Shooting at Crows | rogersreflections

Shooting at Crows and Things

When I was growing up everyone in the countryside raised chickens--and crows and hawks were said to carry off baby chicks. (In fact, hawks were commonly referred to as “chicken hawks.”) I never talked to anyone who had actually seen a chick being carried off, but their reputation as chick thieves made crows and hawks fair game for young hunters.

In those days farm boys were allowed to use a gun by the age of twelve or so and attempting to shoot a crow was a popular sport for kids. But crows were not easy targets! These are smart, crafty birds and back then they were wary from regularly being shot at, so it was always hard to get close enough for a decent shot. Dozens of times I saw a crow in one of the big old maple trees that served as a windbreak and sneaked out on a “mission of death,” but in all that time I only killed one crow. In that instance a pig had died in winter just west of the cow barn and several crows had come to feed on the carcass. I slipped out to the cow barn with a rifle, but the crows saw me coming and flew away. I waited in the cow barn for half an hour before they thought the coast was clear and came back. I was thrilled to have my first reasonably close shot--and got one! The other crows flew around in a circle and made an awful ruckus over their fallen comrade. I fired again and missed--and they all flew away.

In modern times in suburbia crows are extremely tame as compared to their country ancestors from the 1930s. Nobody shoots at them anymore, so they have become pretty relaxed--we have had crows nesting in our back yard the last two summers! I no longer have any desire at all to hurt or kill crows, but I still stop and listen to their “talking” and I am amazed at how they have been able to adapt to change over time. When I see crows at our bird feeders in the winter I usually drive them away, but I am not nearly so upset with them as I am with the grackles who arrive en masse in early March and just “take over” the feeders.

On the farm Dad encouraged shooting pigeons. Although he always vaccinated our pigs to prevent hog cholera, he felt that pigeons, feeding at first one farmer’s hog lot then another, were a major factor in spreading cholera and other livestock diseases from farm to farm. Unlike crows, pigeons were easy to shoot. They liked to puff up and strut on the top of the barn roof with little attention to boys with rifles down below. Big mistake. There was never any permanent pigeon population on our farm.

Once when I was in high school I literally went on a “wild goose chase.” A huge flock of migrating Canada geese flew over our house, flying low. I ran to get the shotgun, but they were gone before I could get ready. I jumped in the car and raced down the road, thinking I could get ahead of the flock and shoot when they flew over. It didn’t work out, of course--the geese were flying faster than I had thought and were flying on a diagonal to the road network. I drove several miles before it finally sunk in that this was a hopeless endeavor. I may have gone on a few dumb ventures since that time, but none that involved actually trying to chase wild geese.

We liked to hunt and trap rabbits, especially since Mr. Patton would pay ten cents apiece for freshly-killed rabbits brought to his store at Prairie Home. We could sometimes shoot rabbits with a rifle, but most of the time we had better luck catching them in the box traps we made. These were long wooden boxes with a trapdoor that dropped down when a rabbit went inside to eat the bait (usually part of an ear of corn) that was fastened to the trigger.

Fur coats were still quite popular back in those days, so there was a market-- that we felt was quite rewarding--for the hides of small fur-bearing animals. Each winter we would shoot or trap a few animals--skunks, raccoons and ‘possums--skin them, scrape off the layer of fat just below the skin, sprinkle it with salt and rub it in and stretch them onto homemade “stretching boards” to dry for at least three weeks. Then we would carefully wrap them in a package made from grocery sacks and mail them off to the “Fur Department” at Sears, Roebuck in Chicago. When the package arrived a fur grader would reward us with up to $5 for a first-class skunk skin (the wider the white streak along the back the less you got, etc.), less for raccoon skins and ‘possum skins. One year John trapped a couple of muskrats down by the creek (crick) whose pelts were graded almost as high as skunk pelts. When you had as little spending money as we had in those days, these fur transactions were almost “high finance” to us boys.

Assuming that inflation since the 1930s has been on the order of ten fold, the equivalent reward in today’s money for killing a skunk, skinning it and caring for the skin might be something like $35 to $50. I don’t think I know any boy today who would even consider skinning a skunk for that kind of money. Yet I remember the winter day when Lynn Burrows and I were walking home from school together and saw a “roadkill” skunk up ahead. We raced for it, but Lynn was faster and proudly carried home his stinking prize. Lynn was a good friend and playmate who grew up on our south farm; unfortunately, he was killed on Iwo Jima in World War II.

We always had lots of target practice sessions. Mostly we would put tin cans on the fence between the cob house and the smokehouse and fire away. I was a pretty good shot (except for shooting crows), but John was our best marksman. We fired mostly rim-fire “shorts,” but all rifle bullets now carry warnings about damage up to a mile--and we never ever worried about the possibility of danger over at Boyer’s or at the church. Once when we started target practice Dad was in the back pasture, but we didn’t know it. He said he could hear bullets whizzing by. He quickly got out of our line of fire, but we were lectured and not allowed any target practice for a month after that.

Once when I shot a sparrow in the head Mary Grace plucked it, cut it up and fried it like a chicken. It was really tiny. Mary Grace ate part of it, but nobody else in the family would touch it.