Waterfowl Hunting
Cranes??
3/27/13 @ 9:47 AM
Displaying 1 to 15 of 26 posts
Duckwidow- your funny.
It's not as easy as you think to get the crop damage tags let alone find a farmer who has time to sit and take days out of his work timeline to hunt these birds. You need paperwork to allow others to hunt them for you and even after that you would need to have a very good hide set up to kill these birds in the spring/summer with fields freshly planted... I don't know one farmer who would like the idea of me walking on one if these fields. So you would be limited in your success of harvesting them. Now if you had a season you could hunt roosts and have more people out hunting and increasing your over all kills.
Whooping cranes and sandhill cranes are not the same thing. 382 sounds about right for whooping cranes....but it's not rare to see a couple hundred sandhills in a single field at the same time.
Crop damage is not a moot point. When you have over 60% of your corn crop wiped out by cranes walking along the rows picking the new plants out it is devastating. A herd of deer and a pile of raccoons might knock cornstalks over but cranes simply eliminate the entire plant. With deer and raccoons you can usually salvage something. You can't do that if the plant simply does not exist.
Crop damage hunts are problematic in that the land owner assumes a certain level of liability for anyone who sets foot on their property. This is why you don't have more people enrolled in that program. Seeing two different neighbors sued by hunters who came onto their land is a pretty souring deal. One drove off of a lane the farmer told him to stay on, got hung up on a rock pile and sued the farmer for damages to his vehicle. The other slipped getting out of his tree stand (he had his fair share of adult beverages) and messed up his knee. Both of these jokers took the landowners to court. They didn't win but it was still costly in attorney fees for the guys that enrolled in the program so it wasn't worth it. 99% of the people coming onto privately owned land will be fine but it's that 1% that screws you over who you need to protect yourself from.
My dad contemplated signing up for a crop damage program but after reading the fine print the risks far outweighed the rewards.
lakrshiner, i agree but crop damage is not a moot point as that is the main reason for a season according to the legislation that is being presented.
The problem is crop damage and the legislation's solution is a hunting season.
Personally, i cant agree on that. If crop damage is a problem, the solution is already available. With that being, good luck asking for a crane season here, just because
A recent population survey of the whooping crane placed its TOTAL population at aprox. 382 birds. To say that loosing one of these birds doesn't weigh in on the decision for a sandhill hunting season is foolish. The fact that the National Crane Foundation is based in Baraboo also carries a significant weight. I'm not saying that it won't happen, but I wouldn't place money on it happening in my life time.
I guess I have to disagree to a point. Think of cranes like ducks for a minute. We hunt ducks now and some of the funds are used to help maintain the populations and habitat. We don't shoot ducks because of crop damage, not a main reason at the very least. We shoot them because in people's minds, its okay.
So now we have cranes. Like you said, they could be hunted and not hurt the population. Usually when it comes to hunting that is a good thing. Who cares about crop damage? Take that off the table, I see that as a moot point when it comes to an overall hunting season. That can be handled by crop damage tags like was said. The main reason people ever want to not hunt something is because in their mind the animal has some special meaning. Or they were raised to not hunt it and it was instilled upon them that way. Hunting them would raise money, just like anything else. The real question should be, would that money be used wisely or wasted? If they had a hunting season and said some of the funds would be used for conservation of the species, it would be very similar to duck hunting now, any hunting really. Dove hunting drew a fuss, wolf hunting does now. Any time a new species is added to the table, someone will complain for a while. They'd complain about deer if we had to bring it up again.
Another example would be the elk herd. They are figuring on a season in a few years once the population is 200 animals. There will be probably 10 tags or less given out I bet, but there will be a hunting season. That will be more okay than shooting a few of the many cranes around. Sorta funny, but elk is okay and crane is not. 
If the crop damage is so rampant then I believe more would be getting tags than just crying about it. The numbers are still very low compared to western states.
The kill it and grill it mentality will get us no where towards a hunt with the crane foundation in our backyard.
Killing such a small number will do nothing to reduce numbers and will have quite the small impact in slowing the growth in population.
Even at 100% success of say 500 cranes, 71,500 still have a chance to breed. That would be a healthy estimate of 20,000 new cranes the next year. Even if the 500 that were killed each paired and had 2 young, thats only a drop of 500 birds vs 20,000.
As much as I would like to harvest cranes here rather than travel, the numbers do not support it.
So just your personal intel. Do you have anything from the DNR official view and stance on this? The issue of the whooping getting shot would not be the biggest weight at the decision table. We will see what the season details are in a few years.
Killing them in the fall in the areas that have large numbers may only make a small dent in the population but is that not better then doing nothing? That might be the loooong fix to the problem but its a movement in the right direction.
Spring or fall... Doesn't matter to me..I just want to kill them n grill them.
Also wondering why you said. "Supposed" crop damage ? Are you saying they don't do harsh crop damage...
1. Only 1 state east of the Mississippi has a season. Kentucky which has killed 140 in two seasons.
2. Its going to be hard enough to get any season much less be the only state in the country to have a spring season.
3. The reason for killing them in the spring is to stop crop damage, those who have crop damage can already receive permits.
4. Our biologists have already basically said they do not want WI to be the poster state for someone killing a whooper.
5. The quota for any season, spring or fall would be so low that it would do little to help with supposed crop crop damage. Kentucky id allowed 350 birds and can't even sell out the tags.
Wisconsin has a better chance at a moose season than a spring sandhill season.
Displaying 1 to 15 of 26 posts
