Sometimes desperate times call for drastic measures.

And sometimes a scarecrow just won’t do.

In March 1949, farmers and sportsmen were fed up with the thousands of crows that roosted nightly in a 1,000-acre section of muckland near Montezuma. Newspapers estimated as many as 400,000 crows inhabited the area.

Some called the infestation “the black menace,” and residents intended to do something about it. Something that involved dynamite.

Crows have always been an issue in Cayuga County.

Auburn city officials have wrestled with the crow population for more than 100 years. In the 1920s, city workers brought Roman candles for children to fire off to scare the birds away. In the 2000s the city staged crow hunts and ignited controversy.

“Barely a mind is laid to rest that has not since childhood days accumulated a memory of experiences with crows. They have accompanied us through life as a friend who has a way at times of becoming a nuisance,” columnist Walter Foulke, of the Auburn Citizen-Advertiser, wrote in 1974.

Crows are known for their intelligence, but for a lot of folks the high-pitched caws and messy droppings are a nuisance. But in 1949 the farmers and sportsmen in the Montezuma area believed that crows threatened their way of life.

“Farmers throughout the area grew tired of having their crops destroyed,” the Cato Citizen reported. “They grew tired of these black vulture-like birds that wing their way home to roost each night on their lands.”

Sportsmen worried about the effect crows had on local game, especially waterfowl, whose eggs crows enjoyed feasting on.

Before another harvest could be ruined by the crows, farmers and sportsmen formed an alliance and declared war.

They reached out to the state Conservation Department and came up with a plan.

Sportsmen, under the supervision of the state police and the Conversation Department, would literally blow up 1,000 acres of Montezuma muckland, using 500 shrapnel bombs. Each bomb would contain a half stick of dynamite surrounded by shards of shrapnel. In total the plan called for four cases of dynamite, a half-ton of shrapnel and 3,000 feet of primer.

The “bomb” would be detonated on the evening of Saturday, March 26, 1949, after the crows had settled in for the night, their heads tucked into their wings, unaware of their pending doom.

It was expected that the blast would kill at least 2,000 crows. Any injured birds would be taken care of the next morning by roving bands of riflemen, who would “humanely” put the birds out of their misery.

To get approval for the plan, Cornell University would receive 300 crow carcasses for their research.

The sportsmen gave their plan an official-sounding military name, Operation Crow Extermination.

The trap was perfectly set. Conservation officials were on hand to oversee everything.

Crows fly above a field along Bluefield Road in the Cayuga County town of Fleming Feb. 25, 2019. Lauren Long | llong@syracuse.comLauren Long | llong@syracuse.com

But the plan ignored one thing: crows are smart.

Hundreds of sportsmen were stunned that afternoon, when the crows started roosting in a different spot, just far away enough to be out of the killing zone.

Members of the Montezuma Rod and Gun Club opened fire with their shotguns at the birds, attempting to “shoo” them into the mined field.

“But the wary crows only hopped from one tree to another and even this last-ditch effort was abortive,” the Southern Cayuga Tribune wrote.

As evening turned to night, the decision was made to proceed with the explosion.

The blast was “terrific” and rattled windows and dishes all over the countryside.

But not a single crow was killed, they had all roosted in another plot, about a mile away from the dynamite site.

“Operation Crow Extermination” was described as a “dismal failure.”

“Needless to say, there were many red faces yesterday, when not a single dead bird was found,” the Citizen-Advertiser wrote.

“The birds hoodwinked us and there is no disputing the fact,” J. Edward McGuire, president of the Falcon Sportsmen’s Club, admitted the next day.

Some of the sportsmen put out a theory that the crows may have had a “sensitivity” to the nitroglycerine in the dynamite, which caused them to roost somewhere else that night.

Newspapers had a field day.

“The crows were noisy today but had no formal comment,” the Utica Observer-Dispatch said.

“The cry of “Caw, Caw, Caw” changed to “Haw, Haw, Haw,” the Cato Citizen joked.

One editorial writer went so far as use the story to describe President Harry Truman’s Cold War strategy.

The crows represented the Soviet Union, bringing their unwanted way of life to Eastern Europe, or the farmer’s fields. The United States was represented by the sportsmen, who threaten to destroy the Soviet Union, the crows, “if she does not cease her depredations upon others’ rights.”

Besides their embarrassment, the operation cost the sportsmen about $150 in supplies and they had to apologize to Cornell for not delivering the promised dead crows.

The struggle between man and crow would continue.

The headline from the March 28, 1949 edition of the Post-Standard after the failure of Montezuma's "Operation Crow Extermination."

“NOBODY CROWING ABOUT IT”

The story of the sportsmen’s defeat to the wily crows of Montezuma was impossible for Upstate New York newspapers to ignore, and most ran a story about it.

Almost all of them included a crow-related pun headline.

Here are some of the best:

“Caw, Caw, Caw” changed to Haw, Haw, Haw”

“Crows Give Sportsmen the Bird as Dynamite Booby-Trap Flops”

“Haw, Haw,” Cry 400,000 Foxy Crows Eluding Trap

“Crows Have Caws to Celebrate; Dynamite Failed to Get ‘Em”

“Field Blasted to Kill Crows That Aren’t There”

“Wanted: Those Old-Fashioned Scarecrows”

“Sportsmen Got Bird, Not the Birds”