Techniques for corvid control
Tom Sykes is always keen to test new ideas and to this end modified his owl decoy with interesting results
Ihave always been keen to learn from others and test different techniques. Experimenting with tactics can be very effective on birds that have encountered just about every trick in the book. It also helps to keep my shooting interesting and gives me things to work on when I can’t get out of the house.
In recent years, I have seen more and more people using owl decoys on crows. They seem to be very popular in other countries, especially Sweden, where they have taken the art of using owl decoys to a new level. I have also noticed a trend to add feathers to the plastic decoys, to give them an edge by improving their realism. I have had great results in the past with plastic owl decoys but thought the addition of feathers stood a chance of improving my success rate. It was also just the excuse that I needed to get out my glue gun and do a bit of crafting.
Feathers
I bought a small dull grey decoy, which definitely had a lot of room for improvement. I thought that the best feathers to add to it were those of a hen pheasant, as they are easily sourced during the season and provide the typical mottled brown effect found on tawny and eagle owls. I plucked the feathers from the wings, back and breasts and glued them to the relevant areas of the decoy to create a realistic look. I finished off by painting the face, feet and base. The whole
“A local beater asked me whose owl it was before realising it was fake”
process was time-consuming but rather therapeutic. I love crafting projects like this, putting effort into making, adapting or improving my gear. Modification done, I had to use it to see how effective it was.
I decided that the hedges near the park of the estate were the ideal place for my owl ambush. The broken-up hedges allowed me to set up a hide that blended into the surroundings. I decided that a newly erected fence was the best place to add the decoy to get it off the ground and help to make it visible from most angles. I had to laugh when I arrived at the field as one of the local beaters happened to be passing and stopped for a chat. He asked me whose owl it was and what I was up to before realising that it
wasn’t real. It was a good sign that he was taken in and hopefully the crows would be too.
After watching the flightline for a short while, I put everything in position to start pulling in the crows. The objective of my set-up was to paint the picture of an owl attacking a crow, with a few other corvids trying to intervene. I thought that having numerous decoys would make the scene look more realistic and opted to use four full bodies on hangers in the hedge and fence with a Hypa-Flap flapper on an extended pole that looked like a bird coming in to mob the owl. I placed the owl on a spare HypaFlap decoy without the wing bars inserted. This allowed the wings to flap unnaturally in the breeze, giving the illusion of a captured crow trying to break free from the owl’s talons. The whole spread was lightweight, quick to set and looked very realistic.
I built the hide from a homemade net design. I had two rolls of plastic garden fencing, to which I added different materials like hessian, jute string and old netting to create natural colours, ideal for both the marsh and inland shooting. The hide was short but perfect when teamed with a low fishing chair. The netting had a nice rigidity to it, which was increased with garden canes and homemade guy ropes. I set the hide in the next gap along from the decoys to keep the bird’s attention away from my position, which allowed me to get a good visual on approaching birds. It was also located in the centre of the hedge to give me a good shooting arc.
Calls
It wasn’t long until I could hear the distant calls of crows that had spotted the decoys at range. You can hear a difference in the calls of approaching birds. They almost sound more agitated as they approached. I used a range of different calls to make varying sounds, including a very distressed crow call. This drew the birds in at speed, both in singles and small groups. They provided some very challenging shots as they were clearly on edge and seemed to have heightened sense of danger. The easiest shots were when I managed to slip the gun into my shoulder and pick off the crows as they were distracted.
The owl decoy was a success and helped bag a tidy number of nuisance carrions. The calling certainly helped to complete the illusion, but it was clear that the owl decoy undoubtedly did its intended job of convincing the ‘streetwise’ crows of a dangerous predator that needed evicting from the area. The shooting was definitely more difficult than the typical lolloping carrion coming into decoys as they were in a lather, which made it tricky to get into a shooting position without alerting them to the real danger lying in wait.
The bag wasn’t record-breaking but it was well worth the effort. I am sure that the modified decoy helped and it won’t be the last occasion that it is deployed to help pull in some wily crows within range of my gun.