Ravens

[John Ellison]

Anybody else got a raven thievery or intelligence story?

My best one is how they stole my lunch. I had it packed in a 3lb. coffee can with the plastic lid, it was in a heavy canvas pack closed with two leather buckles. I had this stuffed up in a big spruce stump that had a hole way up under the roots.
Lunch time and I headed toward where it was stashed, three or four ravens took off from the area so I started to get worried. Sure enough, the pack was 40 or 50 feet away from the stump, one of the buckles was undone, the coffee can was out and empty. The outer part of the plastic was still on the can, but the rest of it looked like it had been cut with a razor blade, not a thing left but empty baggies.
I blamed it on the truck drivers! They would drive down the road and hold a cookie or donut out the window and the ravens would swoop down and take it from them.

 

[Zodiac45]

Yep they are very opportunistic and intelligent little thugs. Anything shiny or smelly and they'll have at it. During the Thanksgiving weekend down at my Brother' place I noticed several large crows or ravens hanging round the driveway. The trash bins were over filled with black trash bags so that they couldn't close. These guys had pecked through and were having they're own Thanksgiving!

 

[CollegeLogger]

Yea there pretty smart birds to say the least. Up in fairbanks this summer on our fuels crew work we usually just threw our packs in the back of the work truck and left the windows down just incase we needed something quick or someone needed to move the truck. My lunch was in my hiking pack under my raingear, sweatshirt, and two nalgene bottles all zipped up in the pack underneath our saw bags and some gas containers. Come back for lunch and come to find a raven had pulled the cans and bag off of my pack, unzipped it, dug to the bottom, and pulled out my lunch. Not to mention that a couple guys trailmix and cheetos in the truck were scattered 50 yards down the road. left us kinda scratching and cursing the birds after that and from then on everything went into the cab of the truck with the windows up.

 

[ak4195]

nothing to amazing,but I did see a flock of at least a dozen ravens shred somebodies grocieries they had in the back of a truck one fall.They really loved the boxes of crackers,no amount of shooing would make them leave permanently,never did see anybody come back during our 1/2 hr lunch.Just demolished a pile of bags and boxes of grub.
Kind of hard to explain,but ive seen what seagulls could do to baited longline gear,hundreds and hundreds of hooks systematically placed in large metal tubs.Well systematically till the birds got to them,of course like the ravens its always funny when it happens to somebody else.
ak

 

[trek5900]

When I moved to my home 10 years ago there was a large number of them in the woods around my house. There aren't any anymore. West nile virus got them. I miss them.

 

[slowp]

A couple of years ago, I walked down to the landing on a unit. The logger got out and raised my suspicions of something not quite right, he said, "You need to go down and rewalk that unit and make :censored: sure we logged it clean enough. Oh, and check outside the boundary too and make sure we didn't take any trees outside the unit." At that point, I knew something was up. I started questioning his suggestion, and he said a raven had stolen his lunch sack and his checkbook was in it. He wanted me to look for it. He never did find it.

 

[Humptulips]

I saw a lot of guys get there lunch robbed by the ravens but I always thought I was safe because I had a good metal lunch bucket. Then one winter day at Port Alice I looked up the hill to see a bald eagle flying off with my stainless steel thermos. Eventually found it but never located the cup.

 

[forestryworks]

humptulips, john... good stories, thanks for sharing

 

[John Ellison]

Hey Humptulips, I've been to Port Alice and lost in the Promised Land Swamp.

 

[Humptulips]

I'd say we move in the same circles if it wasn't for that Arkansas location.
Ever work north of Hoquiam?

 

[John Ellison]

No, but I used to bear hunt in that area every weekend from 76 to 79, worked for Weyerhaeuser out of Snoqualmie Falls. The guys I hunted with were Tarheel timber fallers/ loggers. Messers , Jones, Nations, Buchanon.

I worked at Port Alice briefly in 82 or 83. I was around the corner before that at Little Naukati. Jim Campbell's camp. Had quite a few Plott hounds there for awhile and was known as " hound dog". Maybe we know each other, I was around that area from 79 to 94.

 

[Humptulips]

No, but I used to bear hunt in that area every weekend from 76 to 79, worked for Weyerhaeuser out of Snoqualmie Falls. The guys I hunted with were Tarheel timber fallers/ loggers. Messers , Jones, Nations, Buchanon.

I worked at Port Alice briefly in 82 or 83. I was around the corner before that at Little Naukati. Jim Campbell's camp. Had quite a few Plott hounds there for awhile and was known as " hound dog". Maybe we know each other, I was around that area from 79 to 94.

I have a passing aquaintence with those guys. I trapped that area from 69 to 2000. Had a few run ins with houndmen, mostly good but sometimes not so. I also had hounds up till sometime in the 80s, black and tans. Didn't hunt bear though just cats.
I was just at Port Alice for one season in I think 1990. We moved camp out of there and went to Soda Bay. Looked like Port Alice was finished at that time. Can't say I liked it up there. I can get along with just about anybody but when you have to live with them for months at a time it gets pretty old for the most part. Never been back to AK.