"Playing the Wind"
by Sr. Field Advisor Bob Aronsohn

We are going to discuss the effect that wind has on our crow hunts. Now there is wind and there is "wild wind", and there is a big difference as to where you would set up for each of those situations. On a 10 to 20 mph wind you have an edge on the crows if they are down wind from your position.

First, they decoy much better and second, the sound of your shooting gets muffled by the breeze. On days when the breeze is blowing straight towards them, the sound still gets dissipated from the wind. On several different occasions I have gone down wind several hundred yards while I had another shooter in the blind to test my theory. Now if your set up and the birds have to quarter the wind, this is the very best type of set up because the sound of the shooting gets blown away before the report from your shotgun can reach them! In this type of situation, with a 10-20 mph breeze, the birds that are 200 yards out and closing fast don't even hear the shooting.

Example: Say you have a northwest breeze of 10 to 20 mph and the birds are coming from the south or southwest or both. The sound of the shooting literally gets blown off where they can't hear it if they are a couple of hundred yards down the line. On these types of days you can hunt in hedgerows, river bottoms and draws for the best "flyway" type of shooting. "Wild wind" days are a little trickier as you must find just the right kind of spot out of the wind for two reasons. First of all you need to keep your tree decoys looking lifelike! This can only be accomplished if you keep them out of the wind! If they are swaying back and forth violently in a 20 to 30 mph wind, the crows just won't buy it! A little action on the decoys helps, but when they are being blown around to the point where they don't look natural, it's simply no good! Secondly, it's much more enjoyable when you don't have a "wild wind" beating you up all afternoon. This is when you have to shoot in very dense river bottom cover in order to stay out of the wind or perhaps a good deep draw will accomplish the same thing. In fact, crows will follow this type of terrain in order to stay out of the wind themselves! Just think about it for a moment, a common crow weighs roughly one pound. His brain tells him "Hey, why knock yourself out fighting this damn wind back to the roost", so he flies low and uses any windbreak he can in order save his energy!

The late Boyd C. Robeson leading a tail wind pushed bird

Crows are a lot smarter than most people give them credit for, but can be kept under control (manageable numbers) by using the methods I have just described.