Eating Crow

Caption: This is the end result of only two hours of shooting at roost-bound crows. A total of 124 of them were taken with only two shotguns operating over one caller.


The Art of Crow Hunting

"Even if you don't care much for the crow, you have to give him his due. I've always had a deep, almost reverent awe for the raucous old rascal -- the sort of feeling I usually reserve for space scientists and extremely angry women... Men bomb him, poison him, and gun him down, but he still flourishes and apparently there's not much we can do about it. There's a reason for this -- the crow is just about the end point of avian evolution. He's gone about as far as a bird can go, and is splendidly equipped for survival under an immense range of diet and living conditions. Hardfeathered and sleek, he has a voice like a woodrasp and a mind like a diamond."

I've quoted the above from a chapter on crows my good friend John Madon included in his delightful book, Stories from under the Sky. To a remarkable degree John smote the literary nail on the head. Although I've aided in the demise of some 90,000 of the rascals I still encounter some situations where some crows somehow get the better of me. Perhaps one day John can be persuaded to join me for a top-drawer shoot, preferably during the spring and autumn migrating seasons, when we can further explore his comparison of crows to space flyboys and short-fused dames...

I have gunned crows for over a half century. Yet, while duck hunting recently, with my Ithaca plugged to the waterfowling three-shot limit, I called in a lone crow to within a mere forty overhead yards. I cut at him once, but he flipped into a simple sideslip that carried his feet outside of my shot pattern, then resumed his cruise. I tried him again, and he sideslipped in the opposite direction. So I spent my third shot, at which he sharply eased up on the throttle and slammed on the brakes, so that my shot charge whizzed feet ahead in the direction his black beak indicated.

I suspect that damn crow had somewhere picked up some surplus radar gear, or that he owned superspeed telepathy. He foiled me so completely that I knelt in my blind and swore feelingly, yet admiringly, at that departing bird. I tried to tell myself that he'd slipped through holes in the shot patterns of those Number 6s. But with the Poly Choke on that Ithaca screwed down to full choke, that argument didn't wash. He'd just flimflammed we with three exquisitely timed and precisely executed dodges.

Source: Popowski, Bert (1964), Hunting Secrets of the Experts

Footnote of Interest: Turns out, some people really do eat crow (http://www.crowbusters.com/recipes.htm) and Popowski, the author of this article, is mentioned on the home page of this site along with other elites from "The Golden Era" of crow hunting in the U.S.