"The CrowCam"
by The CrowSniper

Many times CrowSniper has made a great shot and said, "Boy, do I wish someone could have seen that!" A friend brought his camcorder on one of our squirrel hunts and after watching a couple of exciting kills on the TV monitor, I just knew I had to work something out for crow hunting. I went to our Best Buy store and purchased a small Sony video recorder that weighed about two pounds. CrowSniper hunts crows exclusively with a .22 Rimfire rifle, a Ruger 77/22R with a Leupold 2x7 riflescope. Now that I have the equipment, how do I shoot the rifle and run the camera at the same time? My Johnny Stewart searcher spotlight mounts so nice on my varmint riflescope, so I'll just mount my cam on my 2x7 Leupold. To install I used a 1 inch Weaver detachable ring mounted upside down right behind the front Ruger scope ring. I attached the Weaver base to the bottom of the cam using a 1/4 inch stud that was the correct length. Now you just hold the camera to the upside down scope ring, tighten the nut and you are ready for action. How well does this system work? I have a nice videocassette with 134 kills and a few misses. I can show these great shots over and over again on the TV. Lets go hunting!

The landfill I hunted before it was sold was a crows paradise and mess hall. On a quiet Sunday morning I would have the "Death cry of a crow" tape running before daylight with the speaker beneath my favorite dead tree. Some crows are always hanging around a landfill so they come in right away, and those that have farther to travel would trickle in until about 10 am. I called Sunday morning's breakfast and lunchtime. No sooner would one bunch of crows come in, land, get shot and the survivors leave, when here would come some more. One spring Sunday morning it was so foggy I had to follow the white line on the edge of the pavement to get to the landfill. I guess I made it to the blind before daylight, but it was too foggy to tell. I could hardly see the top of my dead tree when I turned the caller on. In a minute crows were everywhere. I got eight just as fast as I could shoot. Hot, cold, foggy or windy, crows will come to my caller except when it is raining. Even crows have enough sense to come in out of the rain.

Down the creek from my favorite blind was a spindly tall dead tree, ninety-six paces away. Often a "Smarter then most" crow would land in this tree to look things over. I would place the crow's body right where the bottom of the small duplex crosshair meets the thick part and squeeze. Not many crows left that tree to take back a report. Once in awhile a dead crow will hang up and not fall to the ground. Crows would land six inches away to look this stricken crow over, confused. Confused I guess by all the dead crows, the panic calling and rifle fire.

Crows would come straight in low and fast, landing without making a sound. One bullet can get only one crow, so sometimes the mate would just circle and land again on the same limb. Just like pigeon or duck hunting a lone bird will come in the best. There was no need for decoys because those crows were looking for that troubled unseen pal on the ground.

I must be doing something right, because there are 1,119 crows that don't eat road kill anymore. One shot, One kill.