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They are the 747s of the
bird-hunting world. Five feet tall. Nearly 7-foot wingspans. While other species rocket through the air with agility, these birds lumber. Their bodies bob up and down in sync with their massive wingbeats. It's a wonder they can stay aloft.
The first time I ever trained my shotgun on a sandhill crane was on a goose hunt in Saskatchewan. Our decoy spread was meant to attract specks, Canadas and snows, but it also drew the cranes roosting on nearby Lake Diefenbaker. They were in season and we didn't waste the opportunity to add something unique to our bags.
After days of bearing down on the little geese of the Saskatchewan prairie, it was a thrill to get something the size of a sandhill in my sights. And when one hit the ground, it hit with an authoritative thump.
The sound of that impact resonated in my head on a chilly morning in late January, as I helped plant about 60 stuffer crane decoys into freshly disced Texas Panhandle red dirt. I traveled here to hunt sandhills with Mark "Crane Man" Meissenburg, owner of Panhandle's Best Inc. guide service of Amarillo. Unlike my only previous experience with cranes, sandhills were the main course this time.
FAIR GAME
The sandhill crane is an ancient bird. Because of a 10-million-year-old fossil found in Nebraska, the International Crane Foundation believes sandhills are the oldest known bird species alive. Dinosaur birds, in the flesh.
A fooled flock of sandhills drops in on a set of the Crane Man's stuffers
over red Texas Clay.
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Because they are enormous, oddly snake-like in flight and have an eerie, trilling call, hunters have compared sandhills to pterodactyls for years. I don't know anyone who's actually seen or heard a pterodactyl, but sandhill cranes bear a striking resemblance to Hollywood's representations of the winged dinosaurs, especially in flight. Their spear-like beak, orange eyes and ruby-red patch of rubbery forehead skin do give the cranes a menacing countenance.
No doubt the tundra swan is the largest migratory bird that can be hunted in North America. But that's a trophy species. In the few places they're hunted, you have to win a lottery to kill one per season. The sandhill, on the other hand, is the largest huntable bird with a daily bag limit. In Texas, licenses to hunt sandhills are sold to all who want them, and cranes are fair game from November to February. With a three-per-day bag limit, it doesn't take long to fill a freezer with crane meat, for which they've earned the nickname "ribeye in the sky" because of their quality as tablefare.
The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service estimates 650,000 cranes migrate up across North America--a journey they've made for millennia. The midcontinent population is the largest flock, with some 500,000 sandhills winging each fall from their breeding grounds in Siberia, Alaska and Northwest Territories south down the Central Flyway to wintering areas in Texas, New Mexico, southeast Arizona and Mexico. Nine of the 10 states in the Central Flyway, including Texas, allow hunting for sandhills. They're also hunted in parts of the Pacific Flyway.
Throughout the Texas Panhandle, sandhills find everything they need to get through winter. Peanut, wheat and cotton fields dominate the landscape. They don't actually eat cotton, but when a cotton field is turned over after harvest, the cranes can find plenty of tasty morsels. And between the scattered creeks, stockyard ponds and leaking field pivots, there's enough water around most years to satisfy the birds.
"If it's really dry, they move to where there's water, and we move with them," Meissenburg said.
Stuffed crane decoys and a wooden goose call help lure enormous, wary
sandhills into a spread.
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Meissenburg himself migrated to the Panhandle from California and has guided sandhill crane hunters for nearly two decades. Fairly quickly, he learned plastic and windsock decoy rigs were good for pass shooting cranes--the most common way they're hunted--but were lousy for truly decoying birds all the way to the ground.
"Cranes are afraid of every thing," he said. "The whole time they're coming in, they're looking for danger. If they see something they don't like, they're gone. I want them feet down in the decoys. To me, that's the right way to do it."
To encourage live cranes to feel comfortable in his decoys, Meissenburg learned taxidermy and began making his own staffers to hunt over--a rarity among crane guides, according to my research. He cranks out several dozen every year, arranging them in a variety of positions to boost the realism his rigs are known for.
Meissenburg also taught himself to call cranes using a tube-style turkey-call to mimic the various adult bird vocalizations--trills, barks and coos. He also carries a coach's whistle to imitate juvenile peeps. His obsession with putting cranes on the ground day-in and day-out, year after year, is what led his hunters to start calling him Crane Man.
CRANES OVER COTTON
On the first day of my hunt, guide Payton Estes had six of us spreading an array of stuffers across a swath of deeply furrowed harvested cotton field. With the dekes deployed, next we set about assembling Estes' take-down A-frame blind.
He had a series of long and short panels made of metal tubing, with page wire stretched between the tubes. The wire was covered with synthetic grass for camouflage. Connected to the front of the blind was a series of lids that could be pulled over top for cover and pushed off when it was time to shoot. All we had to do was set the panels in place and connect them with bolts and wingnuts. Voila! An instant 12-foot-long hideout.
We tucked the blind against a thin line of brush separating two huge cotton fields. The six other hunters and Estes loaded up their shotguns and huddled inside, while I knelt behind the blind with my camera.
As the sky turned a brilliant shade of blue ahead of the rising sun, lines of cranes began to criss-cross the horizon. Soon, birds were everywhere, their cadenced trilling drowning out all other sounds. Flocks snaked past either side of our spread, no more than 40 yards off the deck. Estes called to them by vibrating his tongue through a wooden honker call.
Given the sheer number of cranes on the wing, it was inevitable a group would square us up. About a dozen pulsed our way and set their wings 60 yards out. When the birds dangled their stick-like legs to touch down, Estes threw open the top of the blind and yelled, "Take 'em!"
Shotguns erupted. Cranes crashed into the dirt. Before anyone could make a move to retrieve the downed sandhills, another flock slid into the pocket. We greeted them with the same reception.
Within short order, 21 cranes were on the ground. I ditched my camera and stuffed 3.5-inch BB steel into my Beretta Xtrema 2. Lead is allowed for sandhills in Texas, but you better not get into any geese or ducks.
Just as they'd done for the past hour, birds flew to the right and left of our setup. And it didn't take long for a String of sandhills to appear low on the horizon, heading right toward us.
Through a cutout in the blind, I watched the birds lumber across the flat, bare field. A long pivot stood 500 yards out. The sandhills chugging toward us flew so low they had to gain altitude to rise over the pivot.
"You ready?" Estes said.
I nodded vigorously, my eyes wide as saucers.
"Wait. Wait. Now!"
He stood up and pushed the blind's lid off. A couple of the cranes already were on the ground, but most backpedaled.
I leveled my shotgun on one of the flapping birds and squeezed the trigger. It crumpled. I moved the barrel to a second nearby and squeezed off another round. That crane folded, too. too. I wish I could say I completed a triple with my third shot, but it was off the mark and the sandhill I fired at beat a hasty retreat, none the worse for wear.
Estes was about to release his retriever when someone called out, "Single coming." A lone crane glided in from our left, heading straight toward the decoys. I shoved two shells in my gun and put my right hand on the lid of the blind.
"Go!" Estes said when the sandhill hit the pocket. I flipped the top open, locked onto the bird and fired. My personal limit, and the limit for the whole crew, was filled. It wasn't even 9 a.m.
THUNDERING VOLLEYS
The following morning, I headed out before daylight with Crane Man himself and five hunters. The forecast called for precisely the conditions Meissenburg likes--clear and sunny, with a wind of 10-15 mph.
"When it's sunny, there are shadows and glare. I think that actually makes it a little tougher for the cranes to tell the decoys aren't real," he said. "And I like a decent wind--no less than 8 mph, but no more than 20. That will get the decoys swaying a little and their feathers will move."
We set 65 stuffers in a peanut field where a mess of cranes were feeding and loafing two days prior.
"We should see a lot of cranes this morning," he said as we assembled the blind.
It took a little longer than the previous morning for the sandhills to start their commute, but it was soon clear there were far more birds in this area.
Hundreds swarmed the skies. Most headed to a wheat field about a mile or so southwest of us without paying any attention to our spread or calls. Just like the previous day, though, all we had to do was wait for the right cranes to take flight.
The action started with a few singles, pairs and triples, small bunches of cranes that tipped their wings and glided in on the decoys with great enthusiasm. We matched their eagerness with thunderous volleys.
In flight, the huge wingspan of Sandhill Cranes makes them unmistakable.
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Most of the cranes we racked up were lesser sandhills, which aren't quite as big as the greaters. The lessers average about 6-7 pounds and 3.5 feet tall, with wingspans measuring 5 feet across. That's still a big bird, but the greaters are scary big.
From our blind, we could see the difference between hunting over stuffers and hunting over plastic. Another group of hunters was positioned in a field about a half mile from us, and they had deployed a spread of windsocks. Their only shooting was at birds that glided over their spread within shotgun range. We never saw one crane commit to their decoys and drop in with its feet down.
We, on the other hand, passed up shots at sandhills that swooped in tantalizingly low but never lowered the landing gear. Sticking to his "feet down" mantra, Meissenburg would only call the shot at cranes that were feet down.
"There's no sense doing it if you're not going to do it right," he said.
It's funny, but it never seems like you're chewing up much ground toward a limit when you re shooting at small groups of birds. But with seven guns blazing, not much escapes, so the numbers add up. After we knocked four cranes out of one of the few large flocks that presented a landing shot on this day, though, Meissenburg called an end to the hunt.
"That's a limit," he said.
The Crane Man had struck again.
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