"Tree Top Decoy Setup"
by Staff Advisor Dick Mermon

Years ago, when I first became interested in the art of “crow hunting” there was one thing which always seemed to be a constant factor with these raucous birds and helped more so when I discovered it, especially when the setup was positioned in a tree-line shooting point and decoys were out in the field in front. In my observation and theory, crows seemed to fashion their life style in a type of “military behavior”, by which in mean there was a General of the roost as Commander in Chief; then came the Lieutenants; Sergeants which controlled small groups of birds out of that particular roost and within this platoon were scouts and sentries, all of which had specific jobs to do maintaining proper safety and feeding locations. Each had to sustain their positions within that particular roost of birds, whereby, their job was to search out food supplies for the day and in turn the sentries upheld danger watch over the roost location as well as those fellows crows who foraged below in the field. Thus, it was that a single bird positioned in full view high up in the nearby tree was the so called "sentry crow" and that was its job. This treetop setter became a mainstay of my decoy setup and how I accomplished its positioning without much effort.

In order to place decoys in any lower branches became a simple task by merely using a long pole which supported a heavy coat hanger wire bent in a “U” fashion to lift and place a decoy, which also supported a “S” fashioned wire onto slightly upper branches. This gave me added low level field coverage with the decoys to take away any human ground movement or from the blind itself. Now, how to get a sentry decoy high up in the treetop was a different story. My first try happened to be by tossing a lead sinker attached to a ball of thread, which I threw up as high as possible and permitted both ball and weight to come down over any branch it landed over. Then affix a decoy onto one end of the thread and hoist it up into the tree. No matter how I tried and with all my baseball arm pitching strength, it never went up there high enough.

My next effort was with a lightweight lead sinker and a spinning type fishing rod and reel, but this too seemed insufficient only because the monofilament was either too thin and would break, or it was too thick and cut into the tree branch.

Last and the simplest method came about with employment of a “dog training bumper”. Here, the bumper was ejected by a .22 blank cartridge, which shot the bumper up and over any treetop I choose to use for a decoy placement. From a spool of Dacron fishing line I fastened the bumper, striped line from the spool, placed the bumper onto the shooting handle and pulled the trigger. With that, it carried the bumper up over the treetop uncoiling the line. As the bumper descended downward it also carried the line and I was able to tie one end to a tree and the other end to a decoy, which was hoisted upwards into the treetop. Now I had my "sentry bird" where all fellow crows could see and feel safe to come into the lower and ground decoy set.

Believe me, it really works. There are other tips and guidelines such as this to be found in my book "Crow Shooting Secrets” or ideas can be obtained from other Crow Buster members themselves.