Crows!

Derwood

Well-Known Member
Looking for advice please. I part-time keeper a small syndicate shoot and I am having problems with crows eating the wheat out of the spiral feeders. They always bother a couple on the outskirts but this season they are quite literally hammering almost every feeder! As I cant get every day any advice would be greatly appreciated. Cheers
 
Maybe kill a few and hang them around.
Don't know if this would work or is allowed but might help put them off
 
That's often a way of attracting more of the b!!!!!s. I have often wanted to bring them to the gun but never had to try for a deterrent.
 
They are on the feeders all around the shoot and not concentrated in 1 spot is the biggest problem!
 
just hang one or two upside down by one leg as already said yes it does attract them but they will only circle and shout at there dead mate and why not invite your beaters to sit on the hoppers and kill what they can? prehaps make a day out of it for them
 
Ladder trap.If your partridge units are still out you only need to make the top and sit it on the unit.Serious inroads can be made into itinerant flocks of corvids.
 
Yes ladder trap, crows seem to be in pest proportions, seen hundreds this week on unharvested maize.

They can be decoyed but needs a particular knack which is difficult to aquire.

D
 
Cheers guys. Have tried giving them a hammering last few mornings with varying success. Trap set up beside where they were seen the most, cant get them all!
 
just hang one or two upside down by one leg as already said yes it does attract them but they will only circle and shout at there dead mate and why not invite your beaters to sit on the hoppers and kill what they can? prehaps make a day out of it for them

That is exactly what to do , it puts the fear of god into carrions !
 
Problem is shooting any number will disturb your pheasent won't it ?

get a ladder trap or as was suggested have an early beaters day;

what about moving the feeders into cover where you want the birds - crows will cotton on eventually but will save some money;

good Luck with it

TOMSK
 
Problem is shooting any number will disturb your pheasent won't it ?

Yep,nobody would be shooting anywhere near my hoppers at this time of year.
Its a case of either stop filling a certain hard hit feeder in the hope they will bugger off somewhere else,ladder trap them or just accept that you are going to loose some of the corn
 
Just a thought, but perhaps someone with a silenced air rifle could reduce the number of crows near the feeders, without disturbing the pheasants too much?
 
Had the same problem on a shoot I managed about 5 years ago, set one day aside an decoyed them. Shot 65 in 6 hours. Problem solved, they left the feeders alone.

Didn't disturb the birds either as it was only one day and I picked a warm one when they would be wandering about to the cover crop rather than near the feeders. Had Larsen traps out for weeks and they were ineffective at reducing the numbers or displacing them.
 
Re. traps. Larsen traps are pretty much useless for removing a large number of birds, even if you have a multi-cage type. Ladder traps are the way to go, as they will sometimes catch as many as 30 birds a day. Use them all year round. Burpster's remedy is also a good one - one day's really good savaging will do a great deal to make your crows look elsewhere for their meals; after that you can try some stealthy if piecemeal thinning out with an air rifle, but I wouldn't rely on the latter to make the urgent difference you want.
 
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