Between seasons I’ve been on YouTube watching others down vast amounts of crows. Yeah, I realize it’s all editing—you know, one year on a five minute video, but I’m still envious. One guy’s blind caught my eye--he was inside a completely camouflage net-covered blind and at the last second would reach up and flip the camouflage net draped over the front opening, up and backward, then blast away. I thought that was a pretty good idea in terms of concealment, but his method seemed to be too much work. What I liked was that he seemed totally obscured to the approaching crows. The problem with last year’s blind—my “doghouse” blind with the roof cut out—was that they could see me too easily within the blind as they looked down. So, I built a PVC frame with gravity-actuated openings, front and rear, having them fall down selectively or simultaneously. (See my previous posting, “Teaser photo of new blind design.”)
I’m completely camouflaged such that the crows cannot see me within. But, I can see them coming through the net. At the point when they’ve committed to the decoys, I pull the release, the side(s) drops, and I‘m shooting.
The lower portion’s construction is of fairly conventional PVC, using 1” PVC for the base, upright, and extension bows to attach the bottom net piece, using eyebolts on which to hang the nets. Then, two ½” PVC bows hinged to a stationary ½” vertical bow. The base pieces are secured to the ground as needed using from one to four 12” spikes, depending on conditions. It needs to be fairly level or one side or the other will fall more slowly—this could be remedied by a bungee-type cord.
Cost: PVC is cheap. The nets were the only significant expense and I looked long and hard for those at reasonable pieces; one (approx 10’ X 10’) for the top pieces was a lucky find from Craig’s List. The other larger one from Wal-Mart (8’ X 19’) for the bottom. They are top quality “radar-scattering ‘woodland’ nets”—nearly identical to the nasty ones I used to wrestle with from Army days—patience is required when dealing with netting under any circumstance. Need to pin the draped nets outward to gain adequate room within.
Construction notes: the height for the main portion was 4.5‘, or about armpit height. Overhead height is 6.5’ with plenty of room to stand while concealed. The upper nets are attached permanently to the two falling sections with nylon zip ties. The upper portion (3 bows) are fixed as a single unit. I had to add the small base piece stabilizers using a 5-way PVC connector on each side as it is laterally unstable without them. The L and R base pieces each have holes for 12” spikes, as needed. Emplacement time in near darkness is less than 4 minutes—not including hanging the accursed camouflage netting.
The release mechanism is a simple piece of copper wire wrapped around one or both sides with a piece of 550 cord as the “ripcord.” It works very well. I suppose that if I wanted to, I could restrict the opening’s fall with ties, to make a smaller opening. Also, if I wanted a strictly seated blind, then the only thing needed would be to make the side uprights shorter or make a second set; one for standing, one for sitting.
Bottom line: it works and it works well. A bit of work for one crow, but hey--the season’s just begun. And, I got my birthday crow this a.m!
I really enjoyed your posts and can see that you have the crow-bug pretty bad.
I just got back from a family vacation so I have done little scouting. I have been seeing some birds in my roundabout travels but have yet to scout an early AM.
