May, 1919 
FOREST AND S T 11 E A :\I 
213 
in a lion, but a crow has the soul of 
a hyena. 
While the wariness of the crow is pro- 
verbial, he is not half so wary as the 
barred-plumaged destroyer, as any one 
can find out by trying to stalk both of 
them for a while. I have killed crows 
with a shotgun, sitting, by walking to- 
ward them at an angle as if to pass 
to one side, watching them all the while 
out of the tail of my eye, and then when 
within range suddenly stopping and kill- 
ing him before he can rise from his 
perch. But I never did that to a hawk 
but once, and then a very strong wind 
was blowing and it seemed he didn’t want 
to take the air. 
When stalking crows and hawks with 
a rifle, the hawk will take wing when 
you are still 100 or 150 yards away, 
while the crow will sit, as a rule, until 
you are just outside long shotgun range, 
about 75 yards away. It comes much 
more nearly being impossible to sneak up 
on a hawk unseen than on a crow. I have 
shot hawks that came flying into the 
trees over where I was standing still, 
but I never remember shooting one where 
I was doing the moving and the hawk 
having the advantage of being still, with- 
out the hawk seeing me. I actually be- 
lieve I have shot crows that were asleep. 
I remember shooting one when a boy 
that sat on a low branch over a spring 
at a range of about ten yards, and I 
had been walking toward him without 
seeing him, though he could have seen 
me. It was in hot weather, in August, 
and he was sitting with his mouth gap- 
ing open like a chicken will do in hot 
weather. He never saw me at all, be- 
fore or after, and died without knowing 
what killed him. I never walked up on 
a hawk that way. I have jumped hawks 
and killed them on the wing at short 
range, but the hawk always saw me and 
was doing his best to get away. On such 
occasions the hawk always saw me first. 
My conclusion is that a crow has a less 
intensely organized nervous system than 
a hawk. 
T he chief characteristic of the crow 
is the mob spirit. He joins num- 
bers of his own kind, and depends 
principally upon sentries to give warn- 
ing of approaching danger, though feed- 
ing crows are in no wise blind, even when 
the sentry cannot see the intruder. The 
carnival and the nosy caw-cuss is the 
black fellow’s conception of the real joy 
of life; and if he can mob an owl or a 
hawk that is the red-letter event of the 
carnival. 
Most highly specialized forms of ani- 
mal life are practically immune from 
capture by man along the line of their 
particular specialty. But it also seems 
that practically every animal in nature 
is highly vulnerable if man can only dis- 
cover the point of that vulnerability. 
The pronghorn antelope, for instance, 
has such keen sight and lives out on such 
barren, open flats that it is very difficult 
to approach him unseen. His speed and 
endurance is so great that he cannot be 
run down by a single horseman. It would 
seem that the pronghorn was fitted by 
nature to be very seldom taken by man. 
But inside his pretty head an unfath- 
omable curiosity lies latent, and when he 
sees any strange object it starts ferment- 
ing right away. Result: He is decoyed 
in with a waving handkerchief and shot. 
The whitetail deer, gifted with a keen 
nose and sight, as well as speed, and 
the ability to sneak through cover, loses 
his life by sheer carelessness and dis- 
position to stick around and play hide 
and seek with the hunter. That is the 
point of his vulnerability. The lordly 
lion, dangerous beast that he is, inhabit- 
ing thorny scrub impenetrable to man, 
and a night ranger, falls victim to poison 
in numb^s. In this respect he is highly 
vulnerable. The bull elephant, impreg- 
nable in the center of a herd, is lost if 
he gets out alone. So it goes through a 
long list. It seems that every animal 
can be so easily taken that it is surpris- 
ing if man can only hit on the particular 
point of his vulnerability. 
The above mentioned mob spirit is the 
point of the crow’s vulnerability. He is 
a highly voluble bird and given to swear- 
ing and taunting. Also he yells when in 
distress. Experienced crow hunters have 
capitalized this disposition and turned 
it to his destruction. His extreme so- 
cial nature and clannishness, together 
wth his disposition to mob something is 
his fatal defect. Man has turned these 
facts against him in the invention and 
manipulation of the crow call. This con- 
stitutes, at once, the most popular and 
most effective method of combatting the 
black army. What can be done by a man 
who can properly manipulate a crow call 
is nothing less than a revelation to the 
uniniated. To the man who is accus- 
tomed to shooting them on accidental 
chance and to stalking them, the com- 
bination of call and shotgun is a jump 
upward in efficiency. 
If you do not know how to call, go out 
into the woods — especially in the spring 
in nesting season — and listen to the vari- 
ous calls. Study what each means. Then 
try to reproduce it on your call. Get 
a lusty young crow and hide. Then put 
your foot on him and squeeze him and 
he will yell in a way that will bring 
all the crows in the woods to his aid. If 
you will listen carefully to his voice and 
the response from the mob he will teach 
you much about crow language in a very 
short time. You will soon have a swarm 
of crows over you; flying in circles about 
two shotgun ranges up in the air (un- 
less you are well hidden) and lighting 
in the trees from 80 to 100 yards away. 
They are actually frantic, but unless 
you are hidden they play safe. I have 
seen them literally swarm like bees just 
out of shotgun range directly overhead. 
Any shotgun load will kill some, but 
the efficiency equipment is a duck gun 
and a duck load, as a good deal of the 
shooting will be at comparatively long 
range. There will be a good many more 
shots at 50 or 60 yards than at 30. The 
sportsman should carry a sharp hatchet 
or belt ax for quickly cutting green 
bushes and constructing hasty blinds. 
When one neighborhood has been thor- 
oughly “shot out” move on. It is pos- 
sible to kill practically as many crows 
as ducks in this way. 
B ut there is a rifle system that I have 
devised that is almost as effective. 
Any one who has observed crows 
has noticed that they have a pretty reg- 
ular route of passage morning and even- 
ing in going from roost to feeding 
grounds and vice versa. On these fly- 
ways there are certain trees, generally 
tall and with one or more dead limbs 
in the top, where crows light as regularly 
as passengers get off trains at certain 
stations. 
The sportsman simply builds a blind 
within 30 or 40 yards of such a- tree, 
and hides therein before the morning 
or evening flight starts. If he has a full 
line of equipment, he should have wood- 
en crow decoys, or a stuffed owl or hawk, 
a .22 rifle with telescope, Maxim silencer, 
and a crow call. He can do very well 
with a crow call, a flyway tree and any 
good .22 rifle with iron sights. When 
the evening flight comes along, we will 
say, he can start his call, and the crows 
will stop, alighting on the highest point 
to look around. That point is the dead 
top of the tall tree commanded by the 
sportsman’s .22. He has a dead rest and 
the range isn’t over 50 yards, so a kill 
is practically certain. With a silencer 
he may get more than one, if two or 
(CONTINUED ON PAGE 240) 
A good morning’s bag of crows with a hawk thrown in 
