Crow Hunting
 

Just wondering if there are any other avid crow hunters out there. I don't mean pickin them off while goose hunting, I mean setting up specifically for crows.

Back in the late 1950's and early 60's we hunted them hard in southern Michigan, during the closed season on other game. Mostly, in the early spring after the rabbit season had closed.
We would set up in the brush in a farm fence row - usually with a paper mache owl on a fence post and a couple of crow decoys in the trees close by was all you needed back then, and we also used an Olt - hard rubber crow call. It worked just fine. The best places we found were farms on the Lake Erie shore. The birds liked to scavenge the dead fish and stuff on the shore and they were always patrolling along there. They usually used the lake shore as a migration path in the spring too. But they seemed to stay more inland on the fall migrations.
The only time I ever shot them over an electronic call - was once, when I got an invite to shoot at a guys house on the Detroit River. He had a little shack on the end of his boat dock with a shooting slit, and three guys could shoot side by side.This was back in the late 1950's and he had made a tape recording of a bunch of Crows chasing an Owl - and he had a few crow decoys set on the shore ice in front of the dock, and the Crows by the thousands would come floating down the river on the ice flows and would come in to the fighting call in big flocks and we shot till we ran out of shells and the guns were so hot you couldn't touch the barrels, and the ice was covered with dead crows.
I have not hunted them since the mid 1960's when I left Michigan and went to Alaska. There are no Crows in interior Alaska, only Ravens - and you don't kill them.
Those Crows are really interesting birds to hunt.They can be so intelligent at times, it's almost spooky. And at other times, they can act so dumb, you can't believe it's the same bird.
The Crows that live around my house, can tell whether I am carrying a gun or a hiking staff when I leave the house to walk back to the woods. They will just sit, and let me get to within easy shooting range if I have my hiking stick. But If I have the gun, they will fly as soon as I get to the edge of the yard. This happens every single time.
I think, they rate as one of the most intelligent birds.

they are very smart! i have about 10 acres of woods behind my house and i have been trying to nab a crow with my pellet gun for years, like you said they can tell whether i am carrying a gun or not.

I'm up in NY and tomorrow is opening day, I'm going to a field with about 200 birds in it. Its gonna be great. I'll let you all know how it goes

Good Luck tomorrow! Lemme' know how they taste!

A Failure
 

This morning was a total bust. Great blind, great decoy spread, but at 6:10 (not sun-up yet) a flock of 50 came in. What a tragedy. We only got 3 out of the bunch. I knew right then the morning would be slow and painful ha. We ended up with 15. I'm not a happy camper right now. But thats the way it goes. Especially in crow hunting, that type of day will occur from time to time. But my season count is 27 (I went on a special nuisance hunt in August that was also a bust) and I'm hoping for 200. A low goal, I know. But anyways, we had fun today. I was with a friend of mine who likes to unload his 870 on every bird that comes in. That probably didn't help keep the birds uneducated haha. Oh well. It is what it is. Still have a whole season ahead of me. Oh, and an interesting fact for the day, I dropped 6 pigeons with 5 shots also :] I got 8 of those. Keep looking back on this thread and let me know how your hunting goes. I'll do the same

I used to go hunting at Fort Cobb Oklahoma, one of the huge crow roosts back in the early 80s. Farmers hated crows because they would tear up the peanut fields in the area so it was easy to get permission to hunt on private land. There was also a public hunting area and an off-limits area where they roosted. Our strategy was to watch which way they came off the roost and set up an ambush, as they would take hours to leave and then come back the same way. We used a Johnny Stewart cassette player with "Crow Riot" recording, a few crow decoys and an owl decoy. We'd wait until they swarm and then start shooting. On a good day we would have 3 or 4 successful set ups and each time pop 10 or 20 crows between 3 or 4 shooters. On a bad day they would stay up high and we got to watch thousands of crows come off the roosts and fly away from us.

I run and gun them with my caller.

Crow opens Dec. 3rd here in SoCal...............I'll get serious then !

Tip: If you wound one leave him in view, it will keep all the "others" coming back.

missed the poll
 

I go hunting for em now and again when I get the Urge. Nothing too serious, just a simple blind, some budget decoys, and a cheap mouth call. Got my (younger)Brother-in-law shooting them down as well.:)