This time, crane hunt may be serious

By David Horst

Wisconsin’s Natural Resources Board clearly has a taste for sandhill crane.

They discussed the possibility of a crane hunt at their June 24 virtual meeting. Three times in the past seven years, Wisconsin’s Conservation Congress voted for a sandhill crane hunt. Nothing came of it. Nothing comes of a lot of Conservation Congress votes. The hearings, held all around the state, always have a noisy “shoot it if it moves” minority.

But this is not a bunch of aging hunters down at the town hall telling how they’d like things to be. This is a state board with actual oversight powers over the Department of Natural Resources. The Board heard a report on the status of Wisconsin’s sandhill crane population, called for by member William Bruins, a dairy farmer from Waupun. 

The facts were laid out by Taylor Finger, DNR migratory game bird specialist. He showed a graph of the sandhill population growth that started with next to zero 30 years ago and has grown to 90,000 birds in the fall count. The growth has been dramatic in recent years.

That led Bruins to ask Finger if it wasn’t obvious that a hunt was needed. Board Chair Frederick Prehn, a dentist, cranberry grower and gun store owner from Wausau, took Finger off the hook, saying he appeared with the understanding he would only present facts and not draw any conclusions about whether a hunt was or was not justified.

Finger’s response brought in another point of view. He said there is also a “social consideration.” Sandhill cranes are big, charismatic birds, he said, that 30 years ago weren’t seen in Wisconsin. His hand tipped the other way when he took away one of the arguments always presented by hunt opponents. Asked if endangered whooping cranes mixed in with the sandhill flock might be killed by mistake, he said hunts of our eastern sandhill flock already allowed in Kentucky. Tennessee and, most recently, Alabama have produced no reports of whoopers mistakenly shot.

There actually are already two types of crane hunts in Wisconsin. Farmers, after trying other required techniques for mitigating crop loss, can be given permits to shoot cranes. But they aren’t allowed to eat what they shoot. Native tribes can shoot up to 50 cranes a year. Finger said they’ve never come close to taking half that number.

My interest in cranes is not how they taste, but the flavor they bring to my life. We get regular visits from sandhills. They are grace in motion. We watch them stretch and preen. As I write this, a pair stands at the edge of our backyard calling out what I can only interpret as, “Give ’em hell.”

I take part in the annual Midwest Crane Count and my numbers have been stable. I am seeing cranes more places.

The arguments will be the same as before. Stories of cranes walking down a row of corn seedlings and gobbling them all down. Descriptions of blast-happy hunters that don’t want the meat, they just want to kill.

I’ve never seen a crane devour a row of corn. I did see one snark up a mouse or a vole the other day. I get a big kick out of watching them land or take off or communicate with their dance of hopping and wing flapping. I have as much right to the joy they bring me as hunters have to the satisfaction of shooting them.

There were clearly a couple votes on the NRB opposed to the hunt. Given the number of hunters and farmers on the board, I think I know which way this is going to go. Watch the meeting video at this link and handicap it for yourself.

Chairman Prehn said he would talk with DNR Secretary Preston Cole over the summer to decide if the agency and the board will ask for a hunt together or the board will go it alone – if the board so decides.

No matter how that vote goes, an actual hunt would require action by the Wisconsin Legislature. We have indecision and partisanship working for us there. Jump on the issue with your legislators now if you feel strongly about a crane hunt.

Because of their beauty, size and graceful movement, cranes are considered sacred in many cultures. Here, we have to ask, is nothing sacred anymore. I think the answer is clear.