Listening for gobblers this morning and on walk back to truck found the turkey egg shell in road......likely picked up by a crow from the hen's next. Too early here for any hatching...this was predation...

They're gonna pay the price for messing with those turkey nests! I find these every spring like this and have never retaliated, but.....

I sure do like watching those crows come apart in the scope.

Shot my share of crows with WS and I really doubt crows are robbing turkey nests unless your habitat is vastly different. Around here, turkeys generally nest in cover over 15" tall minimum and very very few times have I observed crows around vegetation thick enough to provide nesting cover and over 15". They are too wary..........
What makes you think crows? Not skunks, coons, possums, fox, coyotes, cats, dogs etc?

Hay cutters around here run over a ton of turkeys nests and even kill a lot of tight sitting hens with hay equipment. Lot of turkeys nest with no woody overhead cover. But, coons get a lot of nests and no doubt, crows will be attracted to the carnage.

Have saw one a couple years ago pecking at something in a sandy road. It flew off as I approached and left a turkey egg. It still had wet yoke in it and there were no other critter tracks there.

Don't underestimate a dang crow. Rascals will follow a single hen right to her nest mid-morning.

The crows could be grabbing the damaged eggs and flying off with them.

When I was a kid, people down the road raised chickens, used to find chicken eggs on the shot rock logging road behind the house (quite a lot of them) where the crows would pack them and drop them on the road to crack and eat. A good half mile to mile from where they were stealing the eggs. I've seen them do the same with wild turkey eggs.

With the number of turkeys around here, they certainly aren't hurting the population any, probably wouldn't hurt to have a few more crows and ravens to eat more eggs.

Yup found a few of those last spring... Only killed one since then Planning on killing some more tho

I too wondered why you figured crows. Then I guess you answered that when you said you saw one do it before. Not saying crows couldn't or wouldn't do it, just that if I found an eaten turkey egg in the road my first thought woulda been coon or possum, not crow.

Today's egg shell was also laying in a clean sandy place. No critter tracks....appeared to have been dropped there.

I was at a fundraising dinner at a country club with a golf course, ponds, etc. It was a very liberal crowd and I did not fit in in any way. but had to be there because it was on behalf of my employer. A number of us were out on a deck overlooking the golf course and pond when a duckling came out of one of the ponds and was out in the open in the golf course. Very shortly there was a crow chasing after him across the grass, and it caught the duckling and flew off. The folks on the deck with me were aghast and seemed a little shocked when I said "Some predators deserve to be hunted."
Good lesson for them.

Moosetrot

I watched a crow attacking an adult squirrel. The squirrel couldn't get away from the crow. The crow had the squirrel bloody all over. I was in a deer stand nearby. The squirrel finally made it to a leaf nest and the crow left.

We live out in the country and have a very wooded lot. One day I was outside and heard a bunch of crows making a racket on the ground just into my neighbors' land. Then I heard a baby rabbit screaming. As I looked, I saw 2 or 3 adult rabbits making their way to where the crows and baby rabbit were, like they were going in to try to defend the baby. First and only time I have ever seen that kind of behavior from rabbits.

Moosetrot

I was using my Foxpro caller one cold night and had the cottontail in distress playing. Call was on about 5 minutes and 4 adult cottontails came outta the brush & started darting & jumping at the caller. They did that for 10 or 15 minutes before leaving. It was a comical show to view thru the thermal.

I had a crow follow me for a mile while I was turkey hunting. Would fly behind me cawing all the way. At noon closing I walked back too camp and grabbed my 220 Swift, returned to woods and she paid for her disrespect.

Some studies use chicken eggs in fabricated turkey nests to determine likely predators. These nests are often times predated by both crows and blue jays

Crows DEFINETLY preditate turkey nests and small hatchings of all birds

When were they cutting hay ? Usually, by the time the cutting begins , the poults already up and chasing grasshoppers.

A few years ago, I found a nest on the gas line 100 yards out of my yard. I put a trail camera on it. When I went back in a month to get the camera, couldn’t find any sign of the egg shells. When I looked at the SD card, a bear had come and cleaned out the nest.

Crows are bad. Ravens are worst.

June. June is prime time for first renest. I have found turkey nests in July

Agree.

Coons are the worst around here for turkey nest robbing.

Generally, coons come out number 1 as turkey nest predator. My opinion - that is probably due to researchers putting telemetry equipment on hens and being able to find the nest after the hen starts nesting. Probably not many crows steal eggs from a setting hen. However, when a hen is just laying and has not started setting yet - researchers are unable to locate that nest to determine cause of predation and also the hen is not setting to ward off crows. Artificial nests composed of chicken eggs have very high predation rates by crows.

I hatch out huge numbers of eggs. I also throw out huge numbers that don't hatch, plus shells and some chicks that don't make it. When I have several full incubators going, sometimes I dump a nearly full wheelbarrow load a week. Crows definitely crack and eat eggs. I usually have 6 to 8 crows' nests on the back of my property, with around 35 crows in the murder. They check out the egg dump multiple times a day. They build their nests in honey locust trees. Opossums are the most common visitor to the egg dump, followed by coon, skunks fox and coyotes. The fox and probably the coyotes, carry off the bigger eggs and bury them with the top of the egg flush with the ground. Sometimes I find a patch of 20 plus eggs individually buried like that, a few inches apart from each other. I have found eggs, that came from my egg dump, over 1/2 mile away. I can tell because they had hatch dates written on them.

Keith

I sure do like watching those crows come apart in the scope.


Me Too. My passion!!

Exactly

Are those the ones doing damage or the ones about to do damage?I love that law

To this day, I’ll never understand how turkeys and feral pigs coexist. Pigs are notorious for rooting up and eating everything. I’ve seen area where they dug freshwater mussels. I figured they’d eat up every nest they came across . And I’m sure some do. And, yet, we still have a healthy turkey population. Same with other states with them. I don’t get it.

When I worked for Delta Water Fowl, I would find duck egg shells out on mud flats in the open. At times there were shells from 20-30 eggs. I got to where if I saw a crow I set up and called them and shotgunned them. We have a spring season. On the mud flat it was easy to see what hauled the eggs out there.

Dad killed a bear last year, when I gutted it I opened up its full stomach to see what it had been eating. It was full of almost fully developed turkey chicks and eggshells.

I dont know for sure - I would say coons, possums, yotes, etc actually search out the nests. I have always heard one of the many reasons nesting success goes down during wet weather is due to “wet hen syndrome” - hens give off more scent when they are wet and are more likely to be discovered by predators.

No doubt, hogs would destroy every nest they find, but they may be more opportunistic nest predators than coons, yotes, etc that actually search for nests.