with for any of us regardless of expertise or lack there of? Given how tough the crow is to shoot to begin with? The ever decreasing areas to do it in?

 What do you think, NHCRowshooter? Know anyone in Concord at the F&G who'll listen?

Motiondecoy, the guy at Fish & Game who used to have control of the crow season dates was Ed Robinson, the waterfowl biologist. Sometimes he listened and sometimes he doesn't. I don't see any point in having the NH season go past 11/30, the crows have moved through by then. August is nothing but mosquito feeding season. Those days should be put back in March in my opinion so we get the whole month. Talking with him he will not put any days in April, he said that was breeding season.

Just be thankful the let us hunt in Oct and Nov, Maine doesn't allow that to prevent people caught after reaching a limit on something else to say I am crow hunting, which is a BS reason on my opinion.

You are right about no to few places to use rifles any more, sad but things have become built up. It's not just places to crow hunt that is drying up it's places to hunt anything, we are being squeezed into fewer and fewer places every year. The farms are all but gone and what is left will soon be gone too.

and Bob, we have different opionions about many things but you are correct about it being easier to move when you are young. Rather than going to FL for a couple of months to get away during the worst of the winter I am thinking the mid-atlantic would be more to my liking because of the good crow hunting. Once down there for a month or two in the winter a 100% move would probably be easier.

Well that is great for you Bob. Never saw the movie. I suspect you are unusual in that regard as most people have a stronger attachment to family that keeps them in the area where they were raised and when they do move it's because of military or work commitments.

Just curious Bob, did they miss you when you left?

I was watching tv when "TMZ" came on...I usually change the chanel right away but the previews came on and they reported that Chris Kattan got arrested for a DUI.. Well, what caught my eye was that he was wearing tee shirt with a crow on it.. I don't know this guy, but, anyone in "Holly weird" should not disrespect the crow.. http://www.tmz.com/2014/02/10/chris-kattan-arrested-dui-drunk-driving/

I haven't seen this one before. I use this type of goose decoy with fairly good results. I wonder how a hovering owl would affect a fighting setup?

Owl Decoy on Amazon

 

-- Edited by ecuchief on Sunday 16th of February 2014 11:59:02 PM

I see these posts about owl set ups etc.... I have only seen one owl in my entire life during day light hours.. This particular time I heard crows fussing about something and I walked in the woods until was able to see what was going on. The owl was sitting a top tree and crows were going nuts.. I went and got a 17 HMR and was able to kill one crow.. Just curious how many folks actually see owls during the day and how effective is an owl decoy?

I do not think owl decoys increase effectiveness.

To me, owl decoys are one of crow hunting's myths...similar to allowing the first bird pass because it is the scout. It just does not make sense.

I do not think owl decoys hurt a set up, its just that the increase of kill is so marginal that I stopped bringing one along years ago.

BH