Crows

Age 13-15

Crows were considered vermin on our farm. They would pull freshly-sprouted corn up and eat it. They would eat other crops too when they had an opportunity.

Crows are smarter than most people think. I read an article in an outdoors magazine about a farmer who was having trouble with a crow that was raiding his corn crib. The farmer would sit in the corn crib with his shotgun and try to ambush the crow, but the crow wouldn’t come around while the farmer was in the corn crib. As soon as the farmer would give up and go back to his house, the crow would return.

The farmer decided to try to outwit the crow. He asked a neighbor to accompany him to the corn crib and stay about fifteen minutes. The crow would see his neighbor leave and think the coast was clear. The farmer would remain inside so he could kill the crow. It didn’t work. The farmer gave up after two hours and returned home. The crow returned and ate his fill of corn.

The next day, the farmer took two of his neighbors to the corn crib. After they had been there fifteen minutes, the two neighbors left. The crow still would not come around while the farmer was in the corn crib.

The farmer changed clothes and took three of his neighbors. Still the crow would not come around until the farmer left. He kept increasing the number of people who would accompany him. Finally, he took eighteen people with him. After they left the corn crib, the crow flew in thinking the corn crib was safe. That was a fatal mistake.

Reading the article described above seemed reasonable to me. I had already learned that crows are smart. We planted about an acre of corn close to the line fence the summer I turned fourteen. Crows attacked the crop as it sprouted, but stopped until the corn started making cobs of corn. Daddy told me to do whatever I could to kill the crows.

When I would come out of our house with a shotgun in my hands, any crows within 200 yards would fly away well before I could get close enough to shoot them. The only successful strategy for me was to arise before daylight and sit in the cornfield until the crows arrived. The crows would send one or two scouts ahead minutes after daylight to make sure there was no danger to the rest of the flock of about 20 birds. The scouts would always land on a limb of a dead locust tree that was higher than the surrounding trees. I would have perhaps five seconds to shoot one of the scouts. Sometimes I got one and sometimes I didn’t. It was a learning process.

One summer day I saw a crow behind a rail fence around our pasture field. I thought there might be a slight chance I could kill it. I got a shotgun and held it against my body so the crow wouldn’t be able to see it unless he had xray vision. I walked out the yard gate like I was going to our truck. As soon as the chicken house blocked my view of the crow, I walked directly toward the chicken house. My plan was to step out from behind the chicken house with my gun already at my shoulder and the safety off. I would shoot the crow as it took flight. I stepped out and almost pulled the trigger right away, but something stopped me from shooting. Something wasn’t right because a crow would have flown immediately after I stepped into his view. Maybe the firearm safety rules Daddy taught me kept me from shooting. I soon discovered that our Holstein cow, Star, was lying on the other side of the fence. She was fighting flies by moving her ears. If I had pulled the trigger, I probably would not have lived past adolescence. Daddy would have killed me.