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Post Info TOPIC: I May Have Broken The Fish Crow Defense Code!!
Island Shooter


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I May Have Broken The Fish Crow Defense Code!!
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After years of studying methods for hunting the elusive fish crow, I may have stumbled onto something that works.  Not only are fish crows very wary, but they flock and fly very high... usually out of effective gun range.  Unless you can drop one or two, they stay high and are very frustrating to deal with.  All of that changed this past weekend.

While working in the yard on Saturday, a group of fish crows was in the neighborhood, so I got out the electronic caller and my O/U shotgun.  As always, they stayed high, but in two different spots I was able to bring a few down.  The second location was on the edge of a 5-acre field near the house, used primarily for sporting clays shooting.  In my frustration, I was thinking of how I could decrease the distance between me and them.  As I was thinking, I saw the scaffold tower that was used for trap machines.  The tower is about 32' high and included stairs up to the top. 

As I was just playing around, I didn't have all my gear and was only wearing a camo jacket and hat.  No face mask, gloves, pouch, etc..  I threw out the dead birds in front of the tower, set out the caller and when I climbed the tower with the caller on, the birds came in.  I was standing on the stairs about 30' up without any cover or blind.  That height made the difference!

The fish crows came over and were focused on the dead ones on the ground.  They paid very little attention to me standing there shooting at them!  I had many 10-15 yard shots and a couple that were slightly below me!  It was a blast!  I guess they were only concerned with "enemies" at ground level, so I kept shooting.  By the end of it, the total tally was 40 birds! That is the most fish crows I have ever shot, and not one common crow (the neighborhood crows are well educated).

Wondering if it was a fluke, I set up the same situation this morning but had all my gear and auto shotgun.  I was able to get a couple of smaller groups of fish crows to come over.  The were more wary and it was starting to rain, which could have been a factor as well as being educated from Saturday.  After about a half hour, I had killed 34 fish crows.

Now I'm trying to see if I can find a way to talk my neighbor into providing his tow-behind man lift for a twosome of fish crow fun in different locations!  I will keep you posted. 

Demi



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BUZZ


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That is interesting. I have often wondered how it would work to hunt from a tree stand. I just never had a chance, or good set up,  to try it.



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Old Artilleryman


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BUZZ wrote:

That is interesting. I have often wondered how it would work to hunt from a tree stand. I just never had a chance, or good set up,  to try it.

Close to two years ago, a member (can't remember who) reported he got up into a tree stand (or a platform) to "experiment" with the crows that orbited above the treetops in an effort to hide. He gained the extra altitude to be successful and won that particular crow battle.



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Lone Star Phil


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Island Shooter:

I really like your flak tower!!!  Gadget Bob is just going to have to get one of those in a field-portable version!

The TCP has encountered the fish crow on a handful of occasions, at least when I was able to join in.  On one particular hunt, most of the crows we saw were fish crows.  Being smaller than the normal crow at about 75% to 80% of silhouette, I was making the decision not to shoot since they seemed like normal crows at a higher altitude and out of effective range.

I employ a personal policy that "nobody looks for free" and sometimes will send a load up at a tall crow cruising over, eyeballing the kill zone.  I finally got frustrated on this particular shoot and executed on a long shot and connected.  When I saw how much smaller the fish crow was and determining the effect this optical illusion was causing in my targeting computer, light dawned on Marblehead!

Having said that, I agree with the conventional wisdom and your experience that they don't decoy well and fly higher.

 

 

 

 

 



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Lone Star Phil

Texas Crow Patrol

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