Crow hunting

Have you ever heard the saying "Eat Crow"?  just saying.  

I use to crow hunt. I used a 12 gauge shotgun with #8 lead shot back in the 1960's. I had a mouth type crow call and could stir them up pretty good.  

A few years back I got a PM-4 Johnny Stewart Electronic Game Caller that runs on batteries and is portable.  I put up a owl decoy and some crow decoys in the back yard.  Now I've heard crows calling around my area so I know that there is a family living nearby.  Probably rooting in the pine trees across the street.  

They went wild. I was inside the house in my kitchen looking out the back storm door which is half glass and half screen door.  They were attacking the decoy but quickly learned that it was not real and went off.  

When I was in High School I was in speech class my Sophmore year.  I gave a speech on predator hunting and brought several mouth reed type calls to class.  The kids in my class loved it. But the teacher down the hallway got mad because of the noise and came down to your room to complain to my speech teacher.  I just had to finish up my speech faster and not use the calls anymore. Funny if you were there at the time.

My dad had a Book from Herters and it was a hunting and fishing guide book with all types of great hunting, trapping and fishing information.  That was my hunting and fishing bible at the beginning of my hunting career.  Dad didn't hunt but he fished all the time. I learned about fishing from him and by reading books and magazines on the subject.  Fishing Facts magazine and Outdoor life, as well as Field and Stream Magazines, were all around our house back in the 1960s. Dad subscribed to all those hunting and fishing magazines.  

Back in the 1960s, there was a large farm field behind my parents' house and I and the neighborhood kids would play in the field. Next to the field on the East and South was a big wooded area. We played in the woods too. There was a stream that ran through the woods that stayed wet most of the year. There were big pools of water in this stream that stayed full of water year-round. I would sein for crayfish and small sunfish in those pools of water. I hunted squirrels, rabbits, quail, and crows as well as fox and other predators.


Crow hunting was something that I wanted to do.  But, I sold my shotgun when I got married.  After I was divorced I borrowed my neighbor's shotgun and went dove hunting.  I was having trouble walking long distances back then.  So I was limited one where I could hunt.  I wanted to hunt coyotes so I bought a FOX PRO Electronic Game Caller.  It held more calls and was very high tech.  I used it a few times to stir up the crows but they were onto me by then.  The Johnny Stewart PM4 was better and sounded more lifelike.  


I could easily use the PM4 at my parents house today and stir up a flock of crows that roost in the neighbor's yard. They have large pine trees that were planted 40 years ago and are right at the top of the old farm field. If I could shoot a shotgun in the neighborhood I could probably kill a few crows.


Crows are highly intelligent. They can count. They teach their young about the dangers.  They have different calls for different situations.  


I wanted to practice wing shooting back in the day. This was before dove hunting was legal in IN.  So crows were a good option and were considered a nuisance bird back then. I think that at one time they had a bounty on animals like crows and foxes.