A nice batch of warm air has pushed thru Michigan and melted most of the snow. Things are soggy to say the least....(the ground, not my britches).
Anyway, I shot a decent piebald. A pic is below. I thought for a moment about putting the bird on the wall. I passed on the idea and fed him to the coyotes. This is probably the nicest piebald Ive shot to date.
I have been enjoying everyone's reports. Keep them coming.
Ive shot quite a few, I'd hate to guess. In fact, this is the third straight year that I have taken a piebald from this very same location.
Most piebalds I run across have minor markings or only show on about 1/2 the wing feathers. This one is pretty nice. No white body feathers, only the wings.
Seems like shooting a bird with some sort of white markings is not that uncommon, however, getting a good one seems to be rare.
When you say "not that uncommon" it depends on how you look at it. I have shot 38 piebalds in 42 years of living out here. Now 38 might sound like a lot but that is 38 out of over 158,000 shot so that is roughly 4,157 crows for every piebald shot. This does not include the thousands upon thousands that you see while out scouting.
I had dinner last night with Boyd Robeson's wife who is now 87 years old and still drives quite well. She gave me an article just written by the Wichita Eagle Beacon about the crows in Wichita. Up to the year 2000 they had a lot of crows around Wichita but not huntable numbers any more. Anyway the article said that Wichita had hundreds of thousands of crows that roost in the city limits along the Arkansas River. This is some over blown fabrication to say the least, there are perhaps a few thousand at best, my point being is that most city people look at a few thousand and think it's hunderds of thousands; they are not lying they just don't have a clue is all.
Very nice piebald, well beyond "decent class"! Wonder what the taxidermy would run on such a trophy? I'd like to get one mounted some day. Bob A. has some really nice ones in his crow museum. The brown crow there is my favorite.
