Wyoming Crow Hunters Can Blast All They Want, but Nobody Eats the Birds

Mention bird hunting, and most people picture duck blinds, pheasant flushes, and retrievers working icy water. But in Wyoming, there’s another kind of bird hunting—one with no license required, no bag limit, and absolutely no interest in eating the quarry.

Crow hunting.

“It’s about the sport of it,” Dan Kinneman of Riverton told Cowboy State Daily.

Kinneman started crow hunting at 14. He’s about to turn 85. In all those decades, he’s never tried cooking a crow or known anyone who has. Instead, crow hunting functions as nuisance bird control. Crows wreak havoc on agricultural crops, and ranchers are happy to let hunters thin them out.

“All the ranchers will let you hunt crows. I’ve never been refused access to hunt crows. They all hate them,” Kinneman said.

Wyoming’s crow season runs Nov. 1 to Feb. 28. No license, no bag limit—just shoot. His yellow Labrador retriever loves it. “He doesn’t care whether it’s a crow or duck. In fact, he likes crow hunting more than duck hunting, because there’s more action.”

But don’t expect it to be easy. In his youth, hunters drove around “shooting them out of trees with rifles.” As development spread, that fell out of favor. Modern crow hunting has evolved to resemble waterfowl hunting: decoys, blinds, calls—and a serious challenge.

“Hunting crows is hard. They are a lot smarter than ducks and geese,” Kinneman said.

Despite not eating them, he always picks up the carcasses. “Leaving them out there would be no different than just leaving all of your empty shotgun shells out there. You have to pick up after yourself, or the ranchers won’t let you back.”

At 85, Kinneman isn’t sure how many more seasons he has. This year was a total bust—unusually warm weather disrupted migrations. The Riverton area normally sits along major crow flyways, but this winter, they’re empty.

Avid birdwatcher Lucas Fralick of Laramie confirmed the pattern. Dark-eyed juncos, which usually winter in Laramie until March, were gone by November. “They’re a cold-weather bird,” he said.

For Kinneman, the lack of crows is a disappointment. Bird hunting “is my life,” he said. He’s taken big game across the West and once shot a prairie dog near Rock Springs from 2,157 yards—nearly a quarter-mile beyond a mile. But bird hunting remains his passion.

He has a huge collection of duck, goose and dove decoys, and two tubs full of crow decoys. Even at 85, he’d be out there if the birds were.

“Finding a flyway,” he said, is the key. Then set up the spread and wait.

This year, there’s nothing to wait for.