Crow Busters Forum

So, first my apologies for being such a long time since my last report. I had been tremendously busy doing repairs on the farms, trying to catch up on 40 years of no servicing and repairs, except what seems to have been emergency repairs that then became permanent until I arrived. Then during TB testing on a farm in December of 2017, I broke my neck, and my back, when 3 bulls knocked me into a 5 bar gate. The result of that was that the repairs then took even longer for me to do, and thus delayed even further my return to pest control. Finally I started doing some "pottering" in the mornings, generally getting somewhere between 5 and 15 birds a day. However even this was difficult as swinging through the bird hurt my back, and sighting hurt my neck. Then to add insult to injury a farmer caused a jack hammer to fly up in the air which then came back down just missing my head, but unfortunately not missing my foot The result of that fiasco was a broken big toe, and it "splatted" open to the bone, ending up in an evening in A&E, and 5 stitches plus 4 staples. But I was back at my work the very next day at 06:00 Now pest control was even more difficult as I hobbled everywhere. But I persevered, and gradually I have become adept at shooting without too much pain. But I digress. The last few days I have been inundated with new permissions. Yesterday I got one new one, which I said I would shoot today, and while there I was phoned by another two farmers with another 2 permissions to shoot. The area these permissions are in, is rich with corvid and pigeons , but when I got to the one there were none of the "hundreds of crows and magpies" the farmers had baited me with. However they stated that the birds would arrive at feeding time. so, I stood in the middle of the yard, no camo, not even a face veil (maybe my ugly mug would frighten them to death lol), just a bush hat, and for the rest, wellies (still can't get boots on, due to the busted toe being twice it's normal size, and the wound still not fully closed), and dungeries with a white t-shirt They put the feed out, and within minutes the crows started coming. First in ones and twos, then in fives and tens, them in twenties and forties. I stood still, and slowly laid onto a bird as it came over, squeezed the trigger, the gun bucked, the bird crumpled, then on to a second bird, and then a third. Then quickly reloaded and repeated the process These birds are suicidal, they are definitely not used to being shot at. there are three definite flight lines over this farm and I tried them all, as i got called away a couple of times to do some emergency repairs, and when i came back, each time i stood under a different flight line. i ended the day after about 3 hours total shooting time with well over 100 birds, and had I been set up properly for them I could easily of doubled that amount or even more. I cant wait to get a hide set up, a few pallets tied together should more than suffice. I will keep you informed of further developments on these farms.