Suicidal Crows

[Jim Neal]

The wind was building up to be a bit gusty after lunch today, so as soon as I was free I popped out to recce a few roost shooting spots around our game syndicate's land.  The first wood I went to can be a ghost town one year but heaving the next, so you never know.  I pulled up, unslipped my gun and set off with a pocket full of cartridges and two very eager spaniels.  After 30 seconds the writing was on the wall: two gas bangers almost perfectly synced up on the adjacent field, one very near and one quite far, both let rip with a triple salvo.  Great.

I thought I'd give it 5 minutes to see what the bangers put up: two lone pigeons a couple of minutes apart (or the same one doing laps of the wood).  I lingered a little longer than I usually would, distracted because I was next to the pheasant release pen; I stood pondering what work should need doing between now and release.  I noticed a couple of dodgy fence posts, saw a hole in the wire that needed repairing... then some movement caught my eye.  A small flock of about 10 pigeons swooped over the wood and turned into the wind 100 yards in front of me.  I stopped the dogs, one of whom was a good 50yds off to my right along the fence with her nose down, no doubt following pheasant scent.  The pigeons staged up in a tall sycamore roughly 50yds in front of me, which is where I'd normally be standing if I intended to stay.

Keeping quiet and still I elected to just leave the birds there, hoping they'd decoy some others in.  After 5 minutes staring at an empty sky I reached for my phone to check the time, having pretty much decided I should be somewhere else.  The dog along the fence took this hand movement as a sign to get on, which she did - straight towards the staged-up pigeons that she knew were up there!  Luckily she scooped them round in an arc to my left, one of which came a little too close for its own good and I was congratulating myself on a 100% record so far.  Always a curse upon one's self.

I made an executive decision to quit whilst I was ahead and go check out some other spots.

I rolled slowly down the track through a big wood which has been barren of pigeons the last few years (although it's not quite such a big wood, now the forestry department have virtually clear-felled the top 15 acres of it!).  During the last few months, to my delight, there's been a fair few pigeons in the rest of it during the daytime feeding on the wheat scattered for the pheasants, and also flighting in towards roosting o'clock.  I like shooting pigeons in this wood because it's never the same twice.  However it can also be a bit frustrating due to the size - you're always in the wrong place, and if you move to where the last lot came in, the next lot come in to where you were just standing 5 minutes ago!  But if you do get it right the sport is good.  Not today, though.  Zilch.

Time was running out so I fell back on my most-frequented spot in another nearby wood.  Signs were good as I walked along the ride which goes into the end of the wood: several dozen staged-up pigeons scarpered for the pine trees across the field, where they sit gathering confidence to come back, usually in singles or pairs with the occasional small flock of 5-10.  One of them broke off the wrong way and attempted to come around me to rejoin the flock.  Unfortunately for the pigeon it only got as far as the ground 20 yards in front.

Then, to finally arrive at the title of this topic, things went a bit weird.  I've never experienced this before in all my days shooting around woods at roosting time.

To backtrack slightly, the 15 acres of cleared wood I mentioned earlier has always been a corvid roost.  Every sunset, in they would come from several different angles, calling and cackling away between themselves.

Now, fast forwarding again, this favourite spot I've ended up in this afternoon is under the flightline to the old crow roost.  The felling was done last summer and since then I have been wondering how the crows would respond to losing the roost that generations of their ancestors have gone home to every night.  Well, it seems they're a little discombobulated by it all.

After one of my faithful helpers brought me the downed pigeon, I made for my hide which is now in a terribly poor condition since I built it a few years ago, but it's still better than standing in the open.  Another pigeon got unlucky immediately, then I started to hear some crows calling.  Then some more.  And then some more.  They were literally piling in to the tree in the corner of the wood about 60 yards to my left..... only, this was immediately after I'd loosed off two barrels from my gun.

Then they started piling in to a tree about 50 yards to my right as well, swirling, swooping, calling...  BANG!  One of them hit the deck, out in the meadow off the end of the wood.

Normally that's game over with crows, off they go sharpish, not like pigeons who will sometimes have several attempts at getting past your gun in to the wood before finally giving it best..  Oh no, these crows just started calling louder and swirling round to land!  I literally couldn't scare them away with my gun for more than a minute before they were back doing the same thing again.  This went on for about half an hour before I ran out of cartridges and the crows finally realised that someone was down there trying to kill them.  Even so, they still only retired to somewhere still within earshot.

Unfortunately there's no picture of a huge pile of dead crows to go with this post.  That's because there wasn't one.  Out of all that lot I shot only four!  I'm not great on crows at the best of times, and I'm also having a bit of a crisis period with my shooting at the moment.  I can't mount straight, I can't hit anything, it's just embarrassing to be honest, and I've got myself convinced that the current brand of cartridges I'm using aren't patterning well in my gun despite playing with different choke sizes.  Anyway, that's my problem. 

I'm curious, has anyone ever experienced this sort of thing with crows before?  I'd imagine the canny older crows have just found somewhere new to roost since their home was felled.  However, I was wondering if maybe these ones with an apparent death wish are last year's young ones and the parents simply haven't been able to train them, because the woods got chopped away from underneath them?  I'm sure part of their normally cautious nature is learned behaviour as well as instinct, so maybe that's what they're lacking - lessons taught by parents?  Curious, to say the least.

I'd be interested to hear some other views!

[pigeon controller]

DB had a request to shoot a small conifer wood a month ago due to the amount of crows using it as a roost. When he was set up he shot twenty five pigeons and one crow , not through choice but the pigeons came in and the crows just circled higher and higher above the wood with the pigeons not being phased by the extreme shots at the crows but coming in confidently. The crows would just normally leave the area but stayed which was weird.

[jall25]

I have shot more crows this year than ever before - which i would also describe as weird - i  put a thread up in the summer about how easy they would decoy and the fact that i was even shooting them out of the hide in the open during collection and relocation of decoy periods.

Dont worry about the clearfell - it will be great for your pheasant shoot very shortly !

[marsh man]

Can't help you out on your Crow question , not really into Crows , but I tell yer what , that was one hell of a good write up , enjoyed reading it and good luck sorting out your currant off form problem  

[Scully]

Proper write up. Enjoyed that. 👍

If the wheels have come off temporarily, then the best thing you can do in my opinion and which always put me back on track, is to practise your mount in a mirror. Five minutes everyday does it. 

[oowee]

A great right up  I had a session on them this morning shooting from inside a barn out towards the silage pit and managed around a dozen befoe they got the message. 

I echo what @Scullysays re the mount practice. I dont use a mirror but mount the gun again and again in super slow motion. Eyes closed and then looking for the rib. 

[Spr1985]

Fantastic write up 👌🏻 really enjoyed it. 
 

maybe the crows have been watching and seen the lack of form so not too worried 😛 but on a serious note instead of pulling ya leg, it does seem odd! Whenever I’ve shot corvids in general if they make it out of the shot zone they don’t tend to come back to willingly, so you may well be right about them being untrained youngsters, I’ll look forward to seeing some other responses from the more experienced as to their thoughts on it. 

[7daysinaweek]

Superb account that! 👍

I wonder could there have been a moggy in the wood and that is what they were alarming about. Could they have been tree hopping as it moved through the wood?

Suppose we will never know.

[Scully]

7 hours ago, oowee said:

I dont use a mirror but mount the gun again and again in super slow motion. Eyes closed and then looking for the rib. 

Yeah, that’ll do it. 👍

If you mount the gun eyes closed and then open just your shooting eye, it should be looking right down that rib. If not then practise until it is. Then practise some more. 

[Jim Neal]

On 03/02/2023 at 08:01, jall25 said:

Dont worry about the clearfell - it will be great for your pheasant shoot very shortly !

Indeed, what's been done in relation to where the pens are and the usual way we drive the wood might actually mean an extra drive in a few years once it's got a bit of bottom growing in it.  The added bonus (kind of) is they've gone round with a mulcher afterwards and ground up all the brashings so it won't be a death-trap to walk through.  I say kind of, because it would be nice to have the brashings still there, if they could have been pulled up into heaps with a machine, because this would provide some excellent cover.  Elsewhere in the wood they've thinned quite a bit, rather than clearing it, and they've not mulched that part - it's an absolute nightmare!  You can virtually guarantee you'll end up flat on your face at some point trying to clamber through the mess.  I've already started slowly working on it myself, and will be putting others onto the task on forthcoming work parties, to drag the brashings up into piles to both make cover and allow it to be walked through with less jeopardy!  This is the area surrounding the main pen so it's both a holding and flushing area when we finally get on to doing the pen as a drive in the latter part of the season.

On 03/02/2023 at 10:10, marsh man said:

Can't help you out on your Crow question , not really into Crows , but I tell yer what , that was one hell of a good write up , enjoyed reading it and good luck sorting out your currant off form problem  

Thanks Marsh Man, I don't often have too much to post except during roost shooting season so it's nice to make a little contribution now and then.  I was invited out on a mate's permission on Saturday with plenty to shoot at and, let's just say, there's been no significant improvement in my form

On 03/02/2023 at 11:29, Scully said:

Proper write up. Enjoyed that. 👍

If the wheels have come off temporarily, then the best thing you can do in my opinion and which always put me back on track, is to practise your mount in a mirror. Five minutes everyday does it. 

Glad you enjoyed it.  Indeed, I've been practising my mount.  More so during quiet spells in the wood where I'll pick the end of a branch or fork in a tree or something similar.  It's also my swing s much as anything I think - I'm jerking the gun rather than swinging it smoothly.  To be honest I might have to swallow the cost and get over to the clay ground a few times, even hire the coach for a session to hopefully reset things.  It's getting that bad!  Mind you, I'm almost out of said cartridges that I'm sure aren't right for my gun so hopefully a fresh slab of something different will do the trick as much as anything else 🤷‍♂️

On 03/02/2023 at 19:08, Spr1985 said:

Fantastic write up 👌🏻 really enjoyed it. 
 

maybe the crows have been watching and seen the lack of form so not too worried 😛 but on a serious note instead of pulling ya leg, it does seem odd! Whenever I’ve shot corvids in general if they make it out of the shot zone they don’t tend to come back to willingly, so you may well be right about them being untrained youngsters, I’ll look forward to seeing some other responses from the more experienced as to their thoughts on it. 

Thanks.  You know I wouldn't put it past crows to have some sort of intelligence to know they've got a numpty shooting at them who can't hit them 🤣

On 03/02/2023 at 19:36, 7daysinaweek said:

Superb account that! 👍

I wonder could there have been a moggy in the wood and that is what they were alarming about. Could they have been tree hopping as it moved through the wood?

Suppose we will never know.

I'm fairly certain it's a no to that.  The location is way too far for a domestic cat to be from home and I've never seen any wild/feral ones around.  The crows came on their usual flight path, in from the grazing fields and straight into the edge of the wood.  I'll probably drop in there again for a short session mid-week so we'll see if there's a repeat performance.

Thanks all for the kind comments.  Hopefully more to report on this story soon.........

[jall25]

Jim - it would be worth hiring a 360 machine for a week and pulling any brash into banks - to stop the wind and allow access through it - If funds allow 

It totally transformed our shoot 

[Jim Neal]

On 06/02/2023 at 06:51, jall25 said:

Jim - it would be worth hiring a 360 machine for a week and pulling any brash into banks - to stop the wind and allow access through it - If funds allow 

It totally transformed our shoot 

That would be ideal but alas no budget for that sort of extravagance 😕

Curiosity got the better of me yesterday so I popped back to the place with the suicidal crows.  Normal service has resumed.  How strange.  I guess that'll just be another story to tell down the pub in future times!

[jall25]

On 04/02/2023 at 21:22, jall25 said:

You topped him!

They always stop 

 

On 04/02/2023 at 21:45, Weihrauch17 said:

They all naff off anyway with our mild winters so it's immaterial.

 

On 05/02/2023 at 23:13, Jim Neal said:

Indeed, what's been done in relation to where the pens are and the usual way we drive the wood might actually mean an extra drive in a few years once it's got a bit of bottom growing in it.  The added bonus (kind of) is they've gone round with a mulcher afterwards and ground up all the brashings so it won't be a death-trap to walk through.  I say kind of, because it would be nice to have the brashings still there, if they could have been pulled up into heaps with a machine, because this would provide some excellent cover.  Elsewhere in the wood they've thinned quite a bit, rather than clearing it, and they've not mulched that part - it's an absolute nightmare!  You can virtually guarantee you'll end up flat on your face at some point trying to clamber through the mess.  I've already started slowly working on it myself, and will be putting others onto the task on forthcoming work parties, to drag the brashings up into piles to both make cover and allow it to be walked through with less jeopardy!  This is the area surrounding the main pen so it's both a holding and flushing area when we finally get on to doing the pen as a drive in the latter part of the season.

Thanks Marsh Man, I don't often have too much to post except during roost shooting season so it's nice to make a little contribution now and then.  I was invited out on a mate's permission on Saturday with plenty to shoot at and, let's just say, there's been no significant improvement in my form

Glad you enjoyed it.  Indeed, I've been practising my mount.  More so during quiet spells in the wood where I'll pick the end of a branch or fork in a tree or something similar.  It's also my swing s much as anything I think - I'm jerking the gun rather than swinging it smoothly.  To be honest I might have to swallow the cost and get over to the clay ground a few times, even hire the coach for a session to hopefully reset things.  It's getting that bad!  Mind you, I'm almost out of said cartridges that I'm sure aren't right for my gun so hopefully a fresh slab of something different will do the trick as much as anything else 🤷‍♂️

Thanks.  You know I wouldn't put it past crows to have some sort of intelligence to know they've got a numpty shooting at them who can't hit them 🤣

I'm fairly certain it's a no to that.  The location is way too far for a domestic cat to be from home and I've never seen any wild/feral ones around.  The crows came on their usual flight path, in from the grazing fields and straight into the edge of the wood.  I'll probably drop in there again for a short session mid-week so we'll see if there's a repeat performance.

Thanks all for the kind comments.  Hopefully more to report on this story soon.........

 

10 hours ago, enfieldspares said:

 

 

1 hour ago, Jim Neal said:

That would be ideal but alas no budget for that sort of extravagance 😕

Curiosity got the better of me yesterday so I popped back to the place with the suicidal crows.  Normal service has resumed.  How strange.  I guess that'll just be another story to tell down the pub in future times!

Jim - you would be amazed how cheap they are to hire !

Just now, jall25 said:

 

 

 

 

Jim - you would be amazed how cheap they are to hire !

Apologies - not sure why it put all those other quotes in !