Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Sand Hill Cranes

Have been flying over the place, en masse, all day!

I like to hear them!

I just can't get enough of their chirping.

They arrived here over the weekend.

Six weeks out for here.

Well there more headed y'all's way!!!

They were as thick as fleas around here a couple weeks ago. Now, nada.

There are a lot of them up in the Texas panhandle. I managed to bag one when I was in college.

That piercing chuckle-chirp (or is it a chirp-chuckle? ) that they make at altitude always puts a smile on my face.

But don't choot a white one, 'cuz he ain't a sandhill!

“Our ability to perceive quality in nature begins, as in art, with the pretty. It expands through successive stages of the beautiful to values as yet uncaptured by language.”
― Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, commenting on Sand Hill Cranes

Might have to drive out past Grand Island later this week and see if they've overrun the place. Haven't seen them in a few years.

had a flock grazing out in the pasture in front of the place all one day last week. Hear them flying by almost daily...

back in the day, we used to eat 'em. Tasty indeed, more so than wild Turkey.

I always look forward to their arrival and they all but disappear until the adults and chicks hang out in my wet meadow or forage in my picked grain fields.

Their call seems primitive or ancient to me. A call that most likely could be heard when the glaciers were receding around here.

A sense of sadness overcomes me when they leave.

I thought the Sand Hill Crane was North Dakota's State Bird!
But it's not - It's the Meadowlark.

But as for hunting . . .

> http://www.outdoorcentral.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/20080908016.jpg <

Several thousand lessers in the basin here. A couple hundred pairs of greaters that nest locally. None of the lessers hang around. No seasons on them what so ever here in Oregon.

They pass over here without stopping in the fall.

Very short audio

http://www.operationmigration.org/SC-Flight-callssm.wav

We have them around some--
Went out to the garage on Friday, heard a pecking noise that sounds like it was coming from my truck
went to check and there was a sand hill crane pecking at his reflection in the grille.
There was another one standing close by..
My neighbor and I stood at the front of the truck talking for some time-- they stayed close, pecking the ground for bugs.
Pretty cool.

Wyoming has a season on them, my neighbor across the street gets one every fall..

They eat good!!!!

We get them here in Western Kentucky most years in late winter. Haven't seen any this year. I guess they stayed farther West this year. I like seeing and hearing them.

I hear they're good eating.. I don't think I could drop the hammer on one.

Big flock flew over me yesterday, and I musta looked like a dope standing in the parking lot and staring up in the sky at them.