Crows, grackles ... same thing
The whole thing felt odd. There I was sitting underneath a live oak tree behind a camouflage net, overlooking a harvested grain field with a shotgun across my knees. It could have been dove season, but it wasn't. It was cold.
Members of the Hunting Club were lined up along a barbed wire fence. We were hunting Ty Hanrahan's crows. Well, they weren't exactly his crows, but they either flew over or landed on his land, and that gave him ownership.
And why were we hunting them? Ty says that crows descend upon his field every spring and eat the tender shoots as the new grain crop tries to grow. This destructive behavior endangers his livelihood, and Ty really wanted to make some money next year so he could pay his mortgage and eat.
So in order to help Ty earn enough money to pay his mortgage, eat and maybe pay a percentage of a hunting lease for us, we agreed to shoot a few thousand destructive crows.
The cold wind cutting across the barren field, however, made it feel more like we were hunting polar bears than birds.
Still, Wrong Willie was in his element. He loves to use electronic calls to entice crows within shotgun range. Unfortunately for him, the batteries were low, and the crow call sounded somewhat like an alligator's croak, sending the boys into spasms of laughter.
While we snickered and gasped, Willie reached into his coat pocket and brought out what looked like a duck call. He pronounced it a crow call and commenced to blow. It was unimpressive at best.
"We need to do something to get the crows to fly over," he said, frowning at his crow call.
"Maybe if you shut up and quit wiggling around they'd come into this field where they have fed every day but today," Doc said.
"Here comes one," Jerry Wayne shouted and crouched like a baseball catcher.
"That's a grackle," I said, watching the black bird fly toward us.
"Shoot the grackle," Woodrow said. "I hate them too!"
Woodrow has this indescribable hatred for crows. It dates back to his childhood when his Dad's Pontiac hit a crow on the highway, and it spread across the windshield, directly in front of Woodrow's (then lawfully) unseat-belted nose. Startled, his Dad took the cigarette from his lips and tried to flick it out of the closed car window. The burning toonie bounced back into Woodrow's chocolate shake, causing him to fling the shake into the air and coating the inside of the windshield. With visibility near zero, Dad took to the ditch and came to rest up against the rotting carcass of a road-killed deer.
The Trauma of the Crow haunts Woodrow to this day. He hates crows, but he still likes old Pontiacs, chocolate shakes and deer.
"Why do you hate grackles, too?" I asked, as the bird sensed imminent danger and peeled off to the right. Everyone threw lead at him anyway, just to shoot.
"Because they roost in the trees behind my house and crap all over everything."
"Good point," I said.
Willie blew his call some more. The results remained the same.
Another grackle came by, and then a second. Before long, the air was full of the alien birds, all way out of range of our shotguns.
"See?" Woodrow said. "They're just as smart as crows. I think they're relatives."
"I don't think grackles are the same as crows," the Cap'n said. "And besides, it's all right to shoot crows if they fall under the right category. The Parks and Wildlife folks haven't said anything about grackles."
"Yes, they have," Doc said and opened a pamphlet. He read, "... crows, grackles, et cetera, can be killed when they are committing or about to commit depredations on ornamental or shade trees, agricultural crops, or livestock."
"Here comes another bunch of grackles!" Willie shouted. "They're about to commit a depredation!"
"But we're here to hunt crows," I argued.
"But look at all the grackles!"
"But Ty only wanted us to hunt crows."
"Bet he can't tell the difference," Doc said. "He's colorblind, you know."
"What difference does that make?" I asked. "I'm colorblind, but I can tell the difference between a grackle and a crow."
"You apparently can't tell the difference between the colors of a 16- and 20-gauge shell," the Cap'n observed, watching me fumble with the wrong sized shells.
Ty drove up in his truck and rolled the window down.
"Why aren't you guys shooting all these crows?"
"Because they're grackles," I said.
"You sure?"
"Yep."
"Well, they're eating my crops, too. Shoot them."
"But we wanted to hunt crows," Woodrow said stubbornly, suddenly panicked that his hunting trip was in danger.
"Shoot them all," Ty said.
"But I don't have a grackle call," Willie argued.
"You guys are crazy," Ty said. "You don't need a call, because you're covered up in grackles, and they're going to roost on you if you don't shoot them."
Doc continued to peruse his hunting regs while the Cap'n sorted the shotgun shells by color and size. Willie tried to imitate the call of a grackle, and I carefully watched Ty's eyes, just in case he went homicidal.
All in all, it was a great day in the field. Just like our dove hunting trips.
• Reavis Wortham's e-mail address is r.wortham@tx.rr.com.
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