How To Set Up Dove Decoys
Doves, On A Wire
09.ten.13
If you hunt mourning doves, or simply observe them, you lot undoubtedly know doves have an uncanny analogousness for power lines. Telephone and electric lines are choice resting sites for doves. Birds typically land on such wires before descending to the ground to feed, become dust, or h2o. This is such a widely known pigeon habit that in most hunting areas where at that place are power lines, hunting sites around wires are coveted.
Power lines are so bonny to doves that many fields owned by hunters accept specially-built "utility wires" that serve no other purpose just as an attractant for doves. A wire, consummate with alpine poles, looks exactly like a phone line, often extending for hundreds of yards beyond an otherwise flat field. Except it has no power or telephone hook-ups. It'southward put there solely to draw birds when pigeon flavour opens.
Simply not everyone can afford to build his own "power line to nowhere" in a pigeon field. Nonetheless with a flake of effort and for not much money, yous can build your ain "dove wire" that attracts birds from long range, and it's hands portable.
The components of a portable "dove wire" (all bachelor at virtually hardware stores) include: a xx-foot long 2-inch diameter PVC pipe; ii four-inch long, i/four-inch bore "eye-bolts" with four suitable lock nuts; 2 five-foot lengths of physical reinforcement rod (rebar); a 100-pes length of night-color (black best) 1/four-inch rope (nylon good); two tent stakes; i to two dozen plastic drink containers (20-ounce or slightly larger); and a large spray can of apartment-greyness primer paint, plus a large tin can of flat-black pigment.
For tools, you need a saw, a drill with ane/4-inch bit, and a hammer.
Starting time step cut the PVC pipe in one-half, producing two x-foot sections. This makes the pipage more than portable, able to fit inside nigh SUVs and pickups, and many hardware stores will cut the pipe for easy ship. Side by side completely spray the outside of the PVC pipes with flat-black paint, and permit dry.
Remove labels from plastic drink containers, and drill one hole sideways completely through them with a i/4-inch flake. But an inch or so down from the cap is a good spot to drill through. Thread potable containers onto the rope. They should slide on snug. You don't want them to move too easily along the rope. Space them irregularly at various spots along the rope, leaving about 15 feet of blank rope at each end without drink containers. You can spray the drink containers with flat-gray primer pigment at present, only it'due south easier when they're suspended higher up the ground on the "pigeon wire."
When the PVC pipes dry from painting, drill 1 i/iv-inch hole through each piping, most 4-inches from an end. Thread one lock-nut onto the heart-bolt, and spin it far back on the threads. At present put the eye-bolt through the PVC hole, and secure it in place with some other lock-nut. The eye-commodities should be sturdy and secure, capable of holding the rope with plastic "decoys." Do this to both PVC pipes.
Practice setting upwardly the pigeon wire at dwelling house in your back yard, a nearby field, park or other open space. It'southward much faster with another person's help.
Take i of the 5-pes lengths of steel rod and bulldoze it well into the footing with a hammer. A foot or two deep is good. Thread one end of the rope through a PVC eye-commodities, pull information technology through six or eight feet, then slide the opposite end of the PVC pole over the rebar rod, so the pole is continuing upright. Several feet from the vertical PVC pole drive one tent stake into the ground, and secure the end of the rope to the tent stake.
Lay the rope with plastic decoys on the basis in a line leading away from the vertical PVC pipe. This should extend well-nigh 70 feet or so. At that spot drive the second steel rod into the ground. Thread the remaining end of the rope through the second PVC piping eye-bolt, and while holding the rope terminate, slide the opposite stop of the PVC pipage over the rod and so it's standing upright on the rebar, eyebolt at the top.
Pull slowly and firmly on the rope end then the decoys rise and are suspended betwixt the poles. Step several feet away from the second PVC pipe, drive the second tent stake into the ground, and secure the "dove wire" to it.
Arrange decoys by sliding them along the rope, so they wait like real doves on a wire. Yous tin can add a few oversize plastic bottle decoys on the ground nether the wire for more than realism. Attaching a few commercially-made plastic dove decoys is okay, too. The whole matter goes upwards in a few minutes, and comes downwardly even faster.
In fields you regularly chase, a "dove wire" can exist left disassembled forth a woods line or ditch, so set up-upwards when needed. This eliminates the need for transporting the components every time to a hunting site.
Taller and longer "dove wires" are easy to brand, too. Y'all can employ ii, 100-foot lengths of rope tied together, utilizing three poles. For a taller "wire" set up-upwards, use ii xx-foot lengths of PVC, and 3-inch diameter pipes to make information technology more sturdy. Transporting such long piping can be difficult in hunting vehicles, however. Just piping tin can be cutting into 10-pes sections, then mucilage threaded PVC connectors to the ends. This makes it easy to transport piping, then at the hunting site pipage can exist threaded together forming 20-foot alpine "poles," which gets decoys loftier where they're easily seen by incoming birds from long range.
Source: https://www.alloutdoor.com/2013/09/10/doves-wire/
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