FOOD CORNER > Wild Game

Favorite Shotgun Gauge for Upland Hunting

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OldKooT:
LoL Yeah Don the 12ga does handle crows well. Problem is they like to sit in our Cedars and raise hell. When ya shoot them it makes holes in the cedars. Or it could be the 00 I usually have loaded.... The crows like to pick on the wife's Peacocks, so when one needs to be shot, I have just used the .22 and found that's quite effective.

The other advantage to the .22 is our lab doesn't associate it with hunting birds, and this stops us from having him get all worked up and start dragging anything with feathers to our feet. He is one seriously confused Dog as it is.

I once shot a duck flying fast and it went down near our pond. Well the Lab goes off after the duck, I toss my shot gun back into the gun rack and begin a discussion with the sled dog about why he never does anything useful. At that moment the lab returns with one seriously pissed off Canadian goose......

Flyin6:
Gotta tell a story here

So when I was in my non governmental, non-Safety Nazi oversight youth where, pray-tell, I used to get an occasional cut that was never seen by doctors in some trauma ward... Well back then I'd hunt everything...I mean everything.

I discovered back then just how tasty a good woodpecker is. Tastes like pheasant! Well someone told me if you want to hunt crows, then get a cat and tie it up and stake the rope in the ground.

I know, sounds like animal cruelty, well, thinking about it, I guess it was, but the story continues. I think our children ought to know what being a real kid was like before thirty three commissions took oversight over children's fun.

So anyway first I got a burlap bag from the shed, then off to a big old woodpile where I know there's plenty of cats. It was a chore but I scored one, a nasty critter with plenty of fight, a characteristic that would benefit me later on, during the hunt.

I managed to squeeze his (or her??) head out of the bag without adding to the stripping the cat had applied to my arms and tied a good choker knot around his neck, then back into the bag. Nearby was a dairy farm where the owners allowed me to kill groundhogs. I selected a open spot on a fence line where I tied the end of about 10 feet of rope to a fence post, which was near a clump of briars.

I let the demon possessed cat loose and it started acting like, a demon possessed cat. I crawled into that briar patch and made my crow calls which I can do pretty well sounding pretty much like the black critters. Wasn't long at all before a flock of them descended on that cat.

I tell ya what, that technique works! I mean crows are not liking cats. They will make pass after pass and the second the cat doesn't defend itself, it gets a beak in the head! I could have shot, but I was amazed at the crazed intent by those black devils, but finally up I stood and snapped off 5 quick ones killing as many crows.

Now somewhat sorry for what that cat had just gone through I released it from the knot and it just stayed there...shock I think, but it's a cat so who cares!

I inspected the crows, yep, got five of em' but one was now upright and standing on a single leg. Seems a pellet had partially shot away one leg. He was hit in the wing as well, but not too badly. So, while loading another shell to dispatch him into crow heaven I got compassion. He was squared off against me, black eyes boring holes into me and holding his wobbly ground.

Then I was struck with my second thought. Make him a pet! Yep, no one had a pet crow, so I'd be the first. I already had a per turtle, Crawdad, and a deer, so why not a crow? So I captured him in that burlap sack and took him home. I took him downstairs where I hid him in a makeshift cage I built from rabbit fence wire.

For the first few days things were going OK, he would just stand there against the side and stare at me. On the third day I took some scissors and selected a spot just north of where that broken leg was hanging and made the squeeze. That dammed thing let out a series of crow calls the likes of which the world had NEVER seen and just like that, the "Cat" was out of the bag. Dad, then Mon, then my brother were downstairs looking upon the scene.

"Donald, is that a crow?" my mother asked of my father. the former anger in his expression had changed to a smile. "Sure is." "Don, mind telling us how you got this crow?" "Well, dad, I shot him and a bunch of his buddies, and he didn't die so I made him my pet."

And so it came to be. And what an interesting pet he became. On about the fifth day he started eating corn off the cob. Then after maybe 10 days to two weeks he started his "Hop and pop" training where he'd glide to the floor.

I tied him to a length of string, to his remaining foot, then took him outside where he took off and flew over to the cherry tree. He flared to land and grabbed the branch, but the coefficient of grabbis was all wrong and he pivoted over and around that branch and came to a position hanging upside down like some cave bat. He didn't like that much and let go then tangled all my string, so back to the basement for him.

I built a couple CLZ's (Crow landing zones) for him to practice on and he became stronger and better with the passing days. Wasn't long before that critter would stand anywhere, including on my 14 year old forearm. And then he started taking things. Anything with glitter or sparkle was his. He'd take them and collect them in this makeshift nest in that chicken wire cage.

This went on all summer up to the end of those blessed days, and the coming of another school year. Dad convinced me to let him go. We did, on the very farm where he was made captive for a summer, a summer where each very different species learned from the other...my one legged crow!

OldKooT:
Don, that is a very cool story. Very cool experience as well. Some kids these days miss so much... so much.

cudakidd53:
Unbelievable- I also had a pet crow that I initial attempted to dispatch with a slingshot (suburban equivalent of shotgun) to no avail.  He learned to bark like a dog from the Lab next door and I taught him "hello"- will follow up with photo next week when I get home.  Great verbal visual on the "bat" hanging in the branch!

Flyin6:
That upside down crow was funny for sure!

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