I googled public hunting land in Oklahoma and checked a few of the sites out, On one of the sites they said there were 85 state & federally owned lots to hunt on. I didn't dig to deep in to it. Pennsylvania has a state map with all of the Pennsylvanisa game lands posted in green. I know first hand Pennsylvania has some of the best State Game Lands to hunt on for the cost of a hunting license. Pensylvania's state game lands put's New York game lands to shame. Pennsylvania puts a lot of effort & money into their game lands, some parts of the game lands are leased out to farmers and a certain percentage of crops are left standing for cover & feed for the wild life. They really have their s#!t together. Pat
__________________
Walk lightly, Carry a Big Stick & NEVER WALK AWAY!!!
I always wanted to hunt Fort Cobb for crows when I lived in eastern Oklahoma. By the time I was able to get an opportunity they were all gone. I would have loved to seen that place in its hey day. Great place for duck hunting though when we have water.
You can find hunting spots here at wildlifedepartment.com
All through the 1950's, and 1960's they never allowed "roost shooting down at Ft. Cobb" but in the late 1970's they let guys shoot directly in the roost, that did it, blew em all outa there! I got in on the last 10 years down there, they had crow hunters hunt that area from 26 differen't states. They had a book that you sighned in on and you wrote down the state you were from at "Bob's Crow Roost Motel" on the north side of the lake. No, it was not my motel LOL.
My partner Dick Kilbane used to also hunt around Ft. Cobb back in the very early 1980's but by that time it was pretty much finished.
Bob A.
__________________
To listen to this radio talk show go to episode 12, Bob Aronsohn
There must of been tens of thousands of crows in the roost area to bring hunters from over half of the states in the nation. With crows being a migratory bird I'm surprised they didn't impement no shooting in the roosting area. On the positive side any nesting birds got a chance to florish. A friend of mine here in Washington State use to do a lot of duck hunting years ago. Their hunting group use to have two man crow hunts to eliminate them because of the crows destroying the ducks nest. They use to shoot upwards to two thousand crows a year. They never shot in the roosting area, mostly along the rivers, and fields that just had work done on them. There are a lot of farms that raise a couple of acres of pumpkins, after holloween they will disk the pumpkins up so they can start to break down before they plow them in come spring. After the pumkins are disked the crows will be in the pumpkin patch eating on the seeds by the hundreds. Out here in Washington there are a lot of Ravens aswell as crows. A couple of yearsago a pair of crows has a nest in a fir tree two houses down the road, a raven took a young crow out of the nest, in a matter of a minute or two there had to be a hundred crows chasing and harrassing that raven.
I need to get a game caller & camo hunting suit for next season, I should be back in New York come summer time. I will probably buy a fox pro, I have a bunch of crow CD's to play with until then. I'll have everything I need before the season opens next year. I'm going to buy a metro barrel next week. I bought a newWinchester Super X3 12 gauge and a Marlin 882 stainless steel bull barrel 17HMR for crow hunting. I want to pick up a Winchester 12 gauge pump as well. I also need to buy a shotgun reloader, what do you reccomend? Pat
__________________
Walk lightly, Carry a Big Stick & NEVER WALK AWAY!!!
It was not tens of thousands of crows it was tens of one hundred thousands of crows at Ft. Cobb. Some estimates were as high as 17 million in that roost!
I hear tell it was the peanut farmers that got the Game Comission to change the rules about letting guys shoot directly inside the roost. They just wanted them gone, period.
Bob A.
__________________
To listen to this radio talk show go to episode 12, Bob Aronsohn
Bob With that quanity if crows they must of completely devastated thousands of acres of crops and ate hundreds of thousands of eggs & nestlings of every bird imaginable. I'm looking forward to getting the rest of the items I need to get into this sport. Once the weather breaks I will get out and shoot clay pigeons. I will be picking up a shotgun reloader here shortly, I'll spend the extra money and get a good one. About fifteen years ago one of my friends had a dairy farm back in New York, He planted several feilds of corn for cow feed. When the corn got up a couple of inches the crows would be in the feilds by the hundreds and pul the small plant up and eat the kernel of corn off of the tender plant. Two of the feilds we replanted, A couple of the feilds were half stripped of the crops. When there are thousands of crows in a roost area they all have to eat and I'm sure they will eat anything available to get by. Pat
__________________
Walk lightly, Carry a Big Stick & NEVER WALK AWAY!!!
At the time of year ( late November to late February ) the crows were in the Ft. Cobb area they just ate anything that was not nailed down. They didn't prey on any song bird nests because it was the wrong time of year.
Bob A.
__________________
To listen to this radio talk show go to episode 12, Bob Aronsohn
Back about 95 or 96 when the East Coast had that huge blizzard I was traveling back to New York from Florida, South Carolina had ice & snow, North Carolina had the same but more of it, Virginia had close to three feet of snow, I made it to the Pennsylvania border and they closed down Rt.81. There wasn't a room to be had, I was stuck at the border in the car with my three kids in a truck stop parking lot for over 24 hours until the opened the highway up. There had to of been hundreds of thousand of crows migrating south, They were visible from daylight to dark non-stop. I'll never forget that image, my kids would bring it up every once in a while. I see one crow that had about half white plumage. The only other crow that had any white that I seen was here In Washington State this past summer at the 7-11 store downtown, The last inch or so of the tail was white and looked to be a young crow. Two years ago when I was visiting a friend in Long Island we went to the Roosevelt Estate and we seen a dunn colored crow, Like a flat dark brown color. Odd color crows are few & far between.
Back in the day Ft Cobb must of had birds flying back to the roost area like I seen durring that blizzard.
__________________
Walk lightly, Carry a Big Stick & NEVER WALK AWAY!!!
Years ago, me and a friend drove to Ft. Cobb to hunt crows for about 5 days. We lived in Atlanta, Ga. and drove the whole distance in one day, ( approx. 900 miles). What ever you have heard or read about the massive amount of crows at Ft. Cobb is probably true. It was no problem for us to see hundreds of thousands in one day! Great size flocks would suddenly rise up from fields or fly out of trees until they formed a dark cloud probably a mile long and half mile wide. The ground, where a great flock had settled on to feed, would be so black that you could not see the ground. Down behind the dam at Ft. Cobb lake, the crows would roost, and in late afternoon, near dark, every limb of every tree and shrubb was totally covered with crows. While hunting, we noticed that the crows were extremely wild, and often as not, would not even answer the call, no matter what sounds we used. This was very disappointing. Even so, it was an experience that I will never forget!
I recently spoke with a lady who operates the motel we stayed in, and she relayed to me that there were only a few crows in the area now. Nothing like the millions that use to use the area.
I am going to try to attach a few pics that I made of our trip. I am sorry that I did'nt make more pictures, but I guess that I was just too excited about hunting.
That was a great old shot of the motel at Ft. Cobb lake. If you were there in 1973 they still had tons of crows back in those years. That photo of the post office, that had to be either the town of Ownie or Albert. A lot of the guys in those days cooked right in the room with a hot plate since there were no restaurants close by. They had a cafe up at Binger which I used a lot.
Bob A.
__________________
To listen to this radio talk show go to episode 12, Bob Aronsohn
Uppon looking close at your photo of the post office you can barely make out "Albert" on the post office sign. The other sign says "Onie" by the post office; that town had two differen't names, I bet that was rather confusing.
Bob A.
__________________
To listen to this radio talk show go to episode 12, Bob Aronsohn
We stayed in that motel in the pic. Mr. and Mrs. Stewart Willis owned it. He was a polite and affable gentleman. Hard to believe that I still have their business card!
I don't know any history of Albert-Oney townships. The sign on the post office reads "Albert", but we heard some people out there call it Albert-Oney.
We ate meals at Binger, Anadarko, and Lookeba. Restaurants are'nt on every corner out there like they are in town!
The dude wearing the hat is John Fincher, whom I hunted with. The other guy is Stewart Willis, whom owned the motel.
Crow shooting used to be real popular around here in the 70s-people wanted to go with me. Well at this time the local dump was the place to take them-so I would. But only if I knew them. Back then there was plenty of places to go and you really didn't have to go to the same place more than twice in any season. They we everywhere. For hat that is worth and given this is NH it was quite alright. There were no hundred bird shoots but knowing what I know today there could have been some...before the onset of the pheasant hunters and those who saw it was legal so they eventually crowded me out. The dump kept them around but when they closed so too I noticed the crows were blowing right on through.
True enough I have a new area but even so there is competition there too; but thankfully the pheasant hunters stay at the other side of town so no problems with them being busy there.
Now another thing about this new area unlike other types of shooting you can shoot in one direction and be pretty sure of good safe shooting whereas pheasants can turn up in peoples' back yards and then what can you do? Crow shooting gives one more options.
I love to remind you folks out there who like to shoot up crow roosts: you are only hurting yourself. A ten minute ride can become an hour if you decide to shoot up a roost and all for what? You'll never get the whole roost anyways! Ft Cobb was just an effort to get the crows out of the neighboring peanut fields which did work but a good crow hunter should be smarter than that. And while it was good for what that is worth no one ever gets that many crows period regarding roosts in comparison to the size of the birds available. Okay so the bigger the roost the more likely your count will be right up there for that late afternoon shoot. For conversational sake let's say you could do a hundred birds here in NH (I don't know for sure-except one day of migration we are told-the biggest roost I ever saw has no way to get at them or else I would talk about it with hopefully pictures) shooting up your local roost would change that in a real hurry!
I've witnessed first hand where the fellow shot up the roost and now the birds moved way far away...well; imagine you had a huge roost a ten minute drive away and you decided to just do it in? It's now going to cost you more to go look for it and earlier starts creating problems for yourselves!
Another scenario is later in the season they all bunch up...one shot and that 300 bird flock lifts off for ports unknown..see it time an again! So if you got it made keep your area safe! I sure am not about to tell anyone where I go to shoot crows. Even if I only get 20 each time out in late fall...no shooter in their right mind wants any competition! Seen it all before!
I am for the record talking strictly NH where it is no place to go if you like to shoot crows...
(part #2) in all fairness if you are stuck in NH then naturally you make do but don't be thinking North Dakota or Nebraska if you decide to come here. There will be no shooting like that anywhere to be found. Compared to the Plains it is actually claustrophobic....way too much anti-hunting mentality here and areas that just plain dried up-former farms folding up as all our or most vegetables come in from South America and easier to smuggle in cocaine or what ever amongst vegetables and you can see why they wanted to import Veggies internationally. See? You can be impacted by illegal drugs even if you never touched anything like that any time in your life-that's why they import it! But just the same it annihilated our farms. The kids sure don't want to keep up the farming! That is what happened to this area...not profitable anymore and large real estate people buying out all the open areas and building all these $500,000.00 homes on them...otherwise the antis posted their farms they inherited-times have changed and it is going to get worse! Basically the only thing that will save hunting in general is that new suppressor law that'll keep the sound down so people who otherwise forbade hunting due to loud noises on a Sunday hung over morning won't hear it as much now ...provided it catches on-sound suppressors...now on sound suppressors don't be thinking quiet as a pellet rifle-not gonna' happen! I've seen them on youtube-only 10% as loud so to speak...shotguns are still fairly loud....even if suppressed...so no matter what NH is not really the state if you are a passionate crow shooter...most crow shooters collectively are in the Concord Corridor..and look at their numbers! Not even worth it! 5 or 6 each shoot? If even that? You got to love it to even bother ! Me? I'll pass-too far away to justify a crow shoot in that area. It used to be great years ago. All I've ever seen of that is they don't bother dropping in anywhere during the fall these days..oh sure you'll see the occasional big flight but they don't land! And what if they did? It's my old story: one shot and the big flight takes off for the year!
It's as bad as the current western NH areas- lots of areas to feed but no where near the numbers as witnessed in the seventies! The only difference is -yeah-a lot of crows passing overhead but they fly right over Concord! despite the obvious number differences like Ft Cobb no way to get at them when the numbers were there or any other place with lots of hard to get crow areas irrespective of the numbers...(although I read where FT Cobb don't have any any more all the same- same point I am making. They might be there but impossible or no longer worth it to get no matter the crows might be in any numbers of what ever size of the numbers when and if they were available when they were; whereas Ft. Cobb is clearly a memory now of course and this area never had anything like it ever of course I emphasize.)
Just think what ever numbers you used to have where ever you are if we think strictly the past.
On a day with a north type wind Boyd & I used to hunt up near Hinton which was straight north of Ft. Cobb. Those crows would feed just north of I40 and we would have decent shooting that far from the roost. We didn't even have to setup much before 9:00 a.m. because we were over 20 miles from the roost.
The first photo of the old motel on the north side of the lake sure brought back memories. Man were those good days!
There was a much smaller roost about 100 miles from Ft. Cobb just over the Oklahoma state line at Shamrock Texas in wheeler county. This roost had perhaps 100,000 birds plus in the 1970's and early 1980's. Boyd & I actually got better crow hunting north of Shamrock than we did around Ft. Cobb which had many more crows! The reason? Not many guys knew of that area they were all hunting around Ft. Cobb because of the numbers of birds. Boyd used to say "I'd rather hunt 100,000 dumb ones than several million smart ones"
In those days all Boyd & I used were 20 gauge shotguns with a 7/8th ounce load of either 8's or 9's.
Despite the roost hounds at Ft Cobb i doubt they got that many in comparison to the size of that roost....they obviously got a lot but I sincerely doubt they got as many as one would have 25 miles away afield in that time frame...crows don't sit there in the roost as guns go off around them! By the time the hunters got there anyways or the general area the smarter hunters had al;ready racked up the best shooting of the season I reckon? Not that what they likely got wasn't mighty decent compared to many areas but it wasn't the big opening day shoot so to speak-the very first shoot...I think BobA. once said he got a thousand crows the first day and after that was what now-a hundred was about the best he could do there? Well you get the point...
My best day here was 55 with a partner but right after that the shoots were gradually lower and lower so the following weekend would only yield a dozen crows until 1 or 2 was the norm as by this time other crow shooters were well aware of what was available. Now again nothing like the past Plains shooting that the folks out there get every year as if on cue? Not even close. By the way that area now has a plaza sitting right on top of it! Another neighboring good area has a factory siting on it! Decades ago that whole area had a pretty decent amount of crows in it too...it wasn't unusual to see a few hundred in the area. All gone. I still cannot believe it but I don't think many even migrate over it anymore-maybe they do but crows will only stay above an area for so long without a full belly....they will alter any traditional route to get a regular stop along the way....
A lot of the guys down there used stuffed Horned Owle's as decoys. Some only used hand calls while others used both e - callers and hand callers.
I never shot 1,000 crows in a day, my two largest shoots alone were 834 and 711. I had one other with Boyd Robeson in 1982 where we shot 859 crows in one day, that was right here in Kansas.
What you are thinking about is when Dick spent the first week of the season down at Ft. Cobb years ago and he shot a little over 3,000 crows in 7 days. He scouted all of the first day so he actually only hunted 6 days not 7. That is averaging 500 a day which is out of this world. He setup twice a day in two different spots, one morning hunt and one afternoon hunt. His very best day (two setups) was 1,222 crows alone; he had two 600 plus bird shoots back to back that day and this particular hunt was not at Ft. Cobb. If you ever watched 'The Art of Crow Hunting" on the very last hunt where the 551 get shot on an afternoon shoot, that is where Dick shot on the afternoon he killed the 1,222 in one day! This was years before Dick & I started to hunt together but we both hunted the same territory, in fact Drew Moore & I ran in to Dick before Dick & I got together. That was the week long hunt that Drew wrote about in either the Beginner or Advanced Articles section of Crow Busters; it was called "Ole Time Crow Hunting in the 21st. Century" Drew drove all the way from Kentucky to spend a week with me hunting crows. He went nuts the first day where the two of us shot over 500 crows on an afternoon flyway shoot. Drew was a fine young fella but he only lasted two seasons with me because he had a young family to raise.
