"Same Blind Crow Hunting"
by Barry B. Beers

This article is for the thousands of potential crow hunters out there with access to a small piece of ground with just a few crows in the area. For the crow hunters that are wanting to join the rest of us and don’t have access to large crow flocks or loaded flyways. Yes, you can hunt the same piece of ground, from the same blind, week after week, with out moving to a new location. Yes, home crows and old wise crows are smart, but you can still take a few of these birds, along with the young crows. Picking a good location on your property is important.

February and March Hunt, 2006

February, the season starter is hard because of the snow and cold weather. Where I hunt the location is excellent during the month of March because I’m located between the roost and some of the feeding areas. The late season, August and September, is slow because, in August the grasshoppers are in the hay fields on the other side of the roost. September is slow because of how they are feeding, and the leaves are still on the trees. So far I’m killing 80% of my birds in March. The roost is about one and one half miles from my blind. The crows use a wide flyway that does include my blind area. During February and March I have more crows in the area. But, in August and September several days can pass with out seeing or hearing crows. When I was in my teens, I hunted crows with a shotgun at a dump. Over the teen years I shot over a thousand crows, many doubles and some triples. I hunted crows again in my thirties with a wise old-hand-calling crow-hunting friend. I killed a few more during this time. At age sixty-two, a few years ago, I started hunting crows again, this time on my place behind the house. Over the past three years I have learned how to kill crows without using major flyways or large flocks of crows. Through trial and error I came up with a permanent blind; it is located in a Red Pine thicket, near a small field. This is how I found the best hunting area with out having to build a bunch of blinds. First, I built a 3’x3’x5’ lightweight blind frame out of 1”x2” lumber; then covered it with camo cloth and camo mesh. I put it on skids to be pulled with a golf cart or snowmobile. Then I built the permanent blind; from it I have killed over 160 crows.

I started crow hunting using a 12-gauge shotgun. I got a few this way. But, because of the thick pine forest and weary crows landing out of shotgun range, I switched to a rifle. It became obvious that the best type of crow hunting was sniping. I started with a 22-250 single shot Browning with a 45-grain hollow point, and scoped with a 6x20 power Tasco. The .22-250 did the job on the crows, but it kicked just enough that I couldn’t see the feathers fly. I switched to my Savage 223-varmint rifle, scoped the same. The light kick of the 223 allowed me to see the bullet hit the bird. I had some close shots, so I started carrying my Ruger .22-caliber bolt action scoped with a 3x9 power, along with the .223. When the .17 HMR came along, I purchased a Savage SS bolt action, and left the .223 and .22 home. The .17 HMR was fine and deadly up to 150 yards with a clear shot. But most of the crows that came in landed in the brush. The .17 deflected in brush. I started carrying the .223, with the .17 HMR for the brush shots. The Myth Busters TV program tested the return impact of a bullet shot in the sky from a rifle. The results of this test scared me. I have always had concerns about where a bullet might land, should it miss a crow and no brush to stop it. Years ago the countryside in our area was mostly woods and fields. But today country homes are scattered everywhere around us.

During the 2006 season, I shot seventy-seven crows and missed six. Five of the misses had heavy brush behind the bird. One didn’t. The bullet went off and landed somewhere? I wanted to keep snipe-hunting crows, but I didn’t want to shoot the rifle rounds in the sky any longer. The tree line crow hunting required it. I studied, annualized the situation, and came up with two ways to keep hunting crows on the same spot out of the same blind. The first idea was to build a 150-yard lane through the woods; acquire road kill and other bait and place it along the lane. This would be a lot of work. I probably wouldn’t have many crows to shoot on the ground, because many would be sitting in trees. The second idea was simpler. It would cost me the price of a ten gauge 3-1/2 inch magnum full choke single shot New England Arms long range shotgun. I chose the second method.

The shotgun arrived near the end of the 2006 season. I purchased a variety of 10-gage ammo and tested them at 60 yards. I tested #4 and #2 shot. The #2 shot gave me the most hits in my crow target. During the last four days of the 2006 season, I shot eight crows as far out as 70-yards and as close as 40-yards. Snipe hunting with a long-range shotgun may not be as desirable as a rifle, but it does get the job done. What I would like to try next is get a semi auto 10-gage shotgun. So on the long shots, if the bird is floundering, I can hit him again. Also, I wanted to test BB shotgun loads at 70-yards to see what the averages of hits are. The shotgun seems to be the safest sky-shooter. The shot-range is short, and stays in a safe area as it drops to the ground. Now I’d like to talk about how to shoot some crows, from the same blind, in the same spot, week after week and season after season. The quantity of kills won’t be like the shotgunner, with thousands of crows in established flyways. But, the long-range shotgun can still be fun and trim out some of the West-Nile carrying birds in the area. I hunt peak-time, two or three times a day. A two-or-three hour hunt will cover the peak-times. Peak-times may vary in your area. Mine are from dawn to 9 am., from 10 am. to 1 pm. and two-hours-before-dusk. I use a camo covered electric-golf-cart and a snowmobile, covered with a white plastic tarp, to travel back and forth to the blind. I’m real careful going to and from the blind to keep the crows from seeing me. My blind is built of rough sawn oak and also is well camouflaged. The outside of the lower section is covered with pine limbs attached with screws. The upper is mesh camo with vertical slits, every six inches in the four windows. I made a rest for my gun starting at the top of the window opening, I inserted vinyl covered steel rods at, 1/3 and 2/3 intervals. The overall blind size is 3’x3’x6’. This size lets you lock up for a good shot with a rifle, but of course with a shotgun it’s not as important.

Inside view of the Oak Crow Blind

The way I get crows to come in again and again, is by using a decoy high in a tree, seventy feet up. I placed one pulley in the tree, the second pulley on the ground near my blind, and run a one sixteenth cable between the pulleys. The bottom pulley is attached to a garage door spring to compensate for the wind. I also run the speaker up first with the crow decoy about two feet behind it. The speaker has a small camo tarp over it. Both are next to the tree trunk. Needless to say, I blast a fair share of crows from this tree and trees near by. The treetop is about fifty yards from where I shoot across a small field. When you don’t have big flocks of birds and do have lots of single flying crows, the aggressive calls don’t work. Most of the crows shot come in alone. If the crows are grouped up, I can sometimes draw one of them in. Once in a while a group will come in and land, such as when four crows came in and I shot them all in a few minutes with my .17 HMR.

The Snipe Wing Decoy Inspiration

I only use the non-aggressive calls because of the difficult type of hunting in my area, and being confined to the same blind all the time, I developed this calling pattern from the Johnny Stewart’s Prey Master caller. Johnny Stewart’s: Crow #1, #2, #3, and Doe Distress and Turkey #3. The Crow Fights, Crow and Owl, Crow and Hawk calls don’t work, also, the Crow Distress and Reveille calls don’t work. What did work were the Crow Audience, Short Crow, Come Crow and Excited Single Crow. Some decoys I tried were; a fox, owl, hawk, dead rabbit and none of them worked. The crow decoys as purchased did work. But, what worked the best was the Dropped Wing decoy (one piece of black carpet cut to a wing shape and screwed to one side of the decoy), the Spread Wing decoy (two pieces of black carpet cut to wing shape and screwed to the back of the decoy), the Snipe Wing decoy (two pieces of black carpet cut to a wing shape a small one pointing up and a large one pointing down, screwed to the sides of the decoy).

To conclude, I think why the decoys worked so well was that I had dead crows hanging in trees from the 45-grain hollow point, .223, impacts. The incoming crow or crows landed and stayed more often because of these dead crow shapes. I hope this article is interesting and helpful to hunters with similar crow hunting experiences, and inspire new hunters, especially young hunters.