Iowa State has 13 fewer crows to worry about after Saturday’s first annual Government of the Student Body student crow hunt.

The hunt, from 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., consisted of 11 teams — many dressed in camouflage and face paint — that went to public hunting areas to shoot as many crows as they could in part of an effort to reduce the crow population at Iowa State.

The event was also to give students something to do on a weekend, said Ben Albright, GSB student fees senator, who was in charge of the event.

“Crows are kind of annoying. People are always complaining about them. They’re messy, they’re loud,” Albright said.

The event, which cost GSB $300, also featured door prizes from Jax Outdoor Gear, 4723 West Lincoln Way.

“We had a good turnout,” Albright said. “Hopefully we can do this again.”

Although there were a lot of crows, the strong winds Saturday made it difficult to hunt them.

“We got two. How many did we shoot at? Thirty-five probably,” said Cliff Schafer, junior in construction engineering.

Schafer was part of the team Death from Below, which hunted at Peterson’s Pit, and on the north side of town.

“I haven’t hunted crow before,” Schafer said. “It was kind of a learning experience.”

Crow hunting involves setting up decoy crows to look like they’re feeding, using crow calls and sometimes using decoy owls because crows will come down to fight with owls, Schafer said.

Team Krush killed six crows after hunting all day.

“They should have let us go longer, until dusk,” said Robert Krush, senior in agricultural systems technology and leader of the three-person team. “The wind finally died down later, so the birds could hear the calls. We were shooting when it was time to leave.”

Krush said he thought six was a low number and that he probably could have shot hundreds in better conditions.

None of the other teams shot more than team Krush though, which ended up winning first place and $75.

Out of 26 people who registered in the morning, only 12 people showed up to have their crows counted at the end of the day.

“It’s been pretty windy all day,” Albright said. “That probably had an effect on it.”

The crows that were shot could be used in various recipes provided by GSB, including “crow casserole,” “summer crow kabobs” and the “so good you’ll want to slap your mother-in-law” recipe, although most participants said they probably wouldn’t be cooking crow.

“It was fun,” Schafer said. “They should do it more than once a year.”