Crow busting

[ikeslayer]

not sure if any of you guys do much of this. I hunt the march season quite a bit and it is a good time. It would be good to hear if any other guys out there do any crow busting. There is a serious site about it at crowbusters.com. good luck fellas ike

[adloos]

yeah, crowbusters.com is an awesome site. Crows are smarter than a person would think. I am still new to crow hunting, but have been able to get a few. How do you like to setup for them Ike?

[Kris Brantner]

hey, i love crow hunting, the same picture that is my avatar is on that website in the oddities section. its a gray crow that i shot 2 years ago. we usually find a variaty of spots that include cut hay fields and when they spread manure on fields in the winter. we have 2 jonny stewart callers that we put out and about a dozen crow dekes. but you better enjoy that shoot because they usually wont come back to the same spot at all anymore.

[clammer]

How many decoys do you usually use? Can you use black rags? I have a lot of crows near my farm that always look to be "about to do damage" and love hunting them. They are unbelievably smart and I wish I had a solid recipe for success on them but I don't. I usually throw out my deer scraps and that attracts them to my area, but to do a reliable set up would be a lot more fun.
I might try using my archery blind near a road killed deer. What do you think? :confused:

[adloos]

I have never ate crows, but what I have done is play fighting crow music. It can really attract them its awesome. They are a very smart bird and will catch on quick. I think your idea with the hunting blind might just work.

[winona walleye]

i use to hunt crows all the time before i came to college and we killed alot of birds. the key is to find there fly ways. crows roost in large numbers and they always fly the same routes to and from their feeding grounds every morning and afternoon, if you can get close to one of these flyways you will have one heck of a day. the more decoys you have the better off you are. put some on the ground as well as up in the trees. if you tie fishing line to the decoys and throw them over a limb then pull them tight so it looks like they are perched on a branch it works awesome.. put the fishing line down beneath a rock and the decoys wont slide down. also i have used electronic calls and nothing beats a hand call. i heard crow busters mentioned earlier in this forum and they do a good job describing when to use what type of call, for example after you shoot down a bird or two from a flock if u make a call that sounds like an injured bird 5 time out of ten the surving birds will come back to help the shot ones out. Crows also have great vision so i good blind hidden in a tree line is your best bet, laying in a corn feild with the decoys in around you your more likely to get spotted. all this typin brings back some awesome memories i wish i could find a place up here to go, well good luck guys and keep me posted on how the hunts go in march, let me live vicariously through you all.

thank
tim (ww)

[bassman]

How long does the season go for crow hunting this year. I havent done it in a few years.

[Jake]

MN season is closed now and only runs from March 1st-31st.....then opens again in the summer some time?

WI season is open now.


If anybody is looking, White Water is a great place if any one wants to try some run and gun crows......huge area to hunt (all public) and plenty of crows around in March. Run and Gunners paradise actually ;)


Rochester has a HUGE number of crows that roost in town (you Mayo employees know what I mean :rolleyes: ).......we've had good luck hunting the crows just like we hunt the geese......sit right on the edge of town and blast that caller........every morning and every night they come pouring out just like the geese!!! Usually decoy better too :rolleyes:

[adloos]

Sounds like a good time Jake. How many decoys do you put out?

[Jake]

Last year I finally broke down and bought 4 dozen GHG magnum crow dekes.......w/ the flocked heads and motion stakes for added realism of course!!! Man do those things look sweet!!! :D






Ok.....yeah......so that not's completely true :rolleyes:. I actually just use 6 cardboard silos that I cut out and painted flat black :rolleyes:.....put a coat hanger on em and they seem to work.

We play the Crow/Owl fight tape, so I also have an owl deke we deploy.


When we are runnin n' gunnin, we only use decoys about half the time.......only when we're hunting an open area and need to coax the birds closer......if you got woods or trees, you usually don't need much......heck, we've shot crows plenty of times just pullin the truck over to the side of the road and blarin the tape out of the windows :D.......if you can get some trees in between you and the bird, they usually come over the tops of the trees low enough to pop at em. ;)

[ikeslayer]

For all you rochersterians i found a huge roost the other day right behind the Ymca and i always see them down town and by the clinic. Why is this does anyone know why they choose the heart of rochester to roost? ike

[Jake]

The biggest two roost in Rochester are in the graveyard behind Mayo Feild and right in Central Park.....Go there right at dusk and just watch sometime.....it's pretty amazing actually.


I don't know why they chose Rochester (probably for the same reason the geese do :rolleyes: ).

[ikeslayer]

We can hunt grave yards right???j/k Any way i heard of a guy that use to hunt a grave yard for everything it was an old run down one and he said it produced more deer, pheasants, turkeys, squirrels and rabbits than any other place he had to hunt. Granted he was from iowa :D but hey why not add crows to that list. I about this time of year i am lusting to shoot just about anything. ike