“Įventually, blackbird duty on foot with firearms was no longer necessary – after rifles were replaced with gas guns that fired periodically. We shot the barrel out of the Winchester 22 – there was no bore left in the barrel. “Do your multiplication on that, and that’s a lot of shooting. It cost 25 cents to purchase two boxes of 50 shells each. Photo by Lee Epps, courtesy of the Houston County Historical Societĭuring one especially busy blackbird season, Gavin remembers shooting up more than $100 worth of ammunition. The cobs of corn in their fields were only half full, and the blackbirds’ stomachs were full!” Josephine “Josie” Gavin and Joseph and Matilda Lorenz, parents of Josephine Gavin. “Most of our neighbors didn’t circle their cornfields the way we did, three or four times day. The Lorenz corn crop, due to being the most extensive, provided the primary bird buffet. “When we fired to scare away the blackbirds, the horses would stand on their hind legs and let out the loudest scream I have ever heard! Needless to say, we didn’t stick around there any longer than we had to. To get to the farthest cornfield, the children had to walk through the woods and then past a pasture where a neighbor kept wild horses. “We had to stop and rest a few times while circling the fields” she recalled, “We climbed into a high tree stand to see where the blackbirds were we didn’t do any unnecessary shooting.” The children took turns with farm chores – one of which in the late summer and autumn, was cornfield duty on foot with a Winchester that weighed over seven pounds. The late Josephine “Josie” (Lorenz) Gavin reminisced about her childhood in the 1940s. When she was nine or 10 years old, her parents thought she was old enough to handle the rifle that she and her siblings would use to scare the blackbirds out of the family cornfields in the Root River valley near Hokah.

Drozd blackbird barrel damage