By JIM SPENCER

You can look at a crow and tell he is bored out of his skull. You can also tell he is looking for mischief. They find a lot of it too – ruining gardens, robbing bird nests, tormenting livestock and harassing hawks, buzzards, eagles and other large birds.

The reason they're bored is because they're smart. They have active brains but no opposable thumbs to twiddle, so they have to settle for harassment and mayhem.

It's this intelligence, and a mean streak, which provides the chink in a crow's shiny black armor. Crow seasons in most states typically outlast most other seasons, providing a wide window of opportunity.

A growing number of hunters across the country have discovered that by exploiting those crow characteristics of boredom and intelligence, they can have action-packed days during the off-season, hone their wing-shooting skills and give a few more turkey and songbird eggs the chance to hatch.

Gearing up for crow hunting is neither difficult nor expensive, but it requires thought. A full set of camouflage is important, and it must closely match the surrounding vegetation. You can get away with green among brown leaves or brown in a gray background for turkeys, as long as you remain motionless when necessary, but crows will flare like rice-field mallards.

Regardless of what shotgun you choose, carry lots of shells. In most states, there's no limit on crows, and the potential for burning a bunch of ammo is high. It isn't uncommon to burn four to eight boxes of shells on a good crow hunt.

Effective calling is vital to your success. Everybody in the party can blow excitedly and raucously on hand-held mouth calls and attract crows, but to create those blizzards of dive-bombing corvids that make for 200-shell hunts, you need more. In states where legal, an electronic call is the ticket. These are battery-powered tape players with a megaphone attached, so you can really crank up the volume and punch your calling out there.

Most come with a long cord for the megaphone, so you can move it away from your hiding place while keeping the off-on and volume controls beside you. Crows homing in on the racket have their attention focused away from you, allowing you to remain undetected longer.

You can succeed without decoys, but most serious crow hunters use a few decoys when set up in a calling location that allows for long-range visibility in the direction they expect the action to come from. Crows are intelligent, and when they fail to see any of their kinfolk, but they hear excited crow talk, they sometimes behave like wary turkey gobblers; they hang up and refuse to commit that last few yards that would put them into gun range.

A half-dozen crow decoys by themselves are helpful, but if you combine those decoys with an owl or hawk decoy, you double the effectiveness. If you've ever watched a gang of crows mob a barred owl that's only trying to mind its own business, you understand the premise.

Surround your owl with the crow decoys, placing some of them close and others a little farther away. If you don't have any decoys, you can use some of the birds you kill at your first set or two at subsequent sets.

As in real estate, the three most important factors in determining where to hunt crows are location, location and location. Set up wrong, and no matter how much attention you've paid to the other factors, you're going to fail.

Set up where you can stay hidden and where the maximum number of crows will hear your calling. Likely spots include heads of wooded or brushy hollows, uphill edges of large fields or pastures, willow bars along rivers and ridgelines between valleys.

Good visibility can be an advantage or disadvantage, depending on how well you're hidden. If you can see an approaching crow, it's possible for him to see you as well. If you want some tough, sporty shooting, try setting up in a pine thicket.

Get into your set as quickly and quietly as possible, set up and start calling. It won't take long for crows to show up, if they're going to. There are no fast rules except one: kill the first crow you shoot at. If you miss that first one, somehow the word gets out and you won't have much luck at that set.

It doesn't seem to matter if you shot the first bird or whether you wait until several are present before opening fire. Just make sure you drop one with the first round of shooting. The sight of falling and fallen crows seems to incite the bloodlust of the survivors — fallen comrades and all that — and they'll go into a frenzy into which you can shoot again and again.

Eventually they will retreat, but don't pack up and move to another location just yet. Wait about five minutes, then hit the calling again. It won't happen every time, but often you'll get a second flurry of action. It won't be as heavy as the first and won't last as long, either, but it's worth trying.

After that second calling session, move. You might pull them back a third time, but it won't happen often, and when it does it only lasts for a shot or two. Better to pick up, move a few miles to another likely calling location, and start the sequence all over again.