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	Unusual Decoys Help Produce Unusual Results Messingburg along with his dog, Scooter, retrieve a crane. Looking at Mark Meissenburg's decoy spread can play games with a person's senses. They play worse games with the senses of geese and sandhill cranes. Amarillo's Meissenburg, president, owner and guide for Panhandle's Best, Inc. Professional Guide and Taxidermy Service, uses decoys for both crane and geese that are actual taxidermy mounts - birds shot and then stuffed with ground stakes extending from their legs to hold them secure to the ground on windy days. The spread is almost an irresistible magnet to passing geese and sandhills looking for a safe place to feed. "Realism is the No. 1 thing," Mesissenburg said of the effectiveness of his decoy spread. "There is a natural shine on the birds' feathers that no decoy can duplicate. That's the thing that geese see and they key on it." It takes Meissenburg about four hours spread over four months to make each decoy. It takes an hour to an hour and a half to set the spread up and the same time to take it down. The decoys also require extra work in hauling them around. Meissenburg uses a 16-foot trailer with special shelves to transport the decoys. "It's a long process, he said. Meissenburg had scouted the area and found two cut corn fields side-by-side where both the geese and the cranes had landed and fed three days in a row. The fog delayed what is usually an early morning flight. The birds, which usually fly off the roost at the crack of dawn didn't get into the air until 9 a.m. Strings of mostly cranes with lines of geese mixed in were visible in the misty pale skies, winging their way over the flat farm land and finally setting wings and gliding into Meissenburg's spread after the flights started working to fields to feed. He estimated between 12,000 and 15,000 sandhills are staying in the area. Meissenburg set out nine crane mounts and 80 geese mounts - mostly Canada geese with a few snows mixed in. The birds were arranged in small family ranging from eight to 10 birds over the two fields separated by a small farm road and a weed row. A flight of about 60 geese committed to the decoys and landed among their stuffed cousins after a few passes shortly after a noisy mallard duck and a flight of six silent geese sent us scrambling for the cover of the blind. Meissenburg, who called the geese in with a handmade diaphragm call, let us observe the birds walking on the ground just 20 or 30 yards away for a short time before giving us instructions. Meissenburg gave us a three count, at the end of which the three lids on the A-frame blind covered with mess woven with long hay stalks were thrown up and the geese frantically lifted off the ground. Four made it only yards off the ground before finding a place in the corner of the blind. Not long after we picked up the geese we had shot, another flock landed in the same fashion - one close, the rest out in the field about 40 yards. Despite emptying our guns on the smallish, noisy honkers in the four to five-pound range that most hunters call cacklers, the flock of 70 to 80 birds flew off unharmed, but a little wiser. The geese soon became a sidebar as the bigger and harder to bring down sandhill cranes started their morning flight. A little more suspect of the decoys than the geese, the cranes never landed in the spread, but they did get close enough to shoot when they would pass over the decoys for a look with Meissenburg using only his mouth and hands to call the birds. "Cranes are weary," he said. "I don't think you can kill many of them over rags. They're fun but from what I've seen they're pretty smart." The four of us filled our three crane limit and loaded 12 birds to take home with five geese at 11 a.m., just two hours after we started shooting. Flock after flock of cranes and a few more strings of geese closed in on the spread for a closer look after we had finished hunting and started working on picking the decoys up. Meissenburg, who moved to Amarillo eight months ago with his wife Kim, has not been skunked while hunting geese or cranes. He said he has a bigger problem of people complaining about filling bag limits too early.  ~ by Terry Moore Amarillo News-Globe, January 5, 1997
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