Wed, Feb 8

Cold and clear. -2F at 7am

Set-up the net launcher at the bait in the park before dawn. We set out a dummy net launcher when we put the bait out, so I replaced that with the live one. I had covered the bait last night so the coyotes and wolves would eat the rest of the bait overnight. Once the net and remote were set, I removed the cover on the bait and took off before first light.

At 10am Jill and I went out to try and catch some ravens at the bait in the park. There were about 25-30 ravens on the bait. Unfortunately, when we went to shoot it off, Nothing! I thought maybe it was the range of the remote, so I snuck up 1/2 way, but still nothing. At that point, I decided to just spook the birds and see what was going on. Turns out the launcher was frozen and the firing pin didn't go all the way. I reset everything and put a new shell in, left, and hoped the birds would come back....

Got more bait.

12:30 - There were about 15-20 ravens back on the bait. Let's try again. At about 2:30, we were able to make it back out and there were 14 ravens on/near the bait. We waited until the got within range and did a drive by and shot the launcher off. The snow that I had put on top of the net for camo had hardened and stopped the net short of a full fire. However, we still captured 2 ravens and 2 magpies. We banded both ravens and let the magpies go. Both ravens were adults and very docile when banding. To fix the net camo problem, Derek had the insight of covering the launcher with a white sheet that is tied to the leading edge of the net. After a test fire, we figured it was worth a try. We'll try and put more bait and the net launcher out there again in the morning.