Yeah, if i shoot it its cause i want to eat it

TEHO. I have coyotes, ravens, hawks, songbirds, Zoom/Teams calls, and all the rest in my yard & home as well. None of what you said applies in my situation, so maybe you somehow have a bad reputation with your local crow gang. They don’t bother us here to the extent you’ve outlined above. Plenty of hawks, mourning doves, and songbirds in my yard and local skies, even though there are more ravens than all the rest put together. Maybe the ones here just get along with everybody better. Dunno.

But I stand by what I said, and I think your own stance might actually line up closer with mine than with the author’s, in that I’m not against dealing with pests, but blowing away wildlife “for the sheer fun of it”. That’s the adult equivalent of pulling legs off of lizards for the glee of killing something. Not my thing.

Hunt for meat? Yes. Dispatch pests to prevent continued destruction of property or sanity? Sure. But just killing things for the sake of a thrill?

No, that’s not why I own guns. But again, TEHO.

If you want practice wingshooting live birds, I can heartily recommend locating yourself in something of a blind near a fruiting mulberry tree that has a wide open field of fire around it, and shoot the starlings that will come in from miles around to make purple poop. THAT is some fun shooting action.

As for fancy crow shells? Good try.

But do you eat crow?
“Tim Joe the Crow Hunter” tested new “Caw Caw” shotshells? Wait, what?
-April 1, 2024

Haz,

In an unusual turn of events, I must respectfully disagree with you. Crows, ravens, and magpies are pests. Forgetting their scat (which they kindly leave EVERYWHERE, including on recently-washed cars), they (i) harass pets (they don’t mess with my GSD, but they have chased my daughter’s little dog out of the yard more than once), (ii) drive songbirds away, (iii) harass and abuse most raptors (ganging up on hawks and eagles seems to be their favorite sport). And, YES, crows and ravens are smart, and vindictive as hell. Simply trying to get them away from your yard immediately gets you on their sh*t list, and they have LONG memories. If you chase ‘yotes away, they learn to stay away from your yard. If you try to chase ravens or crows away, they leave long enough to collect a couple dozen of their friends, and come back to torment you.

Neither crows nor ravens are IN ANY SENSE endangered species. They disrupt other, native, bird and wildlife populations. Try being on a Zoom call with a flock of ravens or crows in your back yard, sometime. I don’t automatically wish them ill, but I sure as hell wish them to go away – but they don’t. I would prefer not to kill them, but they don’t leave you much choice. I don’t give a damn how “smart” they are; they are a pestilence.

As Mark Twain said, a crow is “a gambler, a low comedian, a dissolute priest, a fussy woman, a liar, a thief, a spy, a professional hypocrite, a conspirator, a rebel, a meddler, an infidel, and a wallower in sin for the mere love of it.” I save my sympathy for animals that deserve it. I’d rather have groundhogs than crows.

Sorry, everyone, but crow hunting isn’t for me. The Corvid family (crows, ravens, magpies, etc) are recognized as among the most intelligent of all birds, right up there at the top with Grey Parrots. I’ve personally witnessed ravens in my area displaying remarkably smart behavior all my life. I can’t speak of what crows might do in other areas to cause damage (think Midwestern crop fields or such?), but in CA ravens are part of our world here.

Don’t get me wrong…we have our pests like anyone else, and I have no problem dispatching ground squirrels, rabbits, and wayward raccoons due to the heavy destruction they cause, but ravens aren’t part of that problem. If anything, they help with cleanup of roadkills nobody wants to touch.

Bird hunting for meat is one thing. Hearing someone say they like to blast wildlife to bits “for the sheer fun of it” puts them on the other side of the line I won’t cross, and I don’t respect.

Hunters might want to remember that when hunting them, even years later…

“Never cross a crow – it will remember your face”

https://theconversation.com/never-cross-a-crow-it-will-remember-your-face-2121

“Do Crows recognize humans & habits?”

https://www.reddit.com/r/birding/comments/16teg18/do_crows_recognize_humans_habits/

I’ve heard of crows protecting the humans that were nice to them and driving off animals trying to attack them…