Something To Crow About

A Serious Bird Hunting Experience

Of A Different Tune

By Dave Freeman

The play button of the homemade caller is pushed -- and in less than a minute a flock of perhaps as many as 50 to 60 black loudmouth crows were overhead, circling, calling, diving.

I tried to pick one, place the bead of my Remington 1187 just ahead of him, follow the movement and squeeze the trigger.

And that was the way the adventure began.

A Bird Of A Different Feather

Last December, Ohio Valley Outdoors reader Ron Klinger called our office and asked me if I’d like to try a day of serious crow hunting.

First let me say, spending long hours working on OVO does have its rewards, and an invitation like this is one of them.

As Mel Brooks said in one of his movies "It's good to be the king, " (Thanks Bill), and being the publisher of OVO, I get to meet some great hunters and fisherman and spend a day in the field with them. That is one of the things that makes the hard work putting the magazine together worth it.

Over the years my son and I and a few good friends have done some crow calling, and we thought we were pretty serious about our calling. That is until I met Ron.

A Mean, Lean

Crow Killing Machine

Equipped with a Camo Chevy Blazer, complete with a bug screen that reads "Crow Killer," Ron and his friends spend most Sundays from June through March chasing, calling and shooting crows.

Ron told me that he had been at this more then 10 years, and while he deer hunts quite a bit, crow hunting is his passion.

This passion results in the harvest of as many as 500 birds per year.

While most of us can spend a small fortune buying game callers, decoys, tapes and the like, most of Ron's equipment is homemade or modified.

Ron's caller is a 40-watt auto cassette player with a 30-watt booster. In addition to both flying motion decoys and hard plastic decoys, Ron uses a hard plastic owl decoy.

On the owl Ron has added the addition of wings made with turkey feathers and a battery driven motor to give the decoy motion, which drives old Mr. Crow crazy.

In the grill of Ron’s blazer are two 50-watt speakers, which give him the ability to make calls from his portable battery equipment and directly from his vehicle.

Ron's firearm for crow hunting is a Mossburg 500 with a 30-inch barrel. He uses size four high brass steel shot in case any of his pellets end up in a farmer’s pond.

Ron's belief in crow hunting is much like a deer or turkey hunters, in that knowing your quarry will make you a successful hunter.

As we made our first shot of the day just out of Boardman, Ohio, Ron explained that in that area were perhaps as many as five different flocks of crows; that these flocks will travel from that area to as far west as Alliance, some miles away, and return each evening to roost.

Ron's plan was to make a quite involved setup at first light, which included decoys (both motion and stationary), and different speaker arrangements all set up some distance from his vehicle. On that particular day several different flocks returned time and time again to Ron's call-changing tactics, offering each of us ample shooting. Ron made from 11- to 12 changes aimed at more than 200 hundred birds.

The next procedure was to drive and intercept the birds as they headed west. The setups then were quickly changed, using the speakers in the blazer. Generally smaller groups of crows responded, and only responded one or two times to the calling.

In mid-afternoon the crows began the journey back east, and while some sets were still productive, the birds by then were more elusive, flying higher and in some cases landing in trees out of range of the caller’s guns.

Our day of serious crow shooting resulted in the harvest of more than 20 birds. As to the number of shot shells being fired; I’m sure Remington, Winchester and Federal were working extra hours to replenish their supply.

The Canfield Fair, just a short distance from where we hunted that day, uses as their theme each year "Something to Crow About."

After that day I think Ron Klinger and his serious crow hunting tactics could use the same theme.

My thanks to Ron for the invitation, and the chance to see a crow hunting expert a work,

Also thanks for the donuts and the Mountain Dew.