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  #31  
Old 11-15-2017, 11:25 PM
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Originally Posted by Pioneer2 View Post
About 30 ravens cruised overhead at first light to see where the hunters were.An hour later they are squealing on a WT buck that got itself shot.Win win for all concerned except the deer.Magpies do this all the time.Symbiotic relationship with man........very smart birds.Saw 2 adult bald eagles and a juvie picking at a road killed dead coyote.Ravens in Norse lore are Odin's messengers of impending death............Harold

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  #32  
Old 11-16-2017, 06:24 AM
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Ive seen ravens follow deer a number of times , especially during cold weather . A buddy took a nice whitetail buck a few years back in extreme cold during an archery season , saw the buck fall within sight of the stand and the birds were on the carcass before the guy was even able to get out of the tree .
Not uncommon for ravens magpies and eagles to follow a coyote or wolf into your predator call set .
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  #33  
Old 11-16-2017, 06:29 AM
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Magpies too - to a certain extent. If I enter a field or opening and there's a few magpies fussing around the willows in one corner - you can sure that's the corner I'm going to thoroughly glass first. They just seem to like company!

I know ravens follow wolf packs, waiting for a kill. I've also had single birds silently glide along only 20 ft above my big dog, when hiking open country after a recent snowfall. Maybe they think the dog will snuff something out from under the snow - like a chewed up deer/elk lagoon or something.

Personally, I'd never shoot a raven. Bad karma.
For sure magpies, from what I've seen they are actually far more intelligent than the more celebrated ravens. I have a bunch of crazy magpie stories but I'll just tell a couple.

We had a bunch of magpies showing up every morning and waking us up. My father in law swore that if you just shoot one and leave it where the others can see it then they will stay away, so I shot one and left it on my shed roof. Well for six days every morning about 50 magpies would come and land on my shed, look at the dead bird, and talk things over for about a hour and a half. My wife threw the bird in the ditch and they took their little wake over there, finally we just got rid of it... magpies have not been back since.

Every year while I'm butchering I'll throw a deer leg bone out in the yard and watch my dog try to fend off the magpies and ravens. Let me tell you, there is not a dog alive that a magpie cant trick away from his bone. With enough persistence it usually ends with the dog too tired to care chewing on one end of the bone, and the magpies happily eating at the other end. The most interesting thing was the pecking order, magpies are not scared at all of the dog so when the dog is out the magpies get the bone while the ravens watch. The magpies are scared of the ravens, the ravens are scared of the dog, so when the dog is gone the ravens get the bone while the magpies watch. Never been able to make sense of that weird little cycle.
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  #34  
Old 11-16-2017, 08:41 AM
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Another weird raven thing, is their relationship with coyotes. If you see a deer or elk freshly road-killed, there'll soon be a 'feast of ravens' feeding off its nice, soft, juicy meat. If a coyote comes along, and also gets schmucked by a vehicle, the ravens immediately switch over to that tough, stinky coyote, and just go nuts! Jumping up and down, bouncing and cawing excitedly, like a kid on Red Bull!

I don't know what it is that excites a raven on a dead coyote that way. It's very macabre.
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  #35  
Old 11-16-2017, 09:16 AM
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What I have found about magpies is that once killed they seem to lay forever without being consumed by anything other than chit beetles.
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  #36  
Old 11-16-2017, 03:49 PM
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I once had a raven pummel and take off with a live magpie in a trap.
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  #37  
Old 11-16-2017, 05:57 PM
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Sitting on lease years ago, I watched a vac hauler put vacuum on his tank, shut his truck off, put a sandwich by the end of his vac hose and stood around the corner by his valves...

I kept watch out of the corner of my eye. Sure enough, a raven flys in, lands by the sandwich and BAM - valve open, raven gone and a thunk in the front of his empty tank. Then histerical laughter....

This lad had spent a little too much time in the bush I think. Was still quite something to see.
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  #38  
Old 11-16-2017, 07:58 PM
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Pipelined in the bush for many years now and the Ravens know when it's coffee and lunch time and even which operator feeds them a scrap or two. Move the equipment to the other end of the line and that same raven will find you in no time at all. I've seen the young ones feed the old ones and seen them play with sticks and hang upside down in trees robbing the whiskey Jacks stash of goodies. I never shoot them either. They even like frozen beer. Won't touch an orange tho. Quite the bird.
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  #39  
Old 11-17-2017, 12:44 AM
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When I hauled logs there was a long hill that we had to pull. A raven would fly alongside the truck at window height and look in. Throw out a piece of bread and it would spin around, land, eat it then peddle like crazy and catch up. Just to do it all over again. Pretty comical looking out your window and see a raven about six feet away eyeballing you. Would get about three rounds before it couldn’t keep up anymore.
Last one I shot was in Whitehorse in 1974 at the dump and the guy I as working for told me that it was probably around watching miners in the Klondike gold rush.
I never thought anything of it until I read this thread but when I shot my elk this fall there were ravens circling overhead making a racket. I’ll be paying closer attention next fall.
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