Crow Busters Forum

nhcrowshooter · Guru

Bob A. any winter spring hunting for you?

Bob · Guru

I hunt them up until the very end of January and call it quits because they are to spooky by that time of year. I hunt them from November to January.

I love pocket billiards almost as much as chasing crows. Just bought a new cue a month ago, it has ivory inlet set in fancy figured iron wood. The tip is made from elk skin and has very good action in the tip. The guy who built it is in Wichita, Kansas. He builds custom cues for the number one guy in the nation right now. He is out of Huston, Texas, his name is Jeromy Jones, young guy in his early 40's.

I hope you get in some good shoots during the next two weeks.

It's 81 degrees outside where I live, the lawn is just starting to green up and the crows are squaking all around the house. These crows have never been touched so they think they are some pumkins carrying on the way they do.

Just replaced the back end of the breach bolt on one of my model 391 Beretta's. One part was $ 75.00 bucks and it was the last one the gunsmith had. After this Beretta makes you buy the whole breach bolt and thats $ 300.00 bucks, but if your gonna play sometimes you gotta pay.

So whats your friend 10 gauge up to, I trust he is also looking forward to the opener tomorrow.

Bob A.

nhcrowshooter · Guru

I lived in Wichita 30+ years ago, McConnell AFB. 81 degrees in Mid-March is bit unseasonal if I recall correctly.

I really know nothing of billiards.

Snow is melting fast temps on a good day have reached 50. Some type of snow storm in forecast for Monday.

How many rounds have you put through the Berretta? I have shot a trap 1100 I bought used in '88 a lot, so much so the rails in the receiver have gotten thin. A piston ring and the spring in the stock have been the only things I have replaced. I don't shot it much any more but it has been a very good shooting pointing trap gun for me over the years.

Crows have been starting to trickle in from the south. We have been shooting them in nearby Maine since late January but have had no "big" shoots yet. Definitely been a much slower season than years past.

I will be meeting 10ga in the AM and we'll be using our old 10 bore doubles as usual.

Bob · Guru

NH,

Was your father in the military?

I'm just guessing but your about mid 40's are you not?

This would have made you somewhere between 10 to 15 years old 30 odd years ago?

The reason I ask is because Wichita used to be one great place for hunting crows between 1978 to 2000. Some of the largest shoots I ever had were outside the city limits of Wichita. Boyd Robeson and I shot 859 crows from one spot, never moved all day long, this was in 1982.

These photos were shot outside Wichita years ago.

The last hunt in "Crow Shooting" the DVD was shot outside of Wichita in 1994.

Bob A.

Mainehunt · Guru

Just 2 weeks for this season NH?

nhcrowshooter · Guru

My dad was in the Army Air Corps, nose and turret gunner on a B-24 in WWII. I am older than you guessed and was a Lt. assigned to the old Titan missile wing at McConnell, spent a lot of my time underground.

Kev, the NH spring season is 3/16 to 3/31, that is about the best time to hunt this area in the spring, April would be better but that is nesting season. NH allows to hunt from 8/15 to 11/30. We get to hunt the best time there is to hunt crows and that is during the fall migration in late Oct and early November. Since Maine is closed then I am going to guess you have no idea how good the shooting is then but on average we kill 2/3 of our annual total in that 3 week push of birds. You are missing a lot with the way the Maine season is structured.

nhcrowshooter · Guru

Skip, my father enlisted in the USAAF after his junior year in HS. He was a nose and turret gunner on the B-24 Lady Esther flying with the 464th BG in Italy. His crew and plane were selected to fly OSS missions ferrying commandos and supplies into occupied Yugoslavia. Those missions did not require a bombardier and turret gunner so they became squadron spares flying with other crews as needed. The crew of the Pistol Packing Mama was killed incrementally until only 3 gunners of the orginal crew survived. The took those three along with my father and his bombardier along with 5 others to crew the Stevonovitch II. My father finished the war with 35 missions but the Stevonovtich II was shot down two months later with only one survivor. Last year quite by accident I discovered a web page devoted to the war time exploits of his nose gunner on the Stevonovitch II created by his son. On it I found two pictures of my father in the Italian theater during WWII that I had not seen before. What were the chances? My father survived the war, in no small part because his group was usually escorted by the Redtail Mustangs of the Tuskeegee Airmen, he passed away in 2004.

If your interested his memoirs are here:

http://www.zplace2b.com/464th/stories/stplester.htm

The tribute page to his nose gunner on the Stevonovitch II is here, it also includes video interview with the crew chief and top turret gunner:

http://ancientlights.org/fifteenth.html

Crew of the Lady Esther

http://www.zplace2b.com/464th/images/big/crew/gordonra.jpg

Crew of the Stevonovitch II

Stevonovitch II. Back row: 2nd from left, Captain L.M. Perkins, pilot; and at right end, 1st Lt. T. H. "Big Joe" Graf, bombardier (see Red Eudaily's last interview segment for a story about Graf). Other identifiable crew: front row, 3rd to 6th from left: engineer Red Eudaily, gunner Jack Dempsey, gunner Paul F. Lester, gunner Corny Faniro. Also listed as crew: 1st Lt. R.G. O'Keefe, co-pilot; 1st Lt. D. DeBeraradinis, navigator; Sgt. R.W. McKee, radio operator; and Corporal A.J. Dalton, gunner.

-- Edited by nhcrowshooter on Saturday 16th of March 2013 08:34:05 PM

Skip · Guru

"A nose and turret gunner in a B-24 in WW II". Now that is a fine piece of history you have in your family, sir. I trust he survived the war and I am guessing he served in Europe? I would have loved to hear his stories! Thanks for sharing that.

Skip

Bob · Guru

You have much to be proud of about your father.

So how long did you live in the Wichita area?

I had to drive down to Mc Connell back in 1988 to get a few shots before I left for Africa.

It's something how things can be blown way out of preportion, on the news several weeks ago the news media was saying there are tens of thousands of crows in Wichita. There tens of thousands are approx a couple of thousand crows. There is some old out dated information that said Wichita has 100,000 crows in residence. Wichita never had anywhere near that number even in it's hey day. If the average person sees a couple of thousand crows they think they are looking at tens of thousands!

Now 40 miles from Wichita they did have a roost of over a million crows, that was at Medora, Kansas. Another roost 90 miles from Wichita was in St. John, Kansas also one million plus crows.

Bob A.

Mainehunt · Guru

NH,

A very good read about your father. You're very lucky to have that. I was surprised to read about the Ligurian Sea. I teach about the sea in my geography class, but rarely see the name in print.

The article mentioned a man named Herb Armitage. My grandfather had a friend named Herb Armitage in Haskins, Ohio. Herb was a WWII veteran. I wonder if this was the same man?

-- Edited by Mainehunt on Monday 18th of March 2013 02:00:15 PM

-- Edited by Mainehunt on Monday 18th of March 2013 02:35:45 PM

Mainehunt · Guru

NH, Luckily, I have time to read your links today. Looking forward to it.

nhcrowshooter · Guru

Mainehunt wrote:
NH,

A very good read about your father. You're very lucky to have that. I was surprised to read about the Ligurian Sea. I teach about the sea in my geography class, but rarely see the name in print.

The article mentioned a man named Herb Armitage. My grangfather had a friend named Herb Armitage in Haskins, Ohio. Herb was a WWII veteran. I wonder if this was the same man?

-- Edited by Mainehunt on Monday 18th of March 2013 02:00:15 PM

Kev, I have no idea if it would be the same Herb Armitage, crewmember of the Lady Esther. Odds would be against it, but then again what were the odds I would find pictures of my father on a website dedicated to his nose gunner on his 2nd crew.

motiondecoy · Guru

Field and Stream around 1974 said that there were ten sof thousands of crows that followed the coinnecticutt river soutgh...well i don't know. I saw many but mainloy the crows that came down on the days I wa sout were small flights up to 20 but I don't know about ten sof thousands. The biuggest flight i ever saw had a minimum of 10,000 I'd guess now at the very LEAST but estimating 20,000 was fair enough based on calculations that burned out the calculator in my brain and that was a few years back, not in the old hey day of the connecticutt [river]...I still cannot believe how that gradually faded away but it did seem to coincide with the closing of the dumps in that area....when they closed the dumps closer to home here it coincided with fewer and fewer crows...couldn't hunt locally anymore....it wasn't worth it. At this time time you had newbies who didn't know what they were doing and hung out all day long acting more like scare crows anyways with out of tune crow calls and poor camouflage applying what they used on ducks and geese at the time...you could actually see these guys trying to look inconspicuous for crying out loud almost a half mile away!!! Do you think the crows missed all that?

You could still shoot crows at the connecticutt river valley that is until a new foreign property owner took over but you'd sit there as every now and then a high flying migrant would drift over about 2,100[?] feet....you could call these singles in if you wanted to sit all day between long periods of shots as by now the large flights had long since moved on...

motiondecoy · Guru

that 10-20,000 birds i mentioned were further north in no mans' land where hunting was largely a thing of the past and where they came down was in an area where they were not welcomed but there was nothing anyone could do about it...shooting was out of the question but none the less quite a sight to see and the single biggest flight i ever saw in the old southern nh Connecticutt river valley was around 500 anyways that were regulars who roosted there somewhere i never did find out...again-not any more....this is all history I am relating...there are better areas elsewhere to shoot at them now...when they are around...the last best shooting was about 1975 i think, or something and they were coming down later and later but these late arrivals were now bigger than the other ones of twenty and less, now there were about a hundred in each huge flight...and the leaves were now orange and brown and by and large on the ground but the hunters were now in the woods looking for deer so I had the fields all to myself...and you had to use pine trees for cover now, as the deciduous trees were largely bare and you would be very very exposed and needing longer range shot and that's how i did it then...

motiondecoy · Guru

There were crows to shoot until about 1989 where upon by now the old days were long gone and the Walpole area long dried up so now you were working pretty hard to get any shooting at all..when they stocked pheasants and all those geese constantly arriving that made it difficult too as the field you wanted to use that morning had goose hunters or pheasant hunters but before all that-what a dream for NH at the time...I never knew there better areas and not terribly far away later on as i was to learn later on...in fact I scouted today and I think next week end is going to be a doozy!

boba · Guru

Keep us posted Mr. Doozy.

Things should be starting in your area so keep us informed.

I haven't shot a single crow "yet" this season.

motiondecoy · Guru

I love satire so calling me "Mr.Doozy' fits right in. If i could I would trade that screen name right now as my own...well my partner has been killing crows each time out so this is a good sign...but my scouting has not located very many crows at all and certainly not where I'd expect to see any most areas the corn has not been cut...we need to remember that because it is colder means nothing to a crow that lives in areas routinely of twenty below so long as there is food.

My partners' kill ratio isn't bad based upon the crows he has been seeing or available...not many-often a handful-but he is killing half generally...

My favorite sighting i was able to shoot at was when the sky was seemingly horizon to horizon crow flight headed south years ago...to this day i cannot believe it..5 crows fell out of that flight but it was incredible..possibly a thousand crows came over that fall day...we were used to seeing a dozen or so coming high overhead. I thought i was seeing things...!!too bad they did not come over in singles and doubles. We still managed to get about 14-18 that day altogether but for us, the main flight moved on but more came as a handful afterwards....not connected to the big flight. so whereas the midwest goes a sight like this is nothing..probably see that all day long where ever?

boba · Guru

Hi Tom,

Butch is the only one that has had any shooting to speak of so far this season. I think that is why the Bulletin Board is so slow right now, just nothing to report.

jacobhwrd · Senior Member

I'm glad to hear that KS crw season is open that late. I have some family in Topeka I might have to go visit and see if I can find some good crow shooting there this year. Just hope Topeka nonresident isn't to expensive. I already have one for TN since my brother is in Nashville.