Hi folks!
My first post here. I would like to hear about effective methods for hunting semi-wild birds like (pigeons) but without firearms or coplex traps.
I was thinking about spear or jevelin or using grain bait. Is this efficient or there are some other ways?
I would be happy to read all tips about checking bird health, gutting, avoiding diseases etc. Any birds in general.
Posted Aug 28, 2013, 11:52 PM UTC
Get some bread, make it into a ball and put a stone in the middle. The bird eats it and can't fly off properly because of the additional weight and its easier to catch.
Fishing line, hook and a bit of bread. Bait the hook and anchor the line. The bird swallows the bread and hook and is anchored to the ground via the hook stuck in its throat.
Lie on the ground with a sheet covering you with some bread on the sheet. When a bird lands to eat the bread, you sit up and catch it in the sheet.
These are just off the top of my head. Birds are daft enough that trapping them is easy.
If there are eagles that can drag goats off the tops of mountains, I have a hard time believing a pebble is going to give a meal-sized bird much trouble.
Nobody is talking about hunting birds of prey. We're talking about hunting small birds who aren't accustomed to carrying heavy loads.
Yeah a Golden Eagle can drag a goat off a cliff, but can it fly with it? If you've seen the videos of this happening, the eagles can only hold the goat and stop it from turning into mush upon impact.
Most birds are lightweight so they can fly. Their skeleton is less dense than other animals, their blood pressure is lower and they digest food very quickly - all so they're as light as possible. All you need to do is add a little weight and the bird will struggle to fly.
When you feed the ducks at the local pond, do they only eat one single pebble sized cube of bread? Or do they eat every bit of bread you put in front of them?
You'd use stones big enough to swallow, wrapped in enough bread to cover the stone. Birds can swallow comparatively large things because they don't have arms. Put out a handful of the bread-stone combo and the bird will eat more than one. Pretend you're feeding the ducks with stone bread.
What makes you think the kind of bird that can carry a carp is going to eat bread you leave lying around? Not all birds eat the same foods, you know. Not all birds are the same size either. Think of the kind of bird that's going to eat bread... Pigeons, ducks etc. not a bald eagle or a harris hawk, that are able to carry their prey. You can't even get close to a bird of prey unless its tethered down in an aviary.
What's so hard to believe about a pigeon finding flying difficult with a belly full of stones? At no point have I said "there isn't a bird alive that can fly with stones in its belly!", because I know that it'd be incorrect.
you can literally just hold out some food in one hand and then hit them with a stick with your other hand
i've read stories about sailors marooned on islands who beat seagulls to death with their bare hands
tbh i think a trap would be more effective but if you want to you can just throw some bait on the ground or hold some out and then start thumping birds when they get close
I think the idea is that you don't already have food.. hence why you would be killing birds..
yeah i wasn't talking about using hamburgers as bait, i sort of meant use something that a bird would want to eat but that you don't
like say, a fish asshole, or a crab's eyeball, or some grass seed
Good point.
My advice would be to buy (or preferably make) a slingshot. Glass marbles and metal ball-bearings make great ammunition. In a pinch, you can use nuts (as in, screw nuts, not edible nuts) and tie a strip of cloth on one side to improve it's ballistic properties.
Killing a pigeon is trivial with almost any such ammunition. You can easily kill something like a duck, raccoon or possum with heavier stuff. Geese can probably be dispatched if you have a reasonably good aim.
Okay, I only know this because it happened once by accident. You can fish for birds. I was casting off a bridge and a seagull grabbed my bait and took off, hook attached. It was not a good experience trying to remove it (it was stuck in his beak). Now, most birds are not as bold as seagulls, but I'd imagine if you got your baited hook on a branch you could catch anything big enough to swallow the hook.
Oh, and a tip: Birds that walk taste good. Birds that hop do not taste good. Discriminate.
Raisins on a string, let the bird ingest a good length of the line (>1.5m) but you have to be quick and claim your meal to beat the foxes and whatnot. ]
Or you could boil up holly leaves, reduce down to a sticky mess (very viscous) which you can smear on any nesting branches and they will either become stuck or give you enough of a chance to grab the bird. Good luck man!
Just use some roadkill stupid. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6J1ZcNppe4M Incidentally, my friend said said that when his dad was growing up in Vietnam he used to give his pet hawk powdered heroin to make sure it always returned home. Just a tip for after you have captured your own raptor!
If there are roads around, its no longer survival hehe
Blow gun. Cold steel.
Blow dart guns are quite effective.
I remember reading once about a goose trench. You dig a trench maybe 10 feet long, 1.5 or 2 feet wide, and about the same deep. Make a nice, gradual ramp at one end. Put food in the trench. Geese walk down into the trench to eat the food, feel secure because they can lift their heads to see around them. You walk up and grab the geese. Trench prevents them from spreading their wings to fly away.
My dad used to get ducks by crawling into a hollow log and floating downstream. I've also heard you can do this with a pile of brush to conceal your face above the water, just grab their legs and pull them under. If you're quiet about it, might be able to get a few before they notice.
That's pretty fuckin' ninja...
There was a case study about people in Mexico using gourds over their heads to catch water fowl. They threw in a bunch of gourds in the water where birds where and would place one over their head and sneak up on the unsuspecting birds. I thought it was interesting lol