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	THE FLYING              DINOSAUR Texas' most underrated gamebird has filled skies for six mission years. It's time to meet the sandhill crane, a prehistoric creature that offers new hunting opportunities. By Lee Leschper On wings to match an eagle, the sandhill crane (grus canadenis) migrates into Texas every winter, bring a challenge to hunters and a hint of mystery. The milo stubble glow in the first orange-gold rays of sunlight. Artic air bites under a light wind. With the growing light comes the haunting, trilling, call of approaching birds...Ka-r-r-rooo, kar-r-r-roo... Not just any birds, but winged giants, drifting on the wind like prehistoric pterodactyls. The gray creatures are not quick to surrender the sky. They drift and circle, long wings capturing and floating on each breeze, intense red eyes searching for threats. Then a dozen break free and drift down toward the birds already standing in the field around an innocent-looking pile of hay. Inside that Trojan haystack, eyes grow wide, Hands feel for safeties. Dark brown dogs whine in anticipation. Now the giants are flapping softly as they land amid the silent decoys. "Take 'em!" the guide barks. Flipping the top off the blind, the hunters stand and shoulder shotguns as the suddenly awkward birds leap into flight. The birds grab for air when the first shot barks. More shots ring out, and the sky is full of feathers and sound and energy. Welcome to sandhill crane hunting on the High Plains of the Texas Panhandle Sandhill cranes (grus canadensis) are the oldest known species of bird still living, with fossil remains found in Nebraska dating back more than six million years. Not to be confused with the endangered whooping crane, the sandhill crane is a graceful giant without equal among American gamebrids. Standing five feel tall, most of that elegant legs and neck, sandhills are an imposing figure. With wings 6 to 7 feet across, in flight they look as big as a 747. Their soft gray plumage is topped with a scarlet topknot on mature birds. Among six subspecies of sandhills, the lesser sandhill is the one that winters in Texas in greatest number. Abundant throughout their traditional range, sandhills are incredibly wary, beautiful on the wing and come equipped with a pronounced beak that dogs and hunters learn to avoid. The sandhill is also the tastiest of winged game, dubbed by admiring hunters as the "ribeye of the skies." Despite growing or stable populations that include winter strongholds on the salty lakes north of Big Spring, lowland pastures of South Texas and Mexico and playa lakes along the New Mexico-Texas border, sandhill cranes are pursued only as an afterthought - or not at all. But here on the wind-swept grasslands and endless horizons of the High Plains hunting sandhills has been taken to a level of perfection. Amarillo guide Mark Meissenburg has been specializing in hunting the giant birds for almost a decade. He missed hunting just four days of last year's 90-day North Texas crane season. In 2002 his hunters enjoyed a success ration exceeding 95 percent, shooting more than 1,300 cranes. The secret to to his unmatched success? Meissenburg goes natural. He uses real sandhills--or rather up to 140 mounted sandhill cranes--as decoys. A taxidermist in the off-season, Meissenburg spends Panhandle winters in his garage, mounting new decoys to add to his 140-mount spread. Old timers call these naturally decoys "stuffers" and they are absolutely deadly. With piercing glass eyes and feathers that rustle naturally in the breeze, the realism is absolutely startling. Setting out these decoys, you will swear you see one of the birds blink or turn its head. "It's the realistic poses," Meissenburg said. "But foremost, in my opinion, is the shine the feathers emit. It's a shine that can't be duplicated by man. When my decoys lose that shine, they go into the dumpster. I hunt four sunny days for every overcast one, and we take more birds on sunny days, because the decoy looks just like a bird." Conventional decoys and rag sets won't fool these birds, at least not consistently, Meissenburg says. This creates a huge hunting resource, largely untapped. Meissenburg, who also guides goose hunters, says cranes are far warier. "A goose has water as a safety net from day one," he said. "But a crane has grown up in a creek with predators on every side. If they are not cautious from the first day, they are not going to survive. They're just a tougher bird to hunt." Most hunters resort to hiding in ambush near roosting or feeding areas, hoping the birds fly within 50 yards. Decoying them is another matter. "Lots of outfits go out with gray rags," Meissenburg said. "The birds catch on in a hurry and start veering off at a quarter mile." But decoys are only part of the answer. In order to be successful, hunter must be totally camouflaged. Some outfitters issue "tamale binds" made of corn stalks and shucks stuffed in the mesh of chicken wire. Meissenburg uses an A-frame blind that assembles in minutes. Panels covered in dried grass bolt together, providing a company hide for hunters, the guide and his retrievers. For large groups he can combine two blinds that will hold up to 10 hunters. The most successful crane hunters are the ones who scout out where the birds want to be, which means knowing the sandhill and its habits. "We have on the High Plains, particularly in the saline lakes around Tahoka and Lubbock, some of the largest roosting concentrations in North America," said Bill Johnson, a Texas Parks and Wildlife Department biologist in Canyon. "Generally they like more open areas. They really like the big saline lakes, big wide-open areas with shallow water where they can wade and almost beach-like shorelines so they can see a long way." "They're a fairly formidable, intimating creature for most smaller predators." Like geese, cranes roost in or next to shallow lakes at night. By day, they fly out to grain fields to feed morning and evening. A sandhill is an equal opportunity omnivore, eating lizards, tiny mammals, most anything it can capture in its beak. Lesser sandhill populations in the mid-continent U.S. are doing well, holding stable, despite a slight drop in population in 2002, Johnson said. Lesser sandhills will next as far north and west as Siberia and winter in Texas, Mexico, New Mexico and California. Some lesser sandhills will migrate more than 14,000 miles each year. During that migration, many of these birds gather each March on the sandbars of Nebraska's Platte River, feeding for one or two months on corn from nearby fields before heading north to breed. This important migratory habitat is threatened by dropping water levels, which may account, in part, for the fact that many Texas landowners, birders and hunters are now seeing sandhills where they never saw them before. Researchers have tagged many sandhills on the Platte that were eventually tracked to Siberia. Breeding in the Siberian tundra, the birds nest in whatever's handy, whether in wetlands or on dry land. The hen incubates eggs for about 30 days, and chicks are fledged in 67 to 75 days. Dr. Doug Slack, professor of wildlife and fisheries sciences at Texas A&M University who also studies Texas whooping cranes, says sandhills are truly an international species, wintering on the High Plains and breeding in Siberia. "They nest in the Siberian tundra, as desolate as you can get," Dr. Slack said. "We had expected these birds would go from the lower 48 to Central Canada, but a large number of the birds trapped on the Platte were tracked to Siberia. "There are not many species I know that large, that go from the northern plains and end up in Siberia. We never dreamed so many birds would go to Siberia from Lubbock. It's a remarkable journey." According to Dr. Slack, part of the sandhills' wariness may be hard-earned education. "I think we are talking about birds that live into their 20s," he said. As testimony to the birds' wariness. Slack had a graduate student spend two summers in Siberia trying to catch and band sandhills. In two years, he caught two. Most times, he couldn't get within a mile of a flow of sandhills. About 80 percent of the lesser sandhill population winters in the playa lakes and river wetlands of eastern New Mexico, the Texas Panhandle and northern Mexico. Hunting has little impact on populations, with Texas being one of the few states with a significant sandhill harvest. Nationwide, the total take on sandhills each year is about 25,000. Compare that to the whitetail harvest of 450,000 deer in Texas alone. For the few, the proud, the brave, success in sandhill crane hunting hinges on staying alert to the birds as they slowly migrate through the state, north to south, seeking open space, shallow water and food. "They always start up north on the Oklahoma-Texas line, then meander south, as far south as O'Donnell and Big Spring," Johnson said. "There's a group of birds that get as far south as San Antonio and beyond." During a 90-day crane season, the longest in the nation, Meissenburg follows the birds from Dalhart and Dumas all the way to Brownfield, depending on the weather. "Water dictates crane movements," he said. "If weather comes in and freezes the water sources, they will move, even if food is available. They have to have access to open water." "They'll feed in wheat, peanuts and milo-cranes love milo more than anything-but they have got to have a food source close to water." When frozen playas thaw, cranes may temporarily migrate back north, said Meissenburg who prefers to hunt the huge concentrations that gather later in the fall south of Amarillo. "If you have to hunt an area several days in a row, you can get stuck," Meissenburg said. "Once the birds are shot at over mounts, they get squirrely. It's not really the mounts, so much as the blind. [Fool them] one time, and they've been to college." But when the deception is complete, these wary birds will land right among the "stuffers" and spread downwind within 15 years of the blind. "I always try to let them land in decoys," he said. "That lets (my hunters) have high percentage shots. But don't think we're shooting cranes on the ground. By the time you throw back those lids, they are all in the air anyway. Especially if there's the slightest wind, they can be out of range in no time. "If I've got a bunch of really good shooters, we can be limited out in 10 minutes. But I see cranes missed at 15 yards every day." This shooting does not require a howitzer. Meissenburg expects to put the cranes at eyeball range - 15 yards - so many first-time crane hunters show up over-gunned. Most guides recommend a 12-gauge with 2 1/4-inch shells packed with size 4 lead pellets. Cranes may live part of their lives in and near water, but they are not classified as waterfowl, so lead shot is permitted. But if you hunt geese and cranes the same day, do not risk a violation of the non-toxic shot regs on waterfowl. Choose a lead, tungsten, bismuth or copper shot. "You don't need a 3-inch chamber," Meissenburg said. "A 20-gauge with No. 6 lead will do the job." Meissenburg nods. "I even have some hunters who shoot with .410s." he said. Most guides refuse to send a retriever after a pugnacious wounded sandhill, which has a wicked and deserved reputation for inflicted serious damage with its sharp beak. But Meissenburg uses two English curly coat retrievers to gather cranes. "The cranes try to peck their eyes out every day," he said. "But they've done it forever, so the dogs just learn to run with their eyes closed. You have to have an aggressive dog, and they learn pretty quickly that if they hit those birds at 35 miles an hours, it's all over. "They hunt every single day of the season with me, and there's no fur left around their eyes at the end of the season." Small wonder that hunters in the know, albeit a modest total number, come to Texas from throughout the U.S. for crane season. Meissenburg, for instance, has built a clientele from the East Coast. "Mostly, we hunt morning, but can shoot cranes in the evenings, too," he said. "They're just harder to pattern . If I have clients who want to hunt ducks in the morning, then we'll hunt cranes in the evening. "We do that a lot, especially early in the season when you can duck hunt every day. Sometimes we have to travel a long way to do it; other times we may be hunting within five miles." That's the reward and special joy of hunting this sprawling, wide-open country. The High Plains is home to a variety of gamebirds -- geese, ducks, quail, pheasants -- and hunting for them is excellent. But nothing, nothing quite matches bringing down your first flying dinosaur.  ~ Texas Sporting Journal, January 2004
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