Nice shooting area. We don't have open places like that here, got hedges round all small fields, and generally only 2-300 metres before the next house. These houses tend to be full of townies with idyllic views of what the countryside should be like, and hence tend to be antis, so slightest reason they phone the police. Hence you have to be very careful that spent shot doesn't drop on their houses, or that you annoy them with shooting before 08:00 and after 18:00 (some even complain before 09:00 and after 15:00) so we have a very difficult time here.
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If it moves and is legal but also moral, SHOOT IT !!
I experienced a little of that when I lived on Long Island New York, thats why I got out of there and moved out west. It's a long walk betewwn farm houses in this country.
Many times either by myself or with a friend have we had dinner with the land owners family after hunting crows. Some I've known for almost 40 years.
We were setup roughly 1/2 a mile from a large feed yard that held over 20,000 head of livestock in it. You can barely see it in the middle photo.
Talk with you soon Red.
Bob A.
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To listen to this radio talk show go to episode 12, Bob Aronsohn
I was in central California and i never saw so many cows in my life...as if an ocean..impossible numbers of cows...I also saw further south crows headed to roost which i was left amazed...california has a ton of crows out there....
I was in central California and i never saw so many cows in my life...as if an ocean..impossible numbers of cows...I also saw further south crows headed to roost which i was left amazed...california has a ton of crows out there....
Do the cows fly too, and do they have a shooting season ? (Sorry, couldn't resist LOL )
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If it moves and is legal but also moral, SHOOT IT !!
Well the thing is cows equal crows...if you got any cows you will always have a few crows around..my point was-(joke noted) was exactly that....so in California this would explain why there are so many crows out there too! Unfortunately you can only bag about 24 a day....and that is the length of whatever the season is there at that! Still that is more than I get in a day in season however; it would drive me nuts to see one of those Californian roosts and know I can only shoot 24 if i can hit them during a flight to and fro!
Bobs' vids are cool too. They are not just about him shooitng criows; he has a running commentary-one liners-:"welcome to the united states!" ((KA_BOOMMM!)) which should leave you rolling in the isles. he provides insight into the methods too. They are important to pay attention to is you got a real crow hot spot. naturally when talking the areas he frequents it's an entirely different world from many areas such as this area..hard to get up at 5:00 am only to shoot a few crows a couple hours away!
So you will enjoy this.
The thing that never fails to amaze me is he goes about a mile out in the middle of nowhere to shoot crows and he does drive there in the "tullies" but here I got to walk which I don't mind but I cannot imagine that though...the river video is hilarious...watch it and see why. Now you got to have thousands upon thousands of crows to go that far out. All in all it is great entertainment.
One of the most interesting things though is that Bob is shooting crows in generally singles and doubles...even though out on the horizon you can occasionally see big flocks moving through...I wish I had that idea here but in the fall here the crows all bunch up and you could have a hundred in the field but when you get to it they all bunch up and fly off never to return for the day or longer...
There is no comparison to here anyways...but the way he has it set up is still worth looking at...
Well even in the areas Bob goes he had to scout them out..most crow shooters will never experience the kind of shooting Bob does. I m always finding stories about guys in Oklahoma in example who don't get any more crows than I do on a better day-5 or 6!!! Incredible! And they live in states where there can be up to a million crows in a huge roost some where. This never fails to blow my mind...or New York state with there 50 thousand bird roosts and the hunters getting only 10 if that..but here you see the science and the big pay off in Bobs' video. And he emphasizes a very important tactic in one video which I think is posted in one scene on the Crowbusters home page...DO NOT SHOOT UP YOUR ROOSTS!
Now a thousand or whatever crow roost doesn't mean you will get that many crows...it is impossible. It means under the right conditions you will get a hundred for the day anyways generally speaking....even Bob has admitted he don't have great days sometimes...no more crows than I do(if I can hit them that day) around here(5 or 6)...so you got to know your area. And the wind direction.
But Bobs' videos are good to watch however.
One final note i got to emphasize; don't bother going to Ft Cobb, Oklahoma...they shot that roost up about 1983 i think and the changing farming conditions ended that huge 11 million bird roost idea..I still read of people talking about going there...and read where that roost is just legend now...a story of a bygone era..where the crows about bankrupted the peanut farmers..but i have no idea where the roost split up went in any case..all I know is it became smaller roosts however still huge but it's up to you to find them...it becomes a joke when i talk about the smaller New England roosts in comparison...typically a roost here hold not more than a couple thousand birds ...and more often than not you might not be able to get anywhere near where you need to be to shoot at the flyways to and from the roosts!
Shooting up or in the roost is bad , very bad, because when they move it can be many many miles away...then you got to look all over again...not something I'd especially want to do in the plains...especially where there are few trees...
Bobs' best hunts or a few are in the videos so you won't get bored at all...he gets quite a number i emphasize..you will not be bored..I forget how many but it's in the hundred plus range...each shoot...
motiondecoy wrote:One final note i got to emphasize; don't bother going to Ft Cobb, Oklahoma...they shot that roost up about 1983 i think and the changing farming conditions ended that huge 11 million bird roost idea..I still read of people talking about going there...and read where that roost is just legend now...a story of a bygone era..where the crows about bankrupted the peanut farmers..but i have no idea where the roost split up went in any case..
I have a real close understanding of where the surviving birds did not go...
SW MI...
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"Arms are the only true badges of liberty. The possession of arms is the distinction of a free man from a slave." -- Andrew Fletcher 1698
depending on the season and the crop here, as our crows (corvid species) don't migrate :) On the silage, if there's lots of fields, you will get flights of 100-1,000 birds, BUT, while they will sit there with tractors working, come with a car or 4x4 and they move on. Lots of fields, so lots of choice for the birds to move due to short dry spells, so average days of 0-25 birds. Come the planting of the crops, or the harvesting thereof, and it's a different story. Normal days are 60-100 birds, a good day is 150-200, and an excellent day is when you get over 300 each :) Our pigeons and corvids are classed as pests, so NO closed season, You can shoot 365 days a year in most of the UK, except NI (where I live) and there you aren't allowed to shoot ANY bird on a Sunday. You can shoot it on Christmas Day, so long as that day isn't a Sunday LOL
-- Edited by Redditch on Saturday 13th of June 2015 09:05:33 PM
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If it moves and is legal but also moral, SHOOT IT !!
The seasons here are varied...summer lasts longer in the south and southwest...they do not show up until later anywhere in large numbers of unimaginable size. Where i am there is a lot but not in the hundreds of thousands to upwards to millions as in areas in the plains states areas in many cases. Some areas have too few crows anyway but such areas are rare and we have about 4 types of crow and the more common "common" crow is not there in any numbers either. Such an area might be as in the Pacific Northwest area or Idaho and Washington state where the crow there will be the northwest crow; slightly smaller and the call is a bit higher pitched idea...but not radical like the fish crow with their distinctive call that is very nasally and doesn't sound (to me anyways) like any crow I ever heard including the Pacific Northwest crow...kind of an "uh-uh".....something like that...except of course for their habitat they act like any bigger crow as familiar here and much of the country.
The raven while a big crow has a very shaggy throat and wedge shaped tail and around here only bunch up in winter of about a dozen or so birds often soaring about like "buzzards"...(yes i know some areas of New England has bigger flights of ravens who hang out together) but all told-I think anyways-the seasons greatly vary based largely on -I think anyways-when the huge flights arrive from the north as in the plains so their season would start later than most in the north or northeast and about end when some state in the southern plains would just be getting started...
There is a law in most states where if any crows have become a problem they can be shot but on another note no one can get all the nuisance birds...as we know they do not hang around to be picked off one by one...and not even return a couple weeks as well...or simply take off when your vehicle is seen parking near by...happened here before..they recognized our vehicle and all of them took off as one!
We also have a "hybrid" crow in my area, the size of a raven, but calls like a carrion crow, as opposed to the deep grunt of the raven.
We have Ravens, we have carrion crow, we have greater and lesser hooded crows, jackdaws, magpies, and a (very few) jays.
The jays and ravens are protected by law, while all the others are free to shoot all year.
I am however not sure where this hybrid falls under the law, so I don't shoot them just to be in the safe side
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If it moves and is legal but also moral, SHOOT IT !!
The blue jay eats whatever a crow or raven will....and i am sure the "moose" jay will too....this jay is that "tame" bird that raids camps and will land on your shoulder if you camp way out there in Northern Maine and so forth...
I can only theorize why the crows do not come to the area west of here in the big numbers they used to...i am certain however in the days they threw all this trash in a pile out in the woods anchor them for the winter as with these smaller towns all they had to do was to drop in here or there often on a sunday when no one was around .....also one could shoot rats with a .22 caliber rifle..there always seemed to be lots of rats-I swear they bred in 24 hours and in a week were adults!
The crows around here get smart really quickly. The areas we might go are getting more and more remote. Ideally you want several different good sized farms to hold a goodly number of crows. One day there will be no crows at Farm "A" but a few miles up the road they will be there!
here there was a scene where the crows during migration had big farmland every dozen or so miles..they could hop from one area to another dragging their tin can all the way to their winter roosting area...that doesn't exist any more in this area. But when it did!!! The only real problem was the goose and pheasant hunters...if you didn't hit it before those seasons opened you would have very average shooting as if you were a novice....this was after they began stocking pheasants that the shooting rapidly decreased in any decent shooting...eventually the old farmers retired and while much of the land remained, there no longer any crows...not more than a dozen in the fall ...
When the dumps dried up, this one critical food source helped see the end of crow shooting in this one huge area i frequented...
The land was still used for agriculture such as corn but oddly; the crows were not frequenting it anymore, just geese here and there .....plus it was now posted as the children of the farmers were not interested in farming so others took it over and they didn't care for hunting...I am sure the horse people had plenty to do with that..they "educated' the new owners to help keep hunting out...this was deep southwestern NH....featuring the 'Englishman"...I am sure when he met me and heard my Irish name that was more than enough to want to keep me out...he didn't post signs advertising new ownership so he was running around kicking out all the hunters out he could find...
Crows in these parts stay completely away from any place where people frequent. I have a feed lot that I shoot pigeons and starlings at. The crows always cut it wide. I've even tried sets and built good hides they just won't do it. If I move 300 yards away from the lot I can kill em😜
I forgot to mention that there are plenty of magpies out west there about but i never saw any in concentrations but I saw them here and there in my travels but i couldn't tell you where they concentrate...in my case it would be western Nebraska initially I would see them haunting the areas the crows would hunting the highways idea....Nebrtaska has to be a great crow state how ever I was never there long enough to look it over..they leave their hit deer in the road-really odd as here where i live people will grab any road killed deer...oddly they don't in Pennsylvania and Nebraska but i suppose they have so many deer about why bother? But the crows note that...don't know if that is the law not to pick up road killed deer or not in those or any other states but here it is unimagineable to leave a dead deer laying in the road...on another note I was surprised to hear of so many crows up in Montreal hanging around...but it was a pig farm and the farmer dumped his dead pigs where the crows could eat all winter long in the frozen province of Quebec at least in that area...
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Me too.....(LOL)