Calling Starlings

I'd like to know that too.

A young starling in distress drives them wild as do the young in distress of most parents.

Setting fire to their nesting cavity gets them a bit stirred up too. Note: do not try this if the cavity is in your home ... it could cause the end of marital bliss and potential complications with next door neighbors!

Thurmond

I have been close to pulling the trigger on a call also. Foxpro does offer some starling mp3s to put on it but they are all starling in distress type sounds. I think it would attract them but in my experience when I have wounded them they mostly just hover and are on high alert. Foxpro told me that you can put any mp3 that you can find on their call. I think a peaceful, feeding or starling jamboree call would work well. Somebody just has to do it and tell the rest of us inquiring minds!

I use my electronic caller for starlings and it makes them go crazy. After you get one sit him up with a piece of wire hanger to pose. Then turn it on again. They will go nuts and hover and scream over it. Repeat the process. After you nail a bunch they get suspicous and leave.

I have a fox pro and have used The starling in the stress call and it scares them away. I have also tried attaching my iPhone and YouTube being starling noises but the FoxPro will not play sound from an MP3 of any sort. Not that I have found anyway. 

 I have had luck putting my iPhone in a 5 gallon bucket to amplify the sound and just playing a starling singing. 

I have done well with starling decoys set on the ground in areas where they are feeding like cut hay fields or lawns. I have had my best luck combining elevated decoys (on a fence or hay bail) with some on the ground in feeding positions. I have shot starlings a few of times that got stuck up in dead trees and that worked great to attract them until the wind blew them down. I even wired 4 starling decoys on a stick and cast a weight with a fishing rod over a high branch in a dead tree then pulled up the stick. It worked, but not as well as I thought it should have. 
I hunt them obsessively. Great fun.

I have had them land right in my decoys a lot. Usually they land on the perimeter though. They are normally on high alert and you have to shoot quick maybe because of the lack of movement. If they start feeding I can usually get more than one out of a encounter.

Any suggestions on the best time of year yo hunt them? Just after the young are born and when there is snow on the ground seem to be ideal.

"Strietwise"Any suggestions on the best time of year yo hunt them? Just after the young are born and when there is snow on the ground seem to be ideal.

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I can get into them all year where I live in Montana. 

In the winter I go to a cattle feedlot where they snuggle up to the cows to stay warm and eat the feed. I usually get 20-50 on a outing there.

In the spring it is great fun to go hide around large nesting trees. In a good outing, I might get 15. 

After the young leave the nest, feeding areas such as cut hay fields are good for decoying. I look around until I find areas where they are feeding then find a hide and set up decoys. On my best shoots I have got close to 50 or so.

This year I found a roosting area in some thick willows along a creek that was very nice shooting for me. I would set up near some large dead trees in the area for a couple hours in the evening and get 10-20 or so. I had some good, although brief, action in mornings there also.

Lately the weather has been cruddy and the starlings have been feeding in town. I bait the grackles and redwing blackbirds to my yard with black sunflower seed and starlings just have to come into the live decoys also.

Most of them migrate somewhere to the south, I assume, but plenty stick around for winter fun. 

I am excited to hear how Davidt does with the Foxpro!

I don't use a call. I use millet seed. A 5# bag is about $10, and will bring in all sorts of pesty birds. And you'd be surprised at how quickly they find the seed.