"Decoy Setups"
by Bob Aronsohn (Crow Busters Crow Staff)

There is more than one-way to “skin a cat” as the old saying goes. Some methods work better than others for obvious reasons. Lets start with the deer hide or dead rabbit setup. This type of setup will yield a few crows but nothing noteworthy. It seems like a good idea, after all crows like to feed on road kill. The major flaw with setting up like this is that you will never attract very many crows in this manner. Why? Because the local crows in the area know exactly where they are going to feed and won't be duped by this type of setup! Lets put it in human terms. Say your driving down the highway and you are hungry. You read the road sign and it says "food next exit" so you plan to pull off at that exit when all of a sudden you see a dinky little hamburger stand with very little parking space. Where would you eat! The same holds true for the crows! You have to be in their feeding area in order to kill any significant amount of them.

Baiting crows is another method but is very impractical for the simple reason that you need a lot of bait to attract a lot of crows. Sure you can leave a few deer carcasses for the crows to feed on and that will work in the short term. In Pennsylvania they used to bait crows big time during the 1950's. I read an article where this fella owned several tracts of land and he contracted out all the broken eggs from all the surrounding chicken farms. All the eggs that were broken or way undersized he got! He had truckloads of 55 gallon drums (filled with broken chicken eggs) delivered to these shooting sites! Now this would be the way to bait crows on a grand scale! Anything short of this and you are just spinning your wheels in my opinion. So if we don't own a bunch of land and can't lease a bunch of land to do any baiting on a grand scale, what do we do? We drive around and follow the crows and see where they feed during the early part of the day. Even in areas that don't have flyways the crows will still favor certain areas over others. This can change from week to week if they are feeding in favored feeding fields, so you have to do your homework in order to be successful. In other areas where they have hog lots, chicken farms and dairy farms, all these operations spread manure, which is a major draw for crows because it's easy pickings! If you seek out these types of places you are going to kill crows! I don't mean a handful either, if there are lots of crows and you can shoot well then the sky is the limit!

Decoy setups for crows can be accomplished several different ways. Many fellas get it in there heads that you need certain decoy patterns to lure crows within range like you’re hunting ducks. It's quite true that crow hunting is similar to duck hunting due to the amount of crows that decoy, or you pass shoot on any given crow day afield. You don't need any elaborate setups in order to kill a mess of crows; you just need to "be where the crows are" plain and simple!

One setup is to have the wind at your back and place your crow decoys in back of you, roughly 12 to 15 yards. This way the crows are looking beyond your position and not at you! Another setup I employ on a regular basis is when I have a spot where the spot itself won't permit me to have the wind at my back. I setup for the crows in what I call "a side shot" or broadside shot! If I'm facing north for example and the wind is straight west, I put my crow decoys in the trees and on the ground northwest of my blind. This way they are not looking at the blind and their attention is diverted for their final moments here on this earth! Don't get the decoys to far from the blind, keep them within 20 yards or under from your blind position. The key to being successful is having the time to really know what’s going on in your hunting area and then capitalizing on that knowledge!

Crow shooting has been very good to me these past 32 years, and they will be good to you as well if you take it seriously! You will have memories that will last your lifetime!