Crow Busters Forum

Basically if you have a lot of crows you don't need much in the way of gimmicks-but I love gimmicks myself-from my own experience they all work so long as you don't haunt your area-your particular little blind area. I've seen people do that and burn the area bad. The crows would not return like they had until the following season. They moved to areas where they could not get harassed. Also if there's a lot of crows figure then there are a lot of crow hunter about. i know this guy whose electronic caller no longer worked. The crows heard it all, recognized the same old set up, "feeding crows" and an owl amongst them and would fly right on by half a mile away.
The triple play right now is the greatest gimmick I've ever used where if you don't feel like a lot of calling but you should do a minimal amount as a crow will call announcing his/her visit. All you would need to do is the slightly long drawn out ever familiar raspy, 'CAWW CAWW CAWW" -the call you hear when a crow sentry is answering any crows coming in with that short higher pitched "ought ought ought"...I can actually tell by a crows call whether it is decoy-able or not.
But the bottom line is camouflage that blends in with your blind and the surrounding area. I've seen too many people with that old "NATO" camouflage trying to hide in an area of brown and orange...he stood out like a sore thumb ...if you have a lot of crows to begin with, you won't want a ton of decoys being hauled out there 3-400 yards. You can get by with a neat little trick of an owl decoy and a buster two or even just a regular crow decoy on its' side as if dead.
But the bottom line as most anyone in here will tell you;any gimmick works. Some put half a dozen decoys in trees. Some use the aforementioned gimmick. You have everything you need with triple play. I have my favorites too but they all work I just think triple play is one of the absolute best even though I was skeptical because of the way they moved.
Why do owls work so well? Because they make the crows go nuts and drop their guard as all attention will be focused on that owl where as in a feeding set up ole mr crow is looking around as he comes in looking for danger but when he sees the owl or hawk the danger is already identified and and focused upon.
You get get one of those red tailed hawks and dull cote it so it don't shine in the sun and put a crow decoy underneath or near it apparently dead. It will work so long as the crows can see it. Get one of those garden owls and put it on a fence post -those great horned owl decoys? And dull cote it-kill the shine-so long as you got crows flapping about. Another technique is to find a huge flyway and just stay camouflaged and shoot at passing crows. I have read here that a few lucky one scan do that. But don't ever ever get too close to a roost. You don't want the roost to leave and you need to look for it all over again. Some guys in here lost their local roost and before it was a ten minute drive away and now up to an hour and a half.
Don't tell anyone you crow hunt or some one might be using your blind and you get jack kaddidly. Keep everything in your local area a secret. Don't tell your friends. Years ago I was the one people who hunted crows wanted to be with. But the areas began drying up so i pretended no one got their message to me. Now all of it is gone. Incredible but it is.
Want to keep it even simpler? Fore go the triple play and put out a crowbuster offered on this website. I used only one once when there a lot of crows and i had a ball.
Some times you got to have a lot of decoys to help keep the crows seeing something different. I had this migration route once so any number of crows would work. I probably didn't need the number of crow decoys I used. Only an owl and one decoy. Oh well..I needed the exercise.
if you can put up a permanent blind then you are very very lucky. Better if other hunters don't recognize it as one. And one very important bit of advise-don't go anywhere where pheasant hunters or goose hunters frequent the area. You will get interrupted. now if you can. share with a goose hunting set up put your decoys off to the side but you might need a waterfowl stamp and plug your pump or automatic in case there could be a legal issue with if the game warden comes along.
That idea works really well as the crows see the geese as confidence decoys. I have put out pigeon decoys too as confidence decoys..that also has a an added benefit how ever pigeons will come to crow decoys too by the way.
So have fun! And you cna never have too much ammo. I always see here and there some one ran out of ammo and the skies are still full of crows!

thnaks guys, i do have the buster 2and have had good sucess, also have a couple flocked decoys along with the standard flat black, we do not have alot of crows and our spots are defin kept to ourself, i was leaning more to the triple play, i am also a fan of the gimmicks, we also have tried the owl set up and did not have any luck probably due to not being able to get crows much higher than the owl decoy, we not got that issue fixed with a hot stick, again thanks for the replys

Most guys on here have said to keep the decoys above the owl decoy, but MoDeke has had success the other way around. Experiment - that's the fun part.

motiondecoy wrote:

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now if you can. share with a goose hunting set up put your decoys off to the side but you might need a waterfowl stamp and plug your pump or automatic in case there could be a legal issue with if the game warden comes along.
That idea works really well as the crows see the geese as confidence decoys.

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New Hampshire as well as some other states impose the 3 shot rule on crows as well as waterfowl.  If your using a goose hunting setup you wouldn't want any lead shot on you either.

http://www.eregulations.com/newhampshire/hunting/migratory-bird-hunting/