You ever feel like a crow is giving you a demeaning stare? I do all the time. Those pesky things are smart. They are capable of judging situations and using complex reasoning.





In this one the bird uses a tool to get another tool, to get another tool to get his food.



Here the bird actualy constructs a tool to get his water. He makes a "hook" mechanism. This one made me think of someone trying to get into a car after they've locked the keys in it.

maybe this bird is a close relative to crow...it's pretty smart too.

They aren't that smart when they land in my yard.

Wing a crow, tie him to a stake with a length of cord, a whole day of shooting.

Crows have also been documented to use humans to get what they want such as dropping nuts or shellfish in the road so they would be run over by cars and broken.

Zing!

Used to watch them at Ft Lewis.. .they would pick the walnuts off a tree, fly across I-5 to a busy Hdqtrs parking lot, drop them and wait for them to get run over and cracked .... smart and patient .. ..

They also innately see the golden arches as a food source. If you give a crow two bags of the same french fries, but one of them has a mcdonalds logo on it, they will investigate that one first.

My buddy use to have a tape of a crow and a hawk fighting. Within minuets of putting it on the sky started turning black.....FIRE!!!

JD

Tornado of crows!

I've got a crow story.
Was eating my lunch in the car in a gravel pit. Had hot wings. Finished off the first one and tossed the bone out the window. Mr Crow comes in and walks over and picks up the bone. Immediately spits it out....was pretty spicy, all right.
Any way, then he did something that I thought was amazing. He circled the bone on the ground and as he walked around it, he would reach in with one foot and quickly touch the bone. He did this three or four times, feeling the bone with his foot to see if it was still "hot". Apparently spicy hot is no different than heated hot to a bird. He left the bone and flew away.

National Geo did a show on ravens and crows that was pretty amazing. They showed these ravens in Yellowstone Park swoop down on a group of parked snowmobiles. They proceeded to unbuckle the saddle bags, toss out a bunch of crap like scarves and gloves, and raid their lunches inside the saddle bags.

The only black bird I'd shoot just for the hell of it any more is a starling. I have a new-found respect for ravens and crows, so I give them a pass.

Boy mine are. If I slide open the door they are gone. Last spring when it was raining hard I got the door open without one noticing. I shot it and within, minutes every c row for miles around was there. They flew around him. Landed and checked him out and screamed their heads off. After about five minutes I got freaked out and left. The next day my neighbor asked what all the commotion was. I acted ignorant - that’s easy for me.

Anyway the crows don't come round here much now. They will split and fly around my place. I see they are now beginning to get a little more complacent. Time to pop another one.

They are also not very smart when they see a dozen crow decoys in one tree, an owl decoy in another tree and the Johnny Stewart blaring "Death Cry of a Crow" over the 12" outdoor speaker.

AA and Blue Magic hulls everywhere and oh the carnage.
If it counts against you at the Pearly Gates, I'm screwed.

Open the garage door, then the door leading to the garage from the house. Prop the .17 HMR on top of the dryer. Work on projects in the house, wait for a crow to bother the chickens free-rangings, POP!

75 yard shot.

That's the most asinine post I've seen from you .

I've never done it but I know some that have.

Dogfish,

Is an .17 HMR like a .22? I don't keep up with changes and advances in the shooting world. Is a .17 HMR quiet?

I've been thinking of buying a quality pellet gun, wondering if they are accurate up to about 40 yd for pest control and other annoying things.

Sg

S.G. The top end pellet guns will definatly kill a crow. Dunno bout 40 yards, but for sure at 20 yards.

When I was a youngster I did this a lot (sort of). I had a crow call and would go into the clear-cut above our house. I would call at crows, and every now and then I could get them in range and I would pop a couple with my 12 ga. Then I had a long length of skinny grey pvc to which I would zip-tie a couple of dead crows. I would shake this up and down and the dead ones would sort of flap their wings.

Combine that with a few other dead crows placed on stumps or limbs and the crow call. I could get lots more crows.

I even had a few blinds placed around this clear cut for my activity. Seemed like a good waste of time at that age (13-14).