I got the loads developed and now I've waged war on the crows. Two kills out of 3 shots with the Fireball. I would have been 3 for 3 but the crow jumped and flew at the same time I squeezed off the shot. Both kills were a little over 200 yards. After practicing on bottle cap size targets at 200 yards crows look as big as the backer. I turned the 14 power Conquest scope down to six power for the shots. The black color against green/brown grass makes an easy target. The 40 grain Nosler Ballistic Tip bullets work really well. The crows didn't know what hit them. Now the ones that escaped are doing fly-bys making all kids of racket looking at their dead buddies on the ground.

Uh oh, you left one living to educate the rest. :p Well, it's happened a few times before. Those darn birds are favorite targets for us out rockchucking, but they are sure smart birds. Keep after them!

Glad your getting some action with that fireball Flash. I struck out on the ground squirrels last week. I let the grass get to high. I know those little buggers are back there laughing their behinds off at me. I'll be there earlier next spring.

Crows are difficult to shoot with a rifle here Flashhole. Good work!

They don't seem to mind me if I "just notice" out there near 300 yards. But if I "think" of them and a rifle in the same thought, they fly away real quick!

I connect once in awhile when the sun is in thier eyes :D .

Do they eat thier own dead? I have observed that they are NOT all that picky about cusine :confused: .

Cheezywan

Crows don't eat their own, that I have ever seen or heard, in fact the flock will become quite upset if you shoot one. The others will create quite a ruckus and if a dead one is left out they will stay away.
I have a problem every fall, we will have hundreds maybe thousands that gather here every night for a few weeks. The trees will be full making quite a mess on everything underneath. If I can sneak out and get one with the pellet gun, I will lay him out in the open wings spread as long as I can and none will land in my trees then or a few days after.

I have read that given the size of the brain of a crow, they have the same [similar] brain capacity of a dolphin, meaning intelligence. Wonder if it is true?
If it is true, they'll be some educated avains...

If you can wound one, the other ones will fly around for quite some time. Maybe... you can shoot another. That works for me in the corn patch. Q

I'm not very good at "wounding shots" on crow.

My good amigo did one:

We were hanging around in my garage with a BB gun. I had a radio tower above it. A crow landed on the antenna. The crow did not look down for danger. Mi amigo shot straight up. I saw bird poop at impact :eek: . Crow went straight up and away. I found him/her a few days later in the road(A guess?)

I don't often see a dead crow.

Cheezywan

I'm not sure how their intelligence would measure up using some kind of test. Like Cheezy pointed out, they really do seem to have "ESP" when it comes to their safety. Of course they do get mad enough sometimes to overide that feature.

I've shot a few crows before. I have grown to like them and leave them alone now. I got no problem with anybody shooting them though, you aren't going to hurt them much.

Crows don't eat their own, that I have ever seen or heard, in fact the flock will become quite upset if you shoot one. The others will create quite a ruckus and if a dead one is left out they will stay away..


All of the above is evident here. I laid one out with wings spread in plain view.....you never heard such a rukus. They haven't been back for a few days now. They still do fly-bys and squawk loudly but they don't land. Maybe I could catch one and stake it to the ground. That would create a target rich environment.

Before I nailed a couple of them they would sit in the trees right outside the bedroom window and make all kinds of racket just as it starts to get light. No central air so the windows are open almost all the time. The loud mouth crow is annoying to say the least. Sleeping in is not an option. We had a large owl do the same thing one night. It screeched really loud and knocked me right out of bed. I didn't think I could still move that fast. I tolerate the owls, they eat mice.

Crow hunting is fun and, yes - they are one smart bird.

Years ago (many, many years ago) my FIL and I would hunt them in northern Indiana. Was still legal to shoot raptors then and he wounded a Big Horned owl one time. Felt sorry for the poor thing, so we managed to get it home, tethered and nursed back to health. It became somewhat tame, so we decided to use it for a live decoy for the crows. Would stake it out in an open farm field, get back in the brush line and start calling. As soon as the scout crow discovered the owl the fight was on! Would have crows milling around the sky like a swarm of flies. My FIL would keep calling to keep the crows stirred up and I'd shoot. The owl got lots of pleasure watching the dead/wounded birds falling. My FIL chewed tobacco and would get to laughing so hard he would start spitting into the caller and end up making some of the darndest sounds you ever heard!

Finally decided to let the owl loose after it was all healed up so we took it to a block of woods, sat him on a tree branch and walked out. When we got back to the vehicle, looked back and there he was, sitting on a branch right beside us as if to load up and go home again. Hope he made out OK in later life.

Sat up in a tree last season, bowhunting before daylight. Had a swoosh fly by ... later heard an owl, glad he didn't get me. Q

Years ago we lived in the Sandia mountains of New Mexico. We were fairly remote and we had lots of rabbits and squirrels in the area. The kids had names for lots of them. I came home one night just after dark and the kids came out the side door and around to the front of the house to greet me. On the front porch was a great horned owl ripping one of the bunnies to pieces. The kids recognized it by its markings. They weren't too keen on the owl after that.

I like to here them when I'm hunting. I have seen them do amazing things... like catch squirrels and rabbits.Q

One year I had a real problem with crows eating my corn before it came up. An old timer told me to soak the corn seed in bug killer before planting ... it worked .... no more problems, the corn grew. I still would rather shoot them as use poison. Q

Crows are smart. Magpies and ravens have them beat for sheer brainpower. All three are from the same family.

I've seen the same sorts of thing. They'll avoid where one died for a while but eventually come back. Wound one, or better yet, let the cat get one and they'll mob you, the poor cat (hysterical to watch the cat get disrespected by his prey) or anyone they feel did the dirty deed. We've got resident magpies and they've bullied the cat in our backyard. The crows I usually see down on the Kenai Pennisula. Seems they don't care for the sight of a rifle in anyone's hands.

Tried to find that article, but found some others:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/12/1209_041209_crows_apes.html

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/06/060606-crows.html

interesting reading....

Almost makes me feel bad a bit about hunting them......NOT:p

Interesting read Chris!

When I lived in town(where the crows do not fear man), I observed that they new the garbage collection routes. You needed to either put your trash in a can with a lid or keep an eye on the bags until they were collected. Crows would tear them up otherwise.

I got one by shooting out the mail slot once with the pellet rifle. Never saw it coming :D .

Cheezywan

I got one by shooting out the mail slot once with the pellet rifle. Never saw it coming :D .Cheezywan

Ha Ha! That's about all you can do with these crafty birds; out-weasel them!

Update

flashhole 4 crows 1

my dad took a crow dn in flight once.. turned out to be a crease shot that just knocked it out..we penned it for a yr. or so then got tired of feeding it pecans so let it go..good memory. :)

The crows have become extremely wary of me. They post sentries in the tree tops and watch the house. When I walk out they go nuts and warn all the other birds I'm there and I have a gun. I swear they make a different noise and are not as enthusiastic in their warning efforts if I am not carrying a gun. The ones in the field that hear the warning react immediately and take to the air. The count is up to 11 but the last two I took I had to shoot from inside the garage. The resident flock count has been reduced by about a third.

My father-in-law had a problem with buzzards eating the foam cover to his hot tub. He lived near a marshy area and they (couple hundred) would roost in the trees in the evening and at night. Since it is illegal to shoot them here in Ga he was shooting 'bird bombs' at them to get them to fly away, but they would just be back shortly there after. He got a permit to shoot one of them after a couple of months of aggravation and hung it in a tree. The buzzards would never roost around there yard when there was one of their comrades strung up in the tree...but as soon as he took it down they would be back within days.

I'm not sure how their intelligence would measure up using some kind of test. Like Cheezy pointed out, they really do seem to have "ESP" when it comes to their safety. Of course they do get mad enough sometimes to overide that feature.

I've shot a few crows before. I have grown to like them and leave them alone now. I got no problem with anybody shooting them though, you aren't going to hurt them much.

I've been feeding some turkeys in my pasture and the crows have been coming in more and more. I decided to shoot one this morning to "encourage the others". Shot one, and they flew off but were back shortly with reinforcements. Shot at and missed another and they went away and returned with even more of their buddies, they must have thought the first shot was a fluke. Got another one on the third shot.

The 218 Bee explodes them pretty good.

Talking of crow intelligence - saw in the paper a couple days ago that a study found some crows in Asia use sticks for tools to get things they want. Guess those birds shutting the patio door on the poor cluck after ringing the doorbell may have some merit afterall! :D

I use a fawn bleat call... real loud to call crows,it works every time. Q