People often make crow hunting harder than it needs to be. They try to go straight to a massive professional hunt where the goal is to down hundreds of crows. That is both unrealistic and unreasonable for most hunters. Most hunters should go into the woods with first time goals of a shooting a crow or a couple of crows. In this episode I talk about one of the easier ways to hunt crows in the woods with minimal gear and expense.
Often when people hunt in timber their goal is to get the crows to land in a clearing or shoot them as they circle overhead. Both of these approaches work and can be fun and effective. But they require more work, ideal conditions, the right setup and a fair amount of skill and/or experience to pull it off well. A much easier plan is to find a fair spot and try to get the crows to land in the treetops and then pick them off.
Doing this drastically increases your chances of getting crows and minimizes many of the weaknesses of new hunters or new crow hunters. You get to observe the birds, better understand them and how they work, and take shots that are much easier and realistic than trying to take down fast moving birds are variable ranges. I have done it the hard way and the easy way, and I wish someone would have gotten me started hunting crows this way.
Now it is true that your total number of crows taken will likely be less using this strategy than many of the professional setups, but those professional setups only work if you have a truck full of decoys, the perfect farm to hunt, and a perfectly brushed in hunting blind. Very few new hunters have all or any of those things. And very few crow hunters ever will.
This podcast episode talks about the various strategies and approaches for hunting crows like this and how you can much more easily get into the woods with the land available to you and take your first couple of crows.