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Outdoor Wisconsin host Dan Small welcomes you to his special on-line sanctuary. This month, Dan recounts what it's like to eat crow.  Awards Highlights
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Theme11/20/98 Crow Talkby Dan Small
I haven’t shot a crow in over 25 years and in fact haven’t hunted them since they have become legal game again. I find them fascinating, though, and still talk to them all the time. On a spring turkey hunt, I’ll sometimes try to get a flock of crows going in hopes they will in turn trigger a gobbler to sound off. On a winter walk in the woods, if I spot a band of crows harassing an owl, I’ll chime in with a few raspy caws, the way a barnyard dog will answer a pack of coyotes. Lately, a large flock has been hanging around our wood lot. The cornfields are picked pretty clean, so they’re scratching for beechnuts in the dry, open woods. When deer season starts, they’ll feast on gut piles. If we step outside, they rise in a great scolding, swirling mass and eventually settle back in the tops of the beeches. Most of them will head south for the winter, but for now it’s neat to see them. They’re good alarm clocks, too, since they sound off at first light. I just wish I could speak crow well enough to ask them to let me sleep in now and then. ©2000 Milwaukee Public Television
November 4, '98:
Deer Hunt
'98
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One of the more useful things
I learned during my college years was how to call crows. My
roommate, who came from a rural farming community, was quite
skilled at talking crow. From deep in his throat, Steve
could croon out the most realistic-sounding caws you ever
heard. The crows thought so, anyway, because they would come
every time he did it. Back in those innocent days, we were
allowed to keep our shotguns in the dorms. Early one fall
morning before the fog lifted, as we were crossing the
campus golf course on our way to a nearby grouse covert, we
heard crows heading out on their morning rounds.
“Watch this,” Steve whispered, as he
motioned me under a large pine. He then launched into a
series of mournful caws that sounded like a crow in deep
trouble. In a moment, several crows were wheeling just above
the pine, cawing excitedly and frantically looking for their
stricken comrade. The ruckus attracted more crows, and soon
there were a dozen or more overhead. Despite the temptation,
we decided the sixth fairway was not an appropriate place to
stage a crow shoot, so we simply walked out from under the
pine and laughed as the crows practically turned themselves
inside out to get away from us. They had been completely
fooled, and I was hooked.
Steve had an entire crow
repertoire that ranged from the basic “caw, caw, caw” of a
lone crow just passing through, to the raucous screeching of
a flock of blackies ganging up on a horned owl. His most
effective call imitated the desperate cries of a young crow,
presumably in the clutches of an owl or hawk. I made myself
hoarse trying to mimic crows, and Steve coached me for weeks
until I managed to croak out something that sounded vaguely
like “caw.” I never could match Steve’s rich crow-cabulary,
but I learned enough to have a little fun.
On one otherwise uneventful duck hunt many
years ago, I shot three crows and brought them home. My wife
insisted I eat them, since I had killed them. She was right,
of course. Why shoot something and waste it? (At that time,
crows were not protected. Today, they are considered game
birds and it is unlawful to shoot them and leave them in the
field.) At any rate, I plucked the scrawny birds and froze
them. Later, we baked them, using a pigeon pie recipe, and
served them one night when my brother Mike came to dinner.
We all tried the crow pie and decided it tasted a bit like
woodcock, only gamier. We were glad there was a venison
roast for the main course. I have not eaten crow since, but
some people claim to relish them as table fare. Some people
eat eels and rattlesnakes, too.