If nothing else, we hunters can sure be called creative! Perhaps it comes from an age when our Prehistoric hunting ancestors needed to use every imaginable trick to outsmart or outmuscle game animals that were bigger, faster, and in most cases were much deadlier than they were. Or maybe it’s just plain human nature to always be searching for a “better way” to get something done. Whatever the case, crow hunters have to be at the top of the list when it comes to trying creative and yes, sometimes wacky techniques in order to outsmart our wary foe, the common crow.

One of the great things about running an organization such as ours is that you become a magnet for ideas and information from all over the world. I’d like to say that we’ve heard it all, but every time I think so, I get a letter or an email that blows me away. Here are some of the ideas we have heard over the years:

• Using a hand painted toy bird to simulate a wounded crow (“Flapping Flyers” to bulletin board regulars).
• Artificial gut piles as bait.
• Drifting creeks to ambush birds.
• Collecting and using actual roadkill (yes, you heard right!).
• Pull string owls with flapping wings to aggravate incoming crows.
• Various methods for launching dead crows into the air to simulate diving birds.
• Kites that look like circling hawks.
• Stuffed predators to enflame a crow’s natural hatred of it’s competition (see the photo of my recent hunt using a stuffed red fox).
• Using distress calls normally reserved for predator hunting to decoy crows.
• Staking out a pet cat within site of incoming birds. Note: can be hazardous to your marriage.
• And even spreading trash from a McDonalds dumpster to lure crows in for a free Happy Meal.

Crazy? Maybe. But I’m told that all these ideas worked, and I believe it. Thanks to the crows inherent intelligence, he is often susceptible to unorthodox techniques that would never work on any other animal. Bad news for them! Good news for us!