Paul and I gave'em one more try this morning before heading home. We started in on them at daylight and had the clickers steadily rising until a thunderstorm rolled in on us. A cold front was pushing through causing some pretty crappy conditions. At 8:30 we had to make a dash for the truck as the sky let loose. We sat and watched it rain for an hour or so and as soon as it let up we went back to bring death to the crows. We called it at 11:30 with a even 70 dead crows.
901.8 miles on my truck & 5 days later the crow marathon is over. My count shows 540 KIA. 314 for Dale & 226 for me. Dale only got me by 88 bird's and since he is a master at those high altitude shot's coupled with the fact that he get's quite a few doubles & occasional tripples i'm happy to be that close to his count. I would pass on a lot of the high ones with my modified choke but Dale smoked em with a full choke. Not to many pics of the bird's since a lot of our setups were in heavy brush. They stayed for the wild hog's & coyotes. Here are a few more pic's. If you look at the second photo you will see a pile of crow's behind Dale's blind. The kill radius was getting so large it would catch the incomers attention & stall them out of range so at almost every shoot we had to occasionally go out & down size the kill zone. Paul.
-- Edited by camo on Tuesday 17th of December 2019 12:04:50 AM
-- Edited by camo on Tuesday 17th of December 2019 12:09:09 AM
BH. It seemed like we were always in a hurry to get to the next setup so i didn't get as much time for photo's as i liked. We did meet some real friendly folks on out venture. The photo of me driving the 4 wheeler pulling Dale's crow sled was interesting. I got to the area a day and a half early to scout it out. I saw an older fellow at his place where he feed's out 40 or so calves. Plenty of crow's there so i stopped and talked with him. He said have at it and shoot all we like. He mentioned that he would shoot some but his shotgun was acting up. I asked if i could look at it for him, it was a Remington 11-87 that was gouging up the shell's while loading the tube. I spent some time with it & found the wire spring for the shell stop out of place. With a small screw driver & an o-ring pick that he provided it was back in action. He thanked me & said he would have to buy me lunch for the fix. I said no to lunch but i sure would like to use that 4 wheeler for half a day. He topped it off with gas & said take it ! He asked if he could come with on the shoot & offered to load our gun's for us while we shot. I told him that my partner takes this stuff pretty seriously & 2 is company & 3 is a crowd. Next time i'm in that area i'll spend an hour or two with him in the blind. Paul.
Glad we could provide some entertainment. The first trip was more like a comic reel. Couple idiots running around trying to get under a flyway and getting out smarted every time.
__________________
"If men had wings and bore black feathers, few of them would be wise enough to be crows." Thoreau.
Paul,
11-87 repair in trade for 4 wheeler use?! Hot dang, that’s a good score. I love developing relationships like that with landowners. They’ll welcome you back and over the years you become more friends than strangers.
Dale,
Comic reel, ha! Ain’t that the truth....Lord knows these birds have made me look like a clown plenty of times. ...but I keep coming back for more.
