I'm going again tomorrow morning for crows and afterwards for boar.
The plan is to be at my spot at 6:30 and put up the decoys, shoot till 7:50 and then we have have a meeting time at 8 for a driven boar hunt.
At the moment I have 9 crow decoys and around 15 pigeon decoys. There are some pigeons around.
Can I mix the crow and pigeon decoys? Or can I put them in different groups? If I get to shoot a few pigeon then great, but my main target will be crows. How will it affect the crows?
Will they be more or less inclined to come in? I'm hoping that they think Mmmm lots lots of birds and lots of food.
The wood pigeon you have in France are totally different from our rock pigeon. One big difference is that wood pigeon are good eating!
With different habits and likes, you rarely see pigeons and crows mixing in groups. Therefore I’m guessing if you mix the decoys or even place groups near to each other, it will not be life like.
Having said that, I’ve seen two or three single pigeon decoys near crow layouts used as “confidence decoys,” but could never determine if it helped or hurt.
Demi
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The man who thinks he can, and the man who thinks he can’t are both right.
I do it that way some times....the last time it worked perfectly! I like to think the addition of the pigeon decoys worked really well but I would use them latter in the season when they are harder to trick. Another favorite is turke decoys (Worked fantastic) and goose decoys(Again fantastic) but keep the seasons in mind too and the appropriate stamps and licenses ofd course....but I like the odds in my favor. Still with the pigeons if you can so long as it is otherwise legal. But I say again; wait until later in the season if you are going to especially if you need to hunt the same farms sooner than later...but don't use the same calls!!
I knew this one gent who used the same set up in the same location day day out until he might get one or two wanderers but by and large he burnt it out really bad!
I went on Saturday and Sunday. Same spot. Only one decoyed in and I missed a unmissable shot.
On Sunday I put out both crow and pigeon decoys. They seemed suspicious. Not one decoyed in.
I need to change the my spot as well. The crows are mostly concentrated around a sheep farm about 2km from where I am sitting but the owner doesn't allow hunting on his farm :(.
I need to take the time and try and figure out the flight paths as well.
The problem I have is that we are not allowed to shoot within 150m of a house, and since houses are popping up everywhere our hunting space is becoming smaller and smaller.
As for the boar hunting, 10 was shot - Everybody in the team saw one - except me.
Thanks for the report. As the old saying goes, “If it were that easy, everyone would be doing it!”
Chalk this one up as a lesson learned. Just remember what you did right and duplicate it...wrong and avoid it.
Another tip: Use the SEARCH feature above to glean valuable information from OTHER hunters’ (me included) mistakes anout many areas of our sport.
Keep us posted. We all have been right where you are!
Demi
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The man who thinks he can, and the man who thinks he can’t are both right.