232 Game Survey of the North Central States 



several times in March, 1927, long strings of crows began to arrive at 3:30 

 o'clock in the afternoon, and the strings were still coming in when they could only 

 be seen by moonlight. This late hour of arrival of course argues for a very long 

 radius for the particular roost in question. 



Size of Roosts. Three observers, including myself, counted sample 

 strings of crows arriving at the Sun Prairie roost just described, and by multiplying 

 the count by the number of strings, estimated that between 20,000 and 40,000 

 birds were present. This size was not attained until March, nor have these 

 numbers been equalled in any subsequent year. 



Ruzicka counted one of the strings efitering the roost at Watertown, Wis- 

 consin, in October, 1928, and then, by multiplying by the number of strings, 

 arrived at an estimate of 10,000 birds in the roost. 



Widmann says that hundreds of thousands of crows roosted on Arsenal 

 Island south of St. Louis in November and December previous to the publication 

 of his book in 1906. These birds occupied a willow thicket on the island. In 

 very cold weather they roosted on the ground in the snow, where the imprints 

 of their bodies were observed next day. 



Disease. Dawson says that winter crow roosts in Ohio are subject to 

 epidemics of "roup" which inflame the eyes, pharynx and nasal passages, and 

 give rise to the popular belief that the eyes "freeze shut" in cold weather. The 

 belief arises from dead crows picked up under roosts with frozen discharges about 

 the eyes. 



Crow Control. There is undoubtedly an increasing tendency for crows 

 to be systematically hunted for sport. This arises in part from the scarcity of 

 other shootable game, in part from a desire to control crows as a game conserva- 

 tion measure, and in part from the invention of the crow call and the develop- 

 ment of live and mechanical decoys as an aid to crow shooting. 



Where crows are abundant, these modern methods of crow hunting are 

 sometimes phenomenally successful. Two men are said to have killed 5,962 crows 

 in Green, Montgomery, Clinton, and Preble Counties, Ohio, in one winter by 

 the systematic use of decoys and calls. In Indiana crows are also systematically 

 hunted in many localities. Organized crow hunting is coming to be frequent in 

 southern Wisconsin, but here the methods used include the use of flashlights in 

 the crow roosts at night. Judge George W. Wood says that three men killed 

 4,000 crows in northeastern Iowa during the past year, and that no roosts exceed- 

 ing 1,000 birds are left in that part of the State. 



While game research may show that it is advisable to control crows, 

 especially during the breeding season in areas where they are most abundant, 

 there is room for doubt over the desirability of an indefinite growth of organized 

 crow hunting, particularly the demolition of roosts by night hunting. It seems 

 likely, however, that any tendency toward excessive crow killing will in the long 



