Cecil,
When I was a kid I was very fascinated at the thought of catching a bird. I could sit for hours with a string hooked to a stick that held up one end of an upside down box. Under the box would be corn, barley, scratch, whatever. If a bird were to come by for a snack, I would pull the string, the box would drop, and I would catch a bird. Never worked. I don't think I ever even saw a bird close to my boxes.
When I got a little older someone did teach me how to catch pheasant. Back in those days we lived near many of the Lake Superior grain elevators that held grain that came from Western Minnesota, Iowa, and the Dakotas. Pheasant would follow the railroad tracks from out west and end up in our back yard. I would take two pieces of stove pipe connected with a stove pipe elbow. I'd put grain in one pipe up to the elbow. I'd set this out between our garage and a hedge. Most of the time various neighborhood critters would eat the grain. But, every once in a while, a dumb pheasant would walk into the pipe. It would get to the elbow, where it couldn't get around the corner. It also couldn't back up.
Lastly, my dad always told me that the best way to catch a bird was to sprinkle salt on its tail feathers. The object was to then grab the bird when it bent its head around to eat the salt.
Good hunting,
Ken
