Sunday, April 15, 2012

Hunting cranes?

We're debating "Should we or shouldn't we?" here in Wisconsin the past couple of weeks. Cranes are still not that common--certainly not common enough to think of as game birds.

I'm not a big hunter--not since I shot rice birds (a pest) before I went to college. There's just not been a lot of time for that, and I live in cities, where you typically don't pot wildlife out the back window. I see nothing wrong with it in theory--a hunter is participating in the environment just as much as someone just watching it all.

But why cranes? They're noisy and would be pretty trivial to nail--so there's no challenge. I've not heard that they're especially delicious, and the taxidermy I've seen is pretty shabby. All I can think of is that some people want to "shoot one of everything."

Eh. No, this is a silly idea.

On the other hand I can think of a target :-)

Surveillance drones. Simple rules:

  • Shotguns-only within city limits
  • no hunting:
    • within 100 miles of a national border or ocean
    • within 20 miles of a nuclear power plant
    • in airport approaches
    • within 5 miles of hobbyist air zones
  • Bag limit 5 per day.

2 comments:

Texan99 said...

Sandhill cranes are in fact very, very good eating. I don't think of them as game birds here on the coast, but hunters of my acquaintance shoot them in big numbers in their fantastically huge flocks way out in West Texas near Big Spring or up around Lubbock.

james said...

I stand corrected.
Around here they're scarcer than turkeys.