GTA
General Discussion To Gateway To Airguns => Hunting Gate => : only1harry February 26, 2010, 02:32:06 PM
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Better late than never right? Still another month or so left in thel crow season so you never know. I was starting to loose faith :)
I woke up this morning to 2.5ft of snow, NO power, and some major huge branches down on my property the size of trees. I 've seen better days..
After I shoveled snow for about 45min. this morning trying to dig our cars out of the driveway, I went back inside to take a break around 8:30am. We had no power since the night before, so I was just sitting around trying to give my back a break and catch my breath :) A few minutes later while I 'm sitting there in dispair buried in snow, street not plowed, live wires hanging in front of my house, and hoping the power would come back, I just happened to turn my head towards the kitchen window and noticed something flying by which looked a little bigger than the usual Starling or Bluejay. I grabbed the RWS 850 .22 which was still leaning on the wall by the radiator from the day before, and went to another window where I had a better view of most of the backyard.
First thing I noticed was a couple of Starlings under the table outside where I had placed the cat food bowl to keep it dry. Even though there were 3-4" of snow on it from the wind blowing sideways, the Starlings had dug through it and had eaten most of the cat food. I then scanned the trees and saw a crow 25+yds out and at least 30ft up!
This crow was checking the Starlling action on the ground and was probably looking for some of that food for itself. The Starlings took off but the crow remained and had not noticed me. I had opened the window upstairs earlier but had left the shade down so I was looking at the crow from a small opening on the side. I got on my knees on the floor and adjusted the A/O to a little more than 25yds. I then moved the shade aside very slowly sticking the 850 out and resting my left hand/forend of the gun on the window sill. I got its chest in the crosshairs very quickly and squeezed without wasting any time because it looked ready to take off. The CPHP struck the crow and it fell straight down on the snow at the edge of the trees. It landed on its belly facing completely away from me and was still alive. It wasn't going anywhere. It was just looking around sitting there stuck in the 2+ft of snow or too wounded to move but its wings were wide open so I knew it was probably fataly wounded. I quickly worked the bolt action and loaded another pellet. I put the shade up, stood up, and aimed right at the back of its head through the chain-linked fence. I aimed a little higher at the very top of its skull because the gun was cold (the house was about 55-60deg w/no power.) and I figured it was probably shooting low 500's. I squeezed and heard a "crack" and the crow's head went down. The tail came straight up for a couple of secs and down again and it was over.
My first crow of the season that I was able to recover. I left the crow out there for a good 20min. to see if any more crows come. They usually show up out of the blue making a lot of noise, but nothing. Not another crow in sight. It was still snowing out and I figured I better go retrieve the crow before it gets buried. I took a couple of pics and then turned it over to take a pic with the 850 under the porch and to my surprise this crow only had 1 leg!! The other leg was missing from the joint down. It had the upper part of the leg but it looked white in color like maybe it had no blood flow and the limb was dead? The feathers were also gone or parted from the upper part of the leg, probably from the crow picking on it. The spot where the leg was cut off had healed well and was rounded off as you can see in the pics.
Anyway, the 1st CPHP struck in the belly slightly off-center (on the left as you can see in 1 or 2 pics) but it's because it was turned that way when I took the shot. The 2nd CPHP hit squarrely the back of the skull and there was much blood where its beak was buried in the snow. So I got a 1-legged crow!! hehehe :) Oh well, first time for everything. This year has been very slow for me with the crows. Last year this time I had 7 or more crows under my belt but that's ok. I 'm making it up with the Starlings :)
BTW, later in the day my Water Heater broke and I had a flood downstairs! Maybe this crow was a bad omen? :0 When it rains, it pours.. If I didn't get that crow today, I 'd say this has been one of my worse days in many years.. but getting that crow made a very bad day a little better, and it was the 850's first crow!! :)
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Congrats on the 850 crow kill Harry! ( odd about the leg! had a one legged chickadee around last fall he seemed to do ok ) Sorry about the storm power loss and water heater ( got 20" here)
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Nice shot Harry. Now for an encore I want to see you get a double on crows. Wait, better not do that. After your bad luck that the dead starlings laid on you, two dead crow bad mojo maybe more then you want to deal with.
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good shooting harry! hmm a 1 legged crow, thats a first for me lol.that sucks about the water heater, hope you get it fixed
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Thanks guys.
1-legged Chickadee, wow. They have tiny little legs! You must have good eye sight.
Furseeker/Dave:
I have shot 2 crows before within a few seconds of each other, but never with the same pellet. I did it last year and the year before. Maybe the bad mojo is catching up to me now? :) As long as they wake me up 1/2hr to an hour every morning before I get out of bed, I will continue shooting them during the season.
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Great shooting Harry. Hope your power comes back on real soon.
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nice shooting harry a long wait pays off my crow season has been great hopefully yours will finish well .I really think those 850's are solid shooters .
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Great shot Harry. Maybe you'll get some more shots after the weather clears. Keep it coming, i really enjoy reading your posts.
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Good shot Harry. I've heard sometimes birds burn one, or both legs off landing on power lines, but it doesn't always kill the bird. Maybe this one had that happen ????
Sorry to hear about all your weather problems. I know how living in an unheated house without hot water can be miserable. I went through that a few years back when my oil burner broke down.
Hope you get the power back on soon !!!!!!
Paul.
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congrats on the crow
nice shooting
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Yea Harry it was strange, I had some seed on my deck outside my window and the chickadees kept landing and grabbing seeds and flying off but this one would land and go down flat and pick up seeds and take off so i kept watching it and saw as it landed it looked like it had only one leg, then I saw it land in a bush and saw it standing on one leg and it had short stump on one side. I have seen seagulls in Mane with one leg , we had a cottage on the ocean back in the early 60's and had a few that hung around like that and one that had a tin can on one foot too! We fished off some rocks for sea bass and would clean them and feed the gulls .
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Thanks guys! I think this crow's injury explains why it was all alone and no other crows came down screaming to fly over my head like they usually do. Maybe it was an outcast.. I hope next time I get a "normal" crow and enjoy all the noise the others make, hehe. That's equivelant to a good death dance from a squirell :)
I have seen a couple of 1-legged Seagulls too Dave. Birds are really tough can can survive even in the worst weather conditions with a handiap.
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Great shooting and pic's Harry and if he was sick the other Crow's will bail and leave him to expire, don't want the sickness spreading. The Crow may have been bad Voodoo since in some Native American cultures the crow is the spirit of someone who has passed over. :o :0 Ed
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I bet some of that bad voodoo passed on to me. How else do you explain the water heater going a couple of hours after I shot it? :)
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I tell you bro my mother is Native American so I have some of that mystic train of thought in me when I go hunting, ever see a hunting post from me with a Crow or Raven laying next to a shooter hehe. I've had em in the cross hairs then I hear my Mother telling her tails spun from her family history and religion, stops me every time hehe. Ed
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Furseeker - 2/26/2010 10:39 PM
Nice shot Harry. Now for an encore I want to see you get a double on crows. Wait, better not do that. After your bad luck that the dead starlings laid on you, two dead crow bad mojo maybe more then you want to deal with.
Yeah! We want to see that the other one wasn't a fluke! :D
Great shooting my friend! I just wish I could get within a mile of them before the bolt. I think they know me by sight!
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Those old folklore stories can only come true if you believe in them I always said.
If you don't believe in any of that stuff, you 're good to go :)
In my grandparents village up in a remote mountain area, they said that if a raven or crow visited you for more than 3 days, someone was going to die in your house. I don't believe in that stuff. Crows visit me every day like the visit the neighbor's tree across the street (more him than me now). They also said if you shoot one you will die or someone you know or something like that. There is a guy on the TAG that shoots hundreds of them every year, year after year, and I shot 8 or 9 last year and about 4 the year before. If you believe all that stuff, yeah eventually some of it may come true or you can relate it to someone else's misfortune and believe the old stories are indeed true. It's just a game of odds. That's how "mediums" or fortune tellers can read your future. They usually have a 50-50 change of guessing most of the things about you.
Not that I don't appreciate the good ZEN you have sent over to me in the past :) Don't confuse the crows with that, hehe :)
Come to think of it, you don't shoot Grackles either. Is it because they look like smaller crows? hehehe 8)
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LOL haven't seen any Grackles since last summer bro and I think the last one I took was with the 2240. The Grackles and Cowbirds got wise to my sniping from the deck hehe. As far as the Yellow beak's they just don't land in my place and I haven't even seen one anywhere including the State Land. :0 Ed
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I've seen lots of Starlings all of the sudden. I'm figuring they have gotten tired of being shot by you Yahoos! However, they are a front yard bird, meaning they only seem to land in front yards. Not sure I could sneak a shot at them or not, but then again I DO have a really quiet Whisper :)
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Randy if you think you can, then you can. I do it from time to time, meaning when the wife isn't home. That's wat the Power Line twins are for. Today the starlings only wanted to use the front yard feeders.
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During the Spring & summer I will take an occasional shot at a Starling or Grackle through the front door when they are hanging out in the front lawn. I look around at first to make sure none of the neighbors are outside. Just don't shoot a bird near the road because the pellet could recochet off the pavement. I make sure they are well in from the road. My neighbor's can't hear the Condor .22 :)
BTW, the Grackles do spend a lot of time walking around in my backyard unlike the Starlings so they are fair game during the warmer months. They are just little crows that bully all the song birds and congregate in large flocks.