On one of our afternoon shoots the land owners yellow lab retrieved every dead and crippled crow we shot. He made two piles of dead crows one next to the blind and the other on the other side of the fence because it was difficult for him to get through it! That dog loved his work.
If the birds cooperate a guy can take a lot of cold weather. It's the slow hunts in bitter cold weather that make you ask yourself "what am I doing out here"
Dick and I found a dandy spot 250 to 300 yards west of that staging area because many birds were coming to it from the southwest. We had a northeast breeze of 10 to 15 miles per hour and it was 18 degrees out but we burned up the gun barrels the last hour of shooting. It was slow from 1:00 P.M. to 3:00 P.M. but from 3:30 P.M. on things started to pick up. From 4:30 P.M. to 5:30 P.M. we shot in volleys, I would shoot till my gun was empty and then Dick would come up and shoot until his gun was empty.
I don't like shooting directly in the staging area because that is your drawing card for the birds that have to come through you first in order to get to the staging area.
It was meant to be both a figure of speech and be quite accurate as well.
There were perhaps 3,000 crows in that first photo but that was only a glimpse of the total flying through the area.
The last hour Dick and I were shooting in volleys and were taking out between 6 to 8 crows a minute for a solid hour! Over 400 went down in 60 minutes of "load and shoot" perhaps an additional 130 odd crows got shot between 1:00 P.M. to 3:30 P.M. It is worth noting that these birds had not been touched before we had a go at them. The farmer never heard the shooting because of the wind direction and should he of asked how we did we would say "we shot a few" and let it go at that.
It was meant to be both a figure of speech and be quite accurate as well.
There were perhaps 3,000 crows in that first photo but that was only a glimpse of the total flying through the area.
The last hour Dick and I were shooting in volleys and were taking out between 6 to 8 crows a minute for a solid hour! Over 400 went down in 60 minutes of "load and shoot" perhaps an additional 130 odd crows got shot between 1:00 P.M. to 3:30 P.M. It is worth noting that these birds had not been touched before we had a go at them. The farmer never heard the shooting because of the wind direction and should he of asked how we did we would say "we shot a few" and let it go at that.
Bob,
Not letting on to a good shoot can't hurt.
Was the clicker finger callused up or did you get a blister? Soaking it in pickle juice will heal it right up.
There was a sufficient time lag so a guy could hit the counter load and shoot. It only takes a few seconds to click anywhere from 2 to 4 crows on the counter each time you have finished shooting.
