FINALLY, I have been going to this permission since last summer with a declining daily total in birds. Not bc there are less but because I was less successful with each run.
Finally figured out that:
1.) I wasn’t concealed enough and walking around a small farm like you see on YouTube wasn’t cutting it. I needed to conceal by simply sitting under trees or getting low to the ground, the birds simply didn’t recognize me as anything and became less spooky.
2.) Wrong time of day. I go late afternoons now right before dark and it’s just one after another trying to come roost. Afternoon has been the best time on any place I have went now and I don’t think I’ll ever go back to mornings.
3.) Positioning. Playing off the first part of being concealed I learned to wear black mostly, you don’t need a ghille suit you just need a low profile. I positioned myself where the birds would be rather than where they are. By this I mean I’d get there and they would be everywhere but rather than chase them around, I’d just go straight to a spot and set up. 30mins later they would be back landing where they felt safest and I’d already be there waiting. This worked so well in fact, the sparrows were landing in the tree I was sitting under with no idea I was there and there’s no leaves on. They simply didn’t recognize me as a threat.
I say all this bc for some of you maybe this is common sense or whatever but for me it was a process. I’ve learned a ton and I’m finally able to make a huge dent in the population at this farm.
Lastly, this is going to seem embarrassing but:
Zero your gun when you GET to the permission. For whatever reason, excitement I guess I wouldn’t do this. It’s so much easier to make one or two click adjustment after 2-3 shots at your zero range, when you get there, versus missing the first 8 birds and MFing your equipment lol. Zero every single time you get there and this will never happen. It’s literally made my hit ratio triple just simply having confidence and making sure I took all mechanical error out.
I’ll end this with a cool once in a lifetime thing that happened. I shot a starling in the top of a maple tree, it fell about 3 ft (dead) and the wing got stuck in a branch. So it sat there about 2 mins and then a giant red tail hawk came in that was over watching the fields and snagged it right out of the tree! I have never saw them do this before so it was cool experience to say the least.
Photo of just what I could recover, but I’ve been dropping the starlings like crazy!
All shots taken by big tree far right in picture, which is 60y. All done with my Crown of course.
