Gone With The Wind? No, no, not the movie. Young farmers...gone with the wind. Yep, young farmers. As years go by, more and more farms in America are closing the barn door, for the last time. Why, because many young people today do not want a life of scratching out a living by digging in dirt. Many have gone to town to make a living, and will never return to the family farm. Much easier to run a computer in an air conditioned office than to dig in dirt.
In May of last year (2017) I dropped by Bob Aronsohn's house and we briefly discussed what had happened to the massive numbers of crows that use to inhabit the lands around Ft. Cobb, Oklahoma. If you have not heard of the once famous crow roost at Ft. Cobb, which actually no longer exist, you are pretty young, or new to crow shooting. As Bob and I briefly reminisced about the greatness of that famous roost, we could not come up with a profound reason why the crows left. Yep, over the years they left. Millions of them. When I hunted the Ft. Cobb area in December, 1973, it was easy to see what I would guess were 10,000 crows in a single flock. Maybe more! And you could see large flocks like this 2-3 times a day!
Back to the young people growing up on farms..then leaving. Farming is hard work, if you are a real farmer, and not a mockery of one living on Franklin Roosevelt's social welfare. Many young folks find out early that hard work is not for them. So, in the last 30-50 years the toils of the farm have been left behind by many of them. Of course many will stay with farming the rest of their life. I am very greatful for them. Farming is an admiral vocation. I am not blaming anyone for transitioning to a easier life. I've had an easier and more rewarding life than my parents did. So it goes.
But what has happened to the farm? Much of the land, at least 90% of it, was not plowed last year when I was in Ft. Cobb. Without cultivation, and planting of corn. wheat, millet, sunflower, oats, etc. the crows had nothing to eat. The crow restaurant, known as Ft. Cobb, has closed down. And the crows are gone with the wind.
I was born in Oklahoma City and my parents lived in the Watonga area, I am 35 years old now. I say this because my dad and his buddies remember the ridiculous amounts of crows out that way at that time. I got them talking about Fort Cobb a couple weekends ago and I sat there starry eyed listening to them describe the sight of that many crows. I think you are onto something that I don't really wanna hear but the truth is the truth.
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"If men had wings and bore black feathers, few of them would be wise enough to be crows." Thoreau.
I don't have anything like Ft.Cobb but none the less what we did have for us at the time was lots of crows. Nothing like anywhere else however but it is true; once the farms closed down the shoots got poorer and poorer and the areas to go got fewer and fewer...and the young weren't interested in farming and all the imported vegetables from south America had finally shut them down..
Farming was a huge money maker but imported fruits and vegies whittled away everything to virtual starvation. My thinking is you had a reason for importing vegies that made it easier to smuggle in contraband...this is why we have foreign wars-reason for being where the opium is in example....this is what's killing American farming....
Or the reason typically and how it is done-one way so addiction is one reason. Smuggling the coke in a banana load or the peas and carrots of Argentina or what have we...Yeah I know bananas aren't grown in America and cannot compete but the point is -belaboring the point-you smuggle the coke in cans or packets whatever of vegies cheap vegies killing off the farmers!
-- Edited by killer Crowalski on Tuesday 6th of November 2018 02:38:34 AM
The peanut farmers got the fish & game department to let people shoot directly inside the roost to try and get them (the crows) to leave Caddo County. The farming changed from peanuts to cotton which had an effect on the crows food source. Many folks were unaware that there was another roost north of I 40 at Shamrock Texas in the good ole days. It was in Wheeler County and Boyd Robeson and I had much better shooting there than at Ft. Cobb because it did not get the pressure Ft. Cobb did in those days. We hunted in Caddo County (Ft. Cobb) as well as Shamrock Texas. It was roughly 125 miles from Shamrock to Ft. Cobb. I quit going to Ft. Cobb in 1978 because the hand writing was already on the wall for me! Dick my partner stuck it out until the early 1980's but this was before we were partners. We have hunted together for the past 17 years now.
Here is a glimpse into the past, this photo was taken in Stafford County Kansas in 1982. The flyway shooting was quite good in those days as depicted in this photo that I took on an afternoon flyway shoot; crows strung out for as far as the eye could see!
I only saw one(huge flock)one one day in my life when the sky was covered in crows and from horizen to horizen....my partner and I got five crows out of that impossible flock..only once and never again...that winter was a very bad one. But I couldn't believeit here in NH...the crows themselves were initially nearly 2,500 feet up!
I want to emphasize I could not believe it; this area we were shooting wasn't known for great amounts of crows-you'd be busy for what that is worth here because then we had watermelon fields and cornfields and the farmers wanted help...and never again would we see such a sight in that area. In fact it is so poor there these days it's only good for those who like shooting one or two crows. And that isn't me! Still a great puddle duck location in season or for birdwatchers who like watching the occasional red tailed hawk or bald eagle!
-- Edited by killer Crowalski on Tuesday 6th of November 2018 02:45:58 PM
And i can tell you that the fort cobb roost left such a memory with the citizens of Oklahoma that 99% of the time that i talk crow hunting to someone here in Oklahoma they tell me that i need to go to fort cobb to hunt crows ! I suppose only the locals of caddo county & crow hunters know they are all LONG GONE !!
And boba, I ran across a retired game ranger here that has some original unposted cardboard signs about restricted area, dynamiting crows ect & copy's of the news articles about that from back in the day. If i can get my hands on them i'll get you one also if you dont already have them. These came from fort reno in el reno Oklahoma.
