EP 525. There’s Something About Sandhill Cranes

 

Ramsey Russell: Welcome back to Mojo’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast. Where Today, I am in Calgary, Alberta, taking a few days off, and I am reaching out to my friend Courtnay Conring down in the great state of Alabama. We’re going to take a little side turn, go on the path less traveled. We’re going to talk about a very interesting game bird called sandhill cranes. I get calls about it. I love to hunt it, which is kind of odd. I’m a duck and goose hunter, but I love to hunt sandhill cranes. Courtnay, how the heck are you?

Courtnay Conring: Doing great. How are you?

Ramsey Russell: I’m doing good. What in the world does an Alabama biologist know about sandhill cranes?

Courtnay Conring: The long path to get there.

Ramsey Russell: When you come to a fork in the road, take it.

Studying the Sandhill Crane

Probably like a lot of girls that ended up in the wildlife field, my daddy took me hunting. 

Courtnay Conring: Yeah, yeah, for sure. No. I grew up in northwest Georgia, ended up going to UGA for my wildlife degree over there. After that, I went to Texas Tech to get a master’s degree. I was studying sandhill cranes. And I know we’ve talked about this a little bit. Lubbock is the mecca for the mid-continent population of sandhill cranes, the overwintering birds. There are thousands and thousands of them up there. And so I studied cranes, and I also hunted cranes out in Lubbock.

Ramsey Russell: Well, I’m gonna back up just a little bit. You grew up in Georgia. What was your background like? What did Courtnay do for fun when she was a little girl that somehow led her into the wildlife field in the first place?

Courtnay Conring: Probably like a lot of girls that ended up in the wildlife field, my daddy took me hunting. My daddy and my uncle both. Just when we had free time, we went hunting. We fished when we couldn’t go hunt. We mostly hunted deer and dove and pigs just because that’s what’s available in northwest Georgia. But yeah, did that growing up. Then I ended up getting into high school and learning. I did sports too, so I did a good many sports. But then I got into high school, and I had an FFA advisor who was a die-hard duck hunter. And he was telling me, “You know what you need to do? You need to go be a biologist.” And I was like, “What, like a game warden?” And he was like, “No, you need to be a biologist.” And he joked, he said, “You’re too smart to be a game warden.” But anyway, he told me about the degree program that was available. He was an Auburn grad, and he told me about that program. My family preferred in-state tuition, so I ended up going to UGA to get a wildlife degree. And to be honest, I thought that I was going to get a degree that would make me a better hunter. But I don’t know if that necessarily worked out like that. I think probably just more time in the woods made that happen.

Ramsey Russell: You know what’s funny you say that. Because back in the day when I went into wildlife and forestry, everybody was a hunter and fisherman. And you know, but there’s really not a lot of advantage in knowing the scientific name of sweetgum, I mean, there’s really not a lot of woodsmanship advantage between the covers of a book or under a microscope, you know, but you learn a lot. And it’s funny how you start walking through the woods or walking through the wetlands, and you begin to see it differently and perceive it differently and kind of get a vague understanding of how this system works differently than you did when you were just out there stomping around trying to kill a deer.

Courtnay Conring: Absolutely.

Ramsey Russell: But still. Okay, so you end up in a wildlife program at the University of Georgia. That’s a reach from growing up hunting deer, and I’m assuming turkeys and rabbits and whatnot, you know, like we all did in the Deep South, to sandhill cranes. There’s no sandhill cranes in Georgia, is there?

Courtnay Conring: Yeah, so there are, but not where I grew up. Where I grew up, an hour east, you could run into a couple of sandhill cranes, and an hour west in Alabama, you could. But there weren’t really any where I was at. And to be honest, I had never even heard of them when I got interviewed for the position. But here’s how it shook out. My first internship in 2011 was at Hollandale, Mississippi, on Yazoo National Wildlife.

Ramsey Russell: Wow. What year would that have been?

Courtnay Conring: 2011.

Ramsey Russell: Golly.

A Start in Wetland Management for Waterfowl

What is a sandhill crane?

Courtnay Conring: So I got an internship with the Fish and Wildlife Service over there, and it was life-changing. I rode around in a little bitty Go-Devil boat, looking at wood duck nest boxes and managing impoundments for shorebirds. And I just absolutely fell in love with wetland ecosystems and water birds, especially waterfowl. After that, I ended up going to UGA. You could select different courses, like you had these electives. And one of my electives was Wetland Management for Waterfowl with Dr. Chamberlain. Dr. Chamberlain had just recently come from LSU, and he kind of just helped facilitate my love for waterfowl and wetland management. Right after graduating, I got a position at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, looking at samples, like core samples, for black duck forage. We were looking at ag and different moist-soil plants under a microscope, seeing what black ducks were eating or what was available to black ducks. And I get an email from Dr. Chamberlain. He goes, “Hey, one of my old grad students from LSU has a research project on sandhill cranes out in Texas. He’s like, I know that it’s not technically a waterfowl, but I think you can translate this to waterfowl work when you get done. I really think it’s a good opportunity, and you should try it.” And I responded to him like, “What is a sandhill crane?”

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, yeah.

Courtnay Conring: You know, so, long story to get there, but yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Hold that thought, hold that thought. What is a sandhill crane? What was it like for a Georgia girl working in Hollandale, Mississippi? I mean, what was it like? Because, you know, I grew up in the Mississippi Delta, of course I know where Hollandale is and Yazoo National Wildlife Refuge, and I know a lot of the staff over there or did in the past. But, you know, I’ve met a lot of people that moved or were stationed or working in the Mississippi Delta from elsewhere, and some of them loved it, and some of them, it just, it was bewildering to them. It’s a land unto itself. I feel like a land and a culture unto itself, for sure. Well, so what was it like? What was your impression of the megatropolis, the great megatropolis of Hollandale?

Courtnay Conring: I absolutely loved it.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Courtnay Conring: I mean, You’ll probably gather this by the time we’re done talking, but I’m a fairly feral person, and they put me in a trailer for the summer and cut me loose with a boat and a truck and basically let me be as wild as I wanted to be out on National Wildlife Refuge land and learn about wildlife out there. So I absolutely loved it. You may know Mike and Charlie Yelverton. They were working over there, and they just took me in, and I don’t know. It was awesome. I loved the people there. There was a guy who worked there at the time. He was an equipment operator who every year dressed up as Holt Collier for the Holt Collier event.

Ramsey Russell: Golly, yeah, yeah.

Courtnay Conring: Yeah,and so it was, you know, just learning about all that and learning about the history of it. It’s just incredible. And it was unlike anything, like northwest Georgia is very forested, very mountainous is a stretch, but, like, hilly. It’s not anything like it. And it was just like, I don’t know. I absolutely fell in love with it.

Ramsey Russell: So, yeah, I think it’s the crown jewel of the Mississippi Delta. That complex is something else. I’ve hunted it for deer, I’ve hunted it for waterfowl in different places. It’s a very unique and interesting place. The staff over there is truly amazing. Was Tim still the project leader when you were working?

Courtnay Conring: I don’t think it was Tim. I can’t remember. Justin Sexton was the refuge manager.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, I think Tim had retired by then, but it’s still just. I was just curious what it was like to move to the Mississippi Delta from Georgia. I can see the similarities, but not much. Now I’m gonna go back to the question. What is a sandhill crane? That was a question you had for Dr. Mike. What is a sandhill crane? What is a sandhill crane? And here’s where I’m getting at this, is any of the list, the collector’s list, the 41, or the 58, or however you count, species and subspecies. I’m a splitter, not a lumper. So I don’t count 41. I count more. Any of the lists you see, you see sandhill crane, but it’s not a duck or a goose.

Courtnay Conring: No, It’s not.

Do You Hunt Sandhill Cranes Like You Hunt Ducks?

I mean, you know, I have pass-shot them, but I mean they decoy extremely well.

Ramsey Russell: You know, it’s like, I’ve often wondered, well, why don’t we put coots on there if we’re gonna have sandhill cranes on these lists. But it’s not really a rail either, you know, but the similarities is that you hunt sandhill cranes like a duck hunt. I mean, you know, I have pass-shot them, but I mean they decoy extremely well.

Courtnay Conring: Yep.

Ramsey Russell: And so I can see it. I mean, I would almost doubt very seriously there are just pure sandhill crane hunters that don’t hunt waterfowl. That’s what I would guess because it’s such a similar. But what is a sandhill crane? 

Courtnay Conring: So you kind of hit the nail on the head with talking about coots and rails and stuff too. Obviously, they’re not waterfowl because they’re not a duck, goose, or swan. And so they fall into what the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service kind of groups them as the webless migratory game birds. And so you got coots there, you got rails in there, you got woodcock in there. Yeah. So they’re a webless migratory game bird. They don’t look like the other things in there necessarily, but that is what they are. Kind of their own little classification of it, I guess. Arguably, they could also be considered like a wading bird, but as far as the feds are concerned, they’re a webless migratory game bird.

Ramsey Russell: Wow. So I guess that’s the answer you got when you said what is a sandhill crane? And you ended up going, you ended up going to Texas Panhandle, up around Lubbock to chase these birds.

Courtnay Conring: Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I think Chamberlain probably was more along the lines of you’ll find out. You know, that’s just his attitude towards them. But no, I went to, I moved to Lubbock and my study sites I actually studied. We’ll get into the populations probably at some point of sandhill cranes to kind of understand their distribution. But in Lubbock, Texas, that’s in the high plains, in the Panhandle, that is where I attended school. So Texas Tech University is located there. I actually studied a population that’s further west called the Lower Colorado River Valley. Population of sandhill cranes, which is on the southern. They winter on the southern Arizona and California borders. And so my study sites were down in like the Sonoran Desert, but I hunted cranes in, in Lubbock.

Ramsey Russell: Wow. That’s kind of where I started. That’s kind of where I started hunting sandhill cranes too. Back in the day. The sandhill cranes first really kind of sort of came up on my radar as a hunter. I was years ago I was still with the federal government, still with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, very briefly. And I did a detail up near the Quill Lakes, banding ducks. Of course, I’m asking all the farmers and everybody we meet, you know, about duck and goose hunting. I’m so excited, you know, to be up in that neck of the woods. And I remember asking a farmer we bought grain from if he duck or goose hunted. He said, heck, no, we don’t hunt them. He says, all we kill are these sandhills. I think he and his sons hunted sandhills every day. And they hated them. I mean, they, like, you know, we say, oh, man, he hates them ducks. They hated them because to hear him say it, they would land in the grain while it was still standing before it was harvested and just. And just strip the heads. He said, man, they cost us up here, you know, and we just hate them. We want to keep them out of our fields and stuff like that. And of course, we’d see them in the fall, see them coming, but. And so I actually started getting out, met some folks over in the Texas Panhandle and started hunting sandhill cranes and geese and ducks. But sandhill cranes, It was a lot of fun. It was. It wasn’t a duck or a goose. That’s what I remember. It was a very interesting bird. But they were fun to hunt.

Courtnay Conring: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I agree with you there. When we would go hunt them, I mean, it was part of it that was just the fact that, like, the sheer number of them, you know, out there, like, you can sit there, and in a morning, as flat as it is, there’s no telling how many thousands, tens of thousands of birds you can see in a morning. So, like, there’s that aspect of it. And the same goes for the geese out there. And like you said, we were not solely sandhill crane hunters. We had the decoys out for sandhill cranes, but goose. Whatever came up, it was getting shot at.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Best Decoy Spreads for Sandhill Cranes

We had mostly silo decoys.

Courtnay Conring: Yeah. We would go out and we would ask permission from landowners, and they, at the time, a lot of them were just like, sandhill cranes. What? Sure, whatever, like, they didn’t care. This was in 2013 to 2016 range is when I was at Tech. But they didn’t mind at all. And we’d go out and we’d try to find areas before the season started that would have. Milo is pretty big or like, sorghum is pretty popular out there to be and then that short corn. There’s some of that out there. And even cotton. We’d try to figure out what fields had that. And then once October came around and the birds started showing up, we’d start picking out where we wanted to get permission on. And yeah, we would go out and hunt them three to five days a week. There was plentiful opportunity and hide under tumbleweeds. A lot of people would have layout blinds, but we just learned. I mean, I’m five foot tall, so I don’t. There’s not much for me to hide, you know, so we just be pulling over on the side of the road on the way to the spot and grab a tumbleweed or two and lay under tumbleweeds in these fields and wait for the birds to decoy in.

Ramsey Russell: What kind of decoys were you using? What kind of setup were you using? Were you calling to them or just putting decoys out?

Courtnay Conring: Yeah, so we would do. I’ll talk about the decoys first. So we were. We had mostly silo decoys. Now in Alabama, I use mostly the stuffer decoys just because I kind of have a fleet available. But when I was just getting into it, we’d use those silos.

Ramsey Russell: Did you say stuffer? You were using stuffer decoys

Courtnay Conring: In Alabama.

Ramsey Russell: Wow. Okay.

Courtnay Conring: Yeah, yeah. And because I have kind of like a fleet, I’ve shot some of them now and I’ve stuffed them. And so now we have that as an option. But back then, we were just getting started. We’d use like those silo socks. Those things actually haven’t worked well at all for me in Alabama, but they worked great out there. And I think what it boiled down to is you’ve always got a good bit of wind out there, so it keeps them kind of moving and makes them look a little more realistic. But yeah, we’d set those decoys up and I mean, kind of like you talked about it similar to duck or geese. We’d have tried to have the wind at our back, the sun out of our face, have a spread set out where it’d be like an open. A lot of times we do like an open string or an open U type shape and have little family groups. I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed that about sandhill cranes, but they live in family groups throughout their wintering season when we’re typically hunting them. And so, yeah, put them in little family groups kind of out there with little pockets open for us to get in and shoot at them and then call in wise did call some, but it wasn’t always that valuable. Mostly if you had birds that were, you know, a couple hundred yards away that could still hear you because you remember the wind’s whipping a lot of the time out there, you could call to them and it might get on a turn and look, but it wasn’t. Calling wasn’t near as important as just making sure you were somewhere where the cranes had been feeding.

Ramsey Russell: Right. Being on the X on the feed, you know, they’re obviously a very vocal bird, and it never ceases to amaze me just how far that sound carries. It’s like a lot of times when I hear them, they’re in a great range for me to hear. Even without wearing the Tetras, I can hear a sandhill crane. But when I finally see them, they could be at what appears to be a mile off. Oh yeah, that sound just carries. What interesting vocalizations they make. I’d almost describe it as like a dinosaur or a pterodactyl or something.

Courtnay Conring: Yeah, it’s pretty incredible. I think there’s a paper or something out that has, I think they have over 20 different vocalizations. So, like, very vocal bird and, like you said, very prehistoric. I always love turkey hunting in South Florida sometimes. And when I go down to South Florida, you know, you’re down in the Everglades and the fog’s all rolling in, and you’ve got all these different bird noises that just sound like you’re in Jurassic Park. And sure enough, cranes are one of them right there, and they just fit right in, like, it just sounds prehistoric.

Stillness: Essential for Hunting Sandhills & Waterfowl

And I think they detect movement pretty easily.

Ramsey Russell: They fit right in. And one of the differences I’ve noticed about ducks and geese and sandhill cranes is, obviously, you’ve got, you know, concealment and being still is important. Waterfowl hunting is one of the basic fundamentals of being a successful duck hunter, blending in, being invisible. But to me, a sandhill has more acute eyesight than a duck or a goose. To me, it does. To me, it’s like if they see anything, any shine, any glare, anything, I just think they’ve got a different eyesight than a duck or a goose for sure. But on the one hand, you know, when you put a duck or goose blind out, let’s just say we’re gonna put an A-frame out in the middle of a field or on the edge, we want to blend in perfectly. And I’ve seen sandhill, and I’ve hunted sandhill, where we’re not blended in perfectly. I’ve literally seen cotton trailers fast-grassed in a milo field, and you can see it a mile off. It’s conspicuous. But, by God, those cranes can’t see humanity, and they’ll come right in. They’ll land right at your feet. But I think they’ve got a little more acute eyesight than typical waterfowl. Have you seen that or are you aware of that?
Courtnay Conring: I agree. And I think they detect movement pretty easily. And so I think that boils down to it. And, like, kind of what I was saying earlier with calling, like, it’s, if you’re calling cranes and they’re getting within the decoy range, you’re making a mistake. They’re going to see you making an, even just like that breath moving. If there’s any kind of movement there, they’re going to see that. And so I’ve got a funny story about their eyesight. I’m not even 100% sure if this is what happened or not, but I’ll just kind of give you an example of where I go when I think about their eyesight. We were trapping them down at Cibola National Wildlife Refuge in southern Arizona. And we had a rocket net set out, and it was in a cut cornfield. So we had the rocket net set out. The rocket was well-covered. It was blending in perfectly with the corn and everything. But there was a brown wire that ran from the cut corn where the rocket net was set up back to the standing corn, where the detonator and the crews and all that kind of stuff were. And it was like a brown or black lamp cord or something. And the birds would come, and they’d land long, and they might march in, but they were always keeping their guard up, looking at something, or they would fly over multiple times. And really, I finally just got, it was like day four, and we’re having issues catching them. And I’m like, what could they be seeing? Because, to me, as a hunter, I’m sitting here thinking, I feel like they’re flaring. Like, there’s something here that they’re flaring. And so I made the effort to go out. And you know how cornrows go up and down, up and down. Well, I went, and I put it under the dirt where I could and covered the stuff where I needed to and hid that wire, probably 50 yards’ worth of wire, back to the cut corn. And the next day, they landed right there at it.
Ramsey Russell: Golly. It was that wild. It was that wild.

Courtnay Conring: It was that wild. I really think it was that wild.

Researching Sandhills

They’re more widely distributed across the North American continent than I really kind of had imagined.

Ramsey Russell: You know, it’s funny what waterfowl will see. I can remember Mama Duck down in Louisiana telling me they were gonna rocket net some speckled bellies, and for some reason, the specs wouldn’t come in. They couldn’t understand it. And what they figured out, or she thinks she figured out, was the fact that where they had been driving the ATVs up to the site through the dew-laden grass and left tire tracks, and those birds were flared. There’s something about those tire tracks that made them nervous. I wonder about that every time I’m driving out into a field going goose hunting. You know, man, we’re riding all over and we’re leaving these tire tracks. I wonder if they’re gonna flare off of it. You know, they’re so used to it. But it’s amazing how canny these birds can be. What was the crux of your research? What were you doing? You were rocket-netting birds? Tell me what all you were doing in grad school in regards to sandhill cranes?
Courtnay Conring: Yeah. So the Lower Colorado River Valley population of sandhill cranes is the smallest of the migratory populations, and it was probably one of the most understudied. They breed up in the Elko Valley area of northeastern Nevada and southern Idaho and then winter in the Lower Colorado River Valley, hence the name down in southwestern Arizona and the Imperial Valley in southern California. And so there was some interest from the feds to look at and get more information just baseline ecological information for these birds, because a lot of the birds in the surrounding areas, specifically the Rocky Mountain population, were hunted, and there was kind of close overlap, or it seemed like their ranges might potentially overlap, and they were starting to see overlap with the mid-continent and Rocky Mountain populations of them. And so what it boiled down to was they needed more information on this small population of birds. And so I went down there, and we put transmitter terminals on these birds that were solar-powered, GPS little transmitters on their legs, and we rocket-netted them, and we kind of just got some baseline data. So the first thing we did was look at their home ranges, their overwintering home ranges. We looked at the fidelity of those home ranges, so year-to-year, did they come back to the same spot? We looked at the resource selection of the wintering ranges, so what were they using during what times of day in terms of resources, like, were they using open water, were they using cropland, etc., And then, for the last chapter of my thesis, we looked at migratory connectivity and usage, so we looked at where the birds stopped and staged, or did they stage between southern Arizona and northeastern Nevada? So those are kind of the top objectives of my research.
Ramsey Russell: How long did that research take?
Courtnay Conring: It took about two and a half years. I started in August of 2013 and finished in May of 2016.

Ramsey Russell: Wow. I actually hunted one of the last big sandhill crane hunts. Now, we got on a great sandhill crane hunt down in southern Saskatchewan just a couple of weeks ago. It was wonderful. And occasionally up here, we’ll go out and shoot sandhill cranes as an afternoon hunt or something like that. But one of the last big, memorable sandhill crane hunts I went on was out in New Mexico. I was actually south of Roswell with a couple of young guys that did a wonderful job. They put us on the X. I think they run a little outfitting service. But wow, what a great hunt. It was a harvested milo field, red clay. I just remembered the red soil, and those birds just, it was a great wind. The wind was at our back, and it seemed like it took an hour for those birds to get across that field. It’s like we were sitting till Daddy brought the breakfast tacos, some really, really good breakfast tacos. And man, they were all gone. The coffee was gone, everything was gone. It was 8:30, 9 o’clock. We hadn’t seen a sandhill crane. I’m thinking, well, this is a bust. And here they come. Boy, you could hear, like I say, you could hear them before you saw them. And you look up, you see these little lines, these little ant lines across the horizon coming our way. It took, I mean, you could have read a book before they got to the decoys. And the thing about sandhill cranes is once it happens, I tell people it’s over so quick. If they’re peeling off and decoying, it’s a lot like shooting flat-screen TVs out in the field. So what we had to do was the first volley. We had to throttle back half the blind, shoot half the blind, film half the blind, swap off, just to stretch it out a little bit. But once they started coming, it was just wave after wave after wave of them. And I really, really enjoy shooting sandhills. But what’s occurred to me in our conversation this morning is there’s more sandhill cranes. They’re more widely distributed across the North American continent than I really kind of had imagined. I mean, I didn’t realize they were in parts or near California. And I know they’re in Florida, so that puts them in the Pacific Flyway, the Central Flyway, which is, I guess, the femoral artery of where the migratory sandhills are and where they’re hunted. Then we jump over to the Mississippi Flyway. I know we’ve got them in Mississippi, you all got them in Alabama, and then they’re in Florida. I mean, they’re nationwide, aren’t they?

Courtnay Conring: Yeah, for sure.

Ramsey Russell: How many populations are there?

Courtnay Conring: Yeah, so that’s what I was gonna say. We probably can do a little breakdown of populations and subspecies. So we’ve got, I think, nine. Okay. Yeah. So nine total populations of sandhill cranes and three of them are non-migratory. Your non-migratory ones are going to be your Florida, your Mississippi, and your Cuban sandhill cranes.

Ramsey Russell: You say Cuban?

Courtnay Conring: Yep.

Ramsey Russell: Cuban. Okay.

Courtnay Conring: Yeah, there’s some down in Cuba. And so those are the three non-migratory populations. They stay there year-round. And then from east to west, you have the eastern population of sandhill cranes. They migrate. You have the mid-continent population, the Rocky Mountain population, which gets over towards the Intermountain West, like Montana, down to Mexico via the San Luis Valley in Colorado. Then the Middle Rio Grande in New Mexico comes that way. Going back to the mid-continent real quick, it is the one that stretches from Mexico all the way to Siberia. It’s the whole central U.S. following up through that route. And then again, the Rocky Mountain population just west of it, the Lower Colorado River Valley population west of that, which we already discussed, where they typically are. The Central Valley population, which is in eastern Oregon and winters in central California. And then finally, the Pacific population, which breeds up in the coastal areas of Alaska and then travels down to southern California for its wintering grounds.

Ramsey Russell: So when we go out to the Central Flyway Texas, Panhandle, New Mexico, maybe parts of Arizona, Canada. Where are those birds coming from? Where are they breeding?

Courtnay Conring: You said Texas, New Mexico, and Canada?

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, Central Flyway, that Central Flyway population.

Courtnay Conring: Yeah. Most of those birds are going to be part of the mid-continent population. And so those birds are going to be coming from anywhere from the northern provinces of Canada all the way up across Alaska and into Siberia. They kind of breed throughout that whole entire range. And then again, they’ll come down to, I think, 80 to 90% of them overwinter on the High Plains, which is the eastern part of New Mexico, and the Texas Panhandle. But then there’s a little bit of overlap. The ones in the Middle Rio Grande Valley of New Mexico are going to be your Rocky Mountain population birds. And those are more breeding in, like, Montana, Wyoming, southern parts probably of Alberta. Over in that area.

Ramsey Russell: I’ve seen those birds. I have been up in Montana in the summertime, and it just blew my mind. I don’t know what I would have imagined a sandhill crane, what kind of habitat, I would have imagined him, utilize him, but it wasn’t what I saw him in, which was near a little creek or stream in real thick brush. It’s like, now you see them, now you don’t. It’d be two adults walking around with one or two fledglings or, you know, young birds. I just didn’t expect them to be in, I mean, you’d think they’d be averse to walking in real thick cover where bobcats and coyotes and predators could hide. But they were impervious. They were just walking in and out of it like nobody’s business. It shocked me to see them there.

Courtnay Conring: Mm. It’s all about the time of year. I mean, during the wintering grounds or wintering time, they’re not going to be doing that. They’re going to prefer more open terrain where they can see better and all that. But in their breeding range, there’s a benefit to that concealment at that point in time. It is wild because the majority of them are going to breed in areas like wet meadows up in those higher elevations. But you’ll find them, like in Montana, for example, near these little mountaintop ponds surrounded by ephemeral wetlands. There might be just one pair breeding there. I don’t know, as you can tell, If they breed all the way in Siberia and their range stretches all the way down to Cuba, there’s a lot of variation among populations and subspecies.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, yeah. I wonder, on that migratory, the ones that go up to the Arctic and breed, are they nesting in the same vicinity as any other ducks and geese?

Courtnay Conring: You know, that’s probably a good question. I would assume probably yes and no, depending on where they are. I think I understand that snow geese, for example, typically use tundra.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, yeah. So, I wonder, are these birds looking for taller cover or open tundra?

Identifying Sandhill Crane Subspecies While on the Hunt

The next time I’m out in that part of the world and we’re bagging a lot of sandhills, how can I differentiate between the lesser and greater subspecies?

Courtnay Conring: Yeah, so like, when I went with some students from Texas Tech and my previous advisor, Dr. Grisham, out to Oregon this past year, I got to see a little bit better what they use on their breeding grounds. Out there, we were scanning with binoculars because we were looking for colts to trap for a project. These cranes, greater sandhill cranes, are four and a half to five feet tall. Scanning with binoculars, you can basically see just the tops of their heads in some of that cover. I’m not saying that’s always what they’re using, but once they had a colt that could get out of the nest and kind of roam, feed, and do its thing, they were on the move in that kind of cover. I think, for them, it works out because their head acts as a periscope. They can look up and see around while their colt stays concealed in the vegetation.

Ramsey Russell: I’ve always heard there are greater and lesser sandhills in that central flyway population that I’ve hunted. I don’t know. I’ve shot some ginormous ones, and I’ve shot some smaller ones. I call myself looking male and female because I can’t tell, they’re sexually similar. I don’t know what the hard and fast rule would be. The next time I’m out in that part of the world and we’re bagging a lot of sandhills, how can I differentiate between the lesser and greater subspecies?

Courtnay Conring: I would say if it’s under 4 feet tall, it’s probably a lesser. That’s kind of the threshold. If your birds are 3 1/2 to 4 feet tall, they’re likely in the lesser category. If they’re 4 to 5 feet tall, they’re in the greater category. There used to be a subspecies called the Canadian sandhill, considered an intermediate subspecies between the two. But genetic testing has now lumped them with the greater sandhill, just a smaller version of the greater sandhill crane. The easiest way I can tell is by height. I’m 5 feet tall. If I hold the bird up and it’s about my height, I know it’s a greater. Depending on where I’m hunting, like the eastern population we hunt in Alabama, I know I’ve shot a greater. But if I’m in Lubbock, again, it’s going to depend on the size compared to me. If it’s smaller and chest level, it’s probably a lesser.

Ramsey Russell: Wow, wow. I’ll try to remember that. Why do you think some of these sandhill cranes migrate and some do not? It’s interesting to me that the Florida and Mississippi populations do not migrate, but the rest of them do.

Courtnay Conring: That’s a big question for me. I’m not really sure, other than assuming there was some kind of event in their evolutionary history, whether geological or climatic, that prevented them from migrating. You wouldn’t think that would be the case since they can fly, but maybe it was a large ice mass or something. I have no idea. This is just me spitballing here. Maybe they had all the resources they needed in one spot, and it wasn’t energetically expensive for me to go anywhere. I got anything I need right here. It could be remnants, so they used to be everywhere all the time and now they are not. That’s something for someone with a Ph.D. on sandhill cranes, not me.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, well, here’s something interesting to me. I just learned that sandhills are in Cuba. Never heard that one. In terms of the Florida and Mississippi populations, you know, when I see and hunt sandhills in Canada, New Mexico, or the Texas panhandle, you see them in open ground, just wide open, and I mean agriculture. But when you see them down on the Gulf Coast in Florida or Mississippi, they’re walking around in the woods. I mean, they’re in great turkey habitat, under the open longleaf pines or slash pine canopies, walking around the palm fronds and it’s like wow they just looks out of place. You know what I am saying? It’s so different to see them in wooded habitats versus open ground. It’s crazy.

Courtnay Conring: Yeah, and that makes you think they’ve probably been residential there all along. That’s all they’ve ever known is to choose that and to be in there. Because in Mississippi, they’re in what’s considered wet pine meadows. And in South Florida where they use. They’ll be in subdivisions in south Florida. In the wild, where they typically are going to occur, they’re going to be in these pine ecosystems that are readily burned in a lot of instances that are more open or that get the rainfall through the Everglades that help keep the water also. I mean, help keep the vegetation also kind of in that early successional stage. Either way, it’s still relatively more visible than what’s available to them. Otherwise, I would assume.

What Habitats do Migratory Sandhill Cranes Prefer?

You know, we say that they’re granivorous, and they are, but I’ve watched cranes eat mice, I’ve watched them eat frogs. It’s kind of like they’ll eat anything small enough they can fit in their mouth.

Ramsey Russell: How would you describe the migratory sandhill crane habitat historically? Obviously, they’re granivorous and eat grains almost entirely. You were telling me that historically they were lumped with herons and egrets, which they’re clearly not. How would you describe the migratory populations’ habitats before agriculture and now? It’s something I’m trying to ask.

Courtnay Conring: Yeah, I mean, I’ll try to answer it. I’m assuming that before now, it’s hard to know. I’m not familiar enough with the super historic literature to know for sure, like what crane numbers were, but I can’t help but wonder if agriculture has had an artificially high carrying capacity effect.
Ramsey Russell: I wondered the same thing. Yeah.
Courtnay Conring: You know, and so what we’re seeing now is maybe not what it was historically. And so, used to, before everything was ag, it was more of that rolling prairie, at least in a lot of the United States, routinely had fire in it and stuff. And so it makes you think that what they use on their breeding grounds is probably what was more throughout their entire range, like that, you know, a couple-foot-tall wet marsh-type habitats. Probably what they used, if I had to guess. You know, we say that they’re granivorous, and they are, but I’ve watched cranes eat mice, I’ve watched them eat frogs. It’s kind of like they’ll eat anything small enough they can fit in their mouth.
Ramsey Russell: Okay.
Courtnay Conring: Yeah. And so it makes me assume that, like, maybe I’m not as familiar with more northern species, but like southern moist soil plant-wise, maybe barnyard grasses and some of the millet, some of the native millet, might have been something that they targeted or anything with those seed heads. They probably also got into some of those sedge tubers. It’s just a matter of now grains are a lot more readily available, you know, and so it’s something that’s easy access for them, and it’s what’s there, and they’ve adapted to it.

Waterfowl Adapting to Agriculture 

I think that they probably just learned that this is an easy way to live. It’s what’s available. They’ve adapted to it, and, you know, they’re benefiting from it now.

Ramsey Russell: I just always find that interesting that so many of these game birds we hunt, waterfowl, ducks, geese, swans, and cranes, have so readily transitioned into agriculture. Like, you know, talking to Rob Sawyer, a historian down in Texas, historically, snow geese would fly from the prairies and pretty much overfly, you know, the central and go straight down to the marshes down in Texas, where they were marsh birds. They were rank marsh birds that lived out in the marsh in Asia, vegetation out in the marsh, and along comes rice. And they began to transition into coastal rice in Texas, Louisiana, and now they’ve, I mean, they’ve just embraced it. They just, generations, snow goose generations later, they are an agricultural bird. And I believe that probably the abundance of agriculture is part of what buoyed their population explosion. And it could be that way with sandhills too. I don’t know. It could be.
Courtnay Conring: Yeah, I can definitely see that. As much as they’re willing to use it, and I mean, that’s what we pretty much target hunting them in. You know, I don’t ever think of, if I was in anywhere picking a place to hunt, I’m not going to choose places that, I mean, they’re not in a lot of the places where there’s marsh anymore. And they’re in their breeding, I mean, in their wintering range, where we’re hunting. So, yeah, I’m with you. They’re probably. I think that they probably just learned that this is an easy way to live. It’s what’s available. They’ve adapted to it, and, you know, they’re benefiting from it now.
Ramsey Russell: Are you aware of when hunting sandhills kind of started and began? I mean, it’s like, on the one hand, I assume, because they are great to eat, that back in the olden days, I mean, seriously, back before the Migratory Bird Treaty Act—there were recipes for cedar waxwings and cardinals and mockingbirds in the Houston newspaper, you know, for housewives. You know, they didn’t eat just ducks and geese. We ate everything out in nature. But at the same time, when I go and, you know, when you look at some of these old black-and-white photos, you don’t see the side of a boxcar with a whole bunch of cranes. You don’t see the sedan, old sedan piled up with geese and ducks. You don’t see sandhills. You see geese and ducks. So I wonder, were they targeting them? Were they protected? Were people eating them? When did even hunting sandhill cranes kind of become a thing? Like, I did learn that New Mexico was where it restarted in the United States, but when did it become a thing, you know?
Courtnay Conring: Well, Native American populations definitely hunted sandhill cranes. I’ve seen images that were, like, drawing images of where people were dressed with, like, black, white, like, whitetail antlers on their head and like different kinds of, or I guess, like kind of like a fur over their body trying to stalk sandhill cranes. So, like, basically, they would try to act like they’re a deer and they’re trying to get close enough to get a shot at a sandhill crane. So I know they were definitely pursued by Native Americans. I guess there’s that to start with. And then with European settlement, you have the market hunting era. You also have the feathered hat era, where everything that had feathers was getting shot to get stuck in hats. I definitely think overhunting did contribute to the decline of the species once upon a time. And this was probably mostly affecting, like, the eastern population of sandhill cranes, because you have the eastern, the way the settlers came in from the east, which is what Aldo Leopold spent a lot of time talking about, was sandhill crane decline. And then I guess in 1918, we had the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, and the hunting of them ceased sometime around that time frame. And then they didn’t pick back up until 1961, I believe, is when the first, like, experimental season started back in New Mexico.
Ramsey Russell: Wow, 1961.
Courtnay Conring: Yeah. And if I had to guess, there’s probably, you know, from 1918 to 2000, or let me get this right, 1918 to 1961, in that time frame, I mean, I’m sure there’s people who were alive willing to say, yeah, sandhill cranes are good to eat, you know, which probably also helped prompt wanting a sandhill crane season back and then potentially had depredation issues as well. I’m not sure, but that would be my guess.

Best Recipes for Sandhill Cranes

They taste like great lean, more like great lean beef to me than a duck or a goose.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. Well, sandhill cranes definitely are good to eat. I’ve heard them called since way back when, “ribeye in the sky.” The first time I ever ate sandhill crane, I was actually working on a deer ranch down in South Texas, and our supervisor grilled out a bunch of sandhill cranes. I’d never even heard of it, you know, and it was good. It was good. I think he overdid them, but it was good. But I’ve always said they’re more like a sirloin than a ribeye. They don’t have the marbling, but they do not taste like ducks or geese. They taste like great lean, more like great lean beef to me than a duck or a goose.
Courtnay Conring: Yeah, for sure. I agree. Yeah. My daddy is hunts and stuff, but he’s kind of picky when it comes to birds and eating waterfowl and stuff. And he’ll be like, ah, it smells good, but I don’t think I like it. And I made him try sandhill cranes. And he loves beef. He’s always loved steak, and he absolutely loved the sandhill crane. So even his little picky self liked the crane. But I typically like, you just said I grill them, but not for long. They’ll either go in the cast iron with butter for a short period of time, one to two minutes on each side, depending on if it’s a lesser or a greater, because the greaters are a little thicker. I might throw the greaters in the oven for another, you know, seven or so minutes to kind of get them cooked all the way through a little bit more. But yeah, I salt, pepper, garlic, butter on them.

Ramsey Russell: Really just like you would lean beef is how I’ve cooked them. You know, one of my favorite recipes recently, I do a lot of sirloin steaks this way. Boy, let me tell you what, I’ll eat the heck out of a sirloin. I might eat sirloin steak three times a week at home cooking it this way. But it’s a simple recipe, and it’s just a hot skillet, salt, pepper, garlic, whatever, you know, Montreal-type seasoning. Put it down on that hot skillet and let it just sear, let it just crust over. And then when I flip it over, here’s where it gets good, I put a big heaping tablespoon of bacon grease on top of that meat and let it just start to melt. And then it melts off the sides, and it gets up under and starts to sizzle. So it adds fat to it, but it also adds just a subtle bacon flavor. And that’s a great way to cook Sandhill crane. I’ve had them grille, I think that’s a very easy way to cook it. And like you say, just really over a hot fire, just briefly, just enough to cook the outside and leave the inside pink to red. One time, it seemed like I had just gotten back from Texas Panhandle and had a bunch of them, had like two or three gallons of filets. And we had a big cookout. We were mid-September, I think this year was the 21st or 22nd annual Ms. Ducks Till Hunt there at my duck camp. I hadn’t been there in five or six years to attend it, but one time it seemed like I soaked them in orange juice concentrate. I think I may have seasoned it with a little salt and red pepper flakes. And then, like I said, I cooked them quick over the fire. But as they were coming off and just gonna rest for a little bit on the tray, I put a little maple syrup on them. And that turned out pretty darn good.

Courtnay Conring: That sounds like it’d be good. I think maple syrup and oranges are always a good combination.

Ramsey Russell: Anybody that knows me knows I’ll chicken fry anything. So, I mean, Sandhill crane is good for chicken frying.

Courtnay Conring: Yeah, for sure. And I’ll tell you something else that’s good. There’s this cheese, it’s called Boursin cheese. It’s like a spreadable type cheese with garlic and herbs in it. And you put that on top of it after it’s been seared, its money. I do it with backstrap, too.

Ramsey Russell: Man, that sounds good. That sounds exactly up my alley to do something like that.

Courtnay Conring: And I’ll tell you this too, you talked about tacos earlier. Them legs on a crane, we take the legs off those cranes, cook them down, and make them shredded meat. Throw in some green chilies in there with them and some onions and stuff, and put them in tacos.

Ramsey Russell: You know, all the Sandhill cranes. I’ve always breasted. I’ve never skinned the bird whole, but I should. It’s like a wild turkey. I know you’re a wild turkey hunter, obviously, and most of the wild turkeys I’ve seen harvested, they just breast them out. It’s a great big ol’—man, I am a, my favorite part of a wild turkey are the legs and thighs. And they’re tough as can be with those steel cables if you don’t do it right. But I can see doing Sandhill cranes the same way I would do turkey legs. And I learned this out in New Mexico. In fact, a couple of guys I met and hunted with described how they cook duck and goose legs. So I applied it to turkeys, put them in a crock pot with duck fat and just make a confit, and those turkey legs and thighs will cook down. You take your tongs and get—I mean, it’s literally like these gnarly steel cables, those tendons you pull out of a wild turkey leg. But then you’ve got this great dark, not too dark, turkey meat that you can chop up and then put back in a skillet, season, and make street tacos with or barbecue sandwiches or something. I guess Sandhill would probably be amazing like that.

Courtnay Conring: Oh yeah, it’s good. I usually just throw mine in a crock pot with a little bit of beef broth and let it cook down. And then once I got it shredded, I’ll throw in extra ingredients to let it soak and have that flavor. But yeah, make tacos or, like you said, barbecue sandwiches, anything you can do with shredded meat with it.

Ramsey Russell: Your experience out west doing your research with Sandhill cranes, is that what parlayed you into being a wildlife biologist in the state of Alabama? Was that the skill set with Sandhill cranes that led you to Alabama?

Courtnay Conring: No, it wasn’t per se. What led me there is I still wanted to be a duck biologist, so I ended up accepting a position with the state as the biologist over some waterfowl management areas in northeast Alabama over near Lake Guntersville. So that’s what got me to Alabama. I just happened to show up around the same time that the Sandhill crane seasons were starting in Alabama. But yeah, so that was my segue over to Alabama.

Sandhill Crane Hunting in Alabama

 And that’s created the opportunity for Sandhill crane hunting in Alabama. I think that’s amazing.

Ramsey Russell: We did a podcast many years ago. If people hadn’t heard it, they ought to go look it up. It would have been two or three years ago. It was about the lost flyway in Alabama. I went up there around Decatur and joined some men on a duck hunt, met the state waterfowl biologist for Alabama, and just was completely flabbergasted to learn that Alabama had a growing Sandhill crane season and that they worked hard with and got the scientific data together. But the most incredible thing was I’d always heard about this lost flyway of Alabama and didn’t understand it. My host, on the property we were hunting, there was a shed, a storage shed, just a little storage shed. And he said, “Come here, I want to show you something.” And we opened up the door, and it was just slammed full of all these homemade silhouettes, Canada goose silhouettes. And he described out on this property, historically, he said it was goose blinds. Rule number one was that all these Canada goose decoys got put out and stayed around those pit blinds until the end of the season. And he said, back in the day, the club members, he said, “You’d look up this gravel road, and there’d be a line of people just waiting their turns.” You know, so you and I are in a blind, and when we limit, we come out with our geese, because that’s one of the rule, as soon as you limit, you get out. And somebody else would come in. And they’d hunted it all day, every day, and there was just a thriving population of Canada geese migrating. And now they really don’t. It’s just resident Canada geese. You know, that would have been the same era that my grandfather Russell would take off two weeks of work and go to what he called goose camp, which was him and five or six or seven, eight or nine buddies. They would pitch tents and dig in pits on the sandbars along the Mississippi River and would target Canada geese. They were goose hunters, and ducks were just something maybe they did in the afternoon, you know, but that would have been that same. And those geese just quit migrating to the deep south. But I find it so interesting that the Sandhill cranes, there are a population of Sandhill cranes coming down to Alabama and exploiting those same habitats that Canada geese historically occupied. And that’s created the opportunity for Sandhill crane hunting in Alabama. I think that’s amazing.

Courtnay Conring: Yeah. And it’s interesting, too, because what I’ve seen of cranes and a lot of the places that they go, at Lubbock, for example, you have a ton of those cacklers, the lesser Canada geese up there. Cranes aren’t usually with them.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, they are.

Courtnay Conring: Yeah. And I don’t know if it’s everywhere like that, but like they typically are avoiding the geese a lot of the time. And the geese don’t mind them. Geese will try to come land and stuff with them, but cranes only tolerate so much of being right on top of the geese. Other than, I would say, like if you’re in refuge systems or something, it might be a little bit different just because there’s absolutely no pressure or anything of that nature. But yeah, I’ve noticed that over time the cranes seem to be relatively intolerant of geese. So maybe the geese not being where they used to be has definitely given way to cranes expanding a little bit more.

Ramsey Russell: I suppose since they’re being hunted that Sandhill crane populations are monitored similarly to ducks and geese. Are they?

Courtnay Conring: You would think. You would think. And so it’s tricky because, like with cranes, their populations overlap flyways. So you have these flyway committee-type folks that come from multiple flyways to get together to kind of get an idea and manage the cranes. The populations are considered the management unit. And so there’s not like a standardized survey to my knowledge, like you have for the waterfowl. But what they do is, per population, they do have some sort of survey that they feel like best gives them abundance measures for the birds. And then they also have, like, the permits issued for the birds. They have an idea of how many birds are getting harvested in these populations. And so even in places where you have daily bag limits and not season bag limits, there’s oftentimes you’re either doing the HIP or you’re doing the annual crane permit to give them an idea. So they are monitoring harvest, and they are monitoring abundance measures. And so, just for example, the eastern population, during their fall migration, they have really high numbers at Jasper-Pulaski National Wildlife Refuge. I think it’s in Indiana. That’s where the eastern population gets surveyed. In comparison, you have the mid-continent population. During the springtime, they all congregate real heavily on the Platte River. So that’s where that population is surveyed. The Lower Colorado River Valley, they are surveyed on their wintering grounds, and they are also surveyed on their wintering grounds by state in plenty of places as well.

Ramsey Russell: Which population of Sandhill cranes are migrating to northern Alabama?

Courtnay Conring: The eastern population. So that’s going to be the greater Sandhill cranes.

Ramsey Russell: And they’re coming from where are they originating on their breeding grounds?

Courtnay Conring: Kind of like the Great Lakes region.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, okay.

Courtnay Conring: So north of the Great Lakes, kind of west of it, over like in Minnesota, over in that area, and then up into Canada, like Ontario through there.

Ramsey Russell: Wow. And is northern Alabama their stopping point in their wintering ground? Are they going further south?

Courtnay Conring: So, used to, it is believed that they, the eastern population, pretty much went to southern Georgia, southeastern Georgia, and northern Florida. So just above where the Florida Sandhill cranes kind of stop. And then they had started noticing more and more that there’s birds staying in places further up between the breeding and typical wintering grounds. So they started surveying different areas, and sure enough, you’ve got cranes wintering in northern Georgia. You’ve got cranes wintering in Alabama and Tennessee, Kentucky, and even in parts of Indiana in some years.

Ramsey Russell: And I’ve heard, have you heard too that or am I imagining things? It seems like I heard that Tennessee is trying to get a season similar to Alabama.

Courtnay Conring: They do.

Ramsey Russell: They’re catching a lot of flack from people that don’t understand shooting a crane.

Sandhill Crane Hunting Quotas

What is the regulated quota hunt like in the state of Alabama?

Courtnay Conring: Yeah. So you have Tennessee and Kentucky both also have these regulated, like quota system for Sandhill crane hunts as well.

Ramsey Russell: Okay.

Courtnay Conring: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: What is it like? What is the regulated quota hunt like in the state of Alabama? How’s it going, and is it still resident only?

Courtnay Conring: Yes, it is. And so I’ll go ahead and say this. I didn’t plan on speaking on behalf of the state today because I’m talking about so much stuff from my past research. So I’m not speaking on behalf of Alabama. I don’t want them to be responsible if I say anything wrong. But I’m pretty sure this is how it is. So in the eastern population, you have overwintering abundance measures that they go out and survey. They do the flyover survey every winter. And there’s a percentage, I want to say like 10% of your three-year, your high, your most recent three-year average. That could be the most number of tags that you were allotted. So for Alabama, I think it’s like 22,000 is our number, is like one of the highest three-year averages we have or the most recent three-year average we have. So 10% of that would be, I maybe have done that math. Long story short, we end up with about 2,250 tags. And then we decide that, like, as a state, you can determine how the tags get allotted. So some states might be like, “Okay, that many people get one tag,” or they could say, “That many or a third of that many people get three tags.” So that’s how that kind of breaks itself down. And it’s going really well. I mean, every year it seems like our hunters are like in terms of Tennessee, Kentucky, and I say we because I am a hunter in these areas, but we are getting better at killing Sandhill cranes in these areas. So, like, it seems that harvest numbers are continuing to increase. So we’re getting more effective at killing cranes for the most part.

Hunting Tips for Hunting Sandhill Cranes

But with cranes, just pay attention to the vocalizations that you’re doing.

Ramsey Russell: What are some pointers, some hunting tips for hunting sandhill cranes? Because you’ve been hunting them quite a long time, you’re getting better. For those listening, what are some hunting tips you would offer for shooting sandhill cranes?
Courtnay Conring: I would say, I mean, it’s going to vary depending on where you’re hunting them. But like in Alabama, for example, I definitely think, I mean, this is a no-brainer for a lot of people, but it’s going to be hard to pull cranes off of the roost to somewhere that’s just near where they like to be. So you need to try to get that permission on the X if you can. Typically, in the mornings, they fly off the roost, and they fly off the roost late in comparison to a lot of the other birds. They fly off the roost, and they’re going, and it’s almost like every time you see them, they’re going somewhere in mind on that first stop. Now, later in the morning, you might be able to pull some away. But usually, that first place they go, they’ve got something in mind. So if you can, try to get permission on the X. And I say that because a lot of the places they are, it’s not public land, it’s private land. Another thing, too, that everybody wants to call because, you know, it probably stems from any kind of bird hunting culture. But with cranes, just pay attention to the vocalizations that you’re doing. So I hear, I watched a tutorial on cranes one time, crane calling on YouTube, and this guy is doing a call, and it’s a call that cranes use as a guard call, which means that they are alerting to some kind of alarm or danger. And I’m sitting there thinking, if you make that sound and you’re sitting in a blind and cranes hear that, I don’t know that a crane is going to come to you when you’re sitting making the sound. So take the time to look up the vocalizations that you need to be trying to sound like and try to mimic those versus just make it because the easiest, it’s unfortunate because the easiest call to make is an alarm-type call because it’s just kind of like one trumpet.

Ramsey Russell: If you don’t speak the language and you just hear cranes making that sound and you’re trying to make that sound, it could be the wrong sound.
Courtnay Conring: Exactly.
Ramsey Russell: It could be the old sound. Get out of here, you know? Yeah.
Courtnay Conring: Yeah. And so I really encourage people to at least, I mean, and there’s plenty of websites that have birding websites, for example, that are going to have, you know, different crane vocals. I just go on there and listen to the differences in them and learn that. Then I’ll go back to Texas here for a minute. Something I learned when I was out there when we were hunting cranes out there and I apologize if you hear my rooster crowing in the background. He’s not in here with me, but he’s right outside the door, but we learned where they roosted at. And what we found and I’m not sure, I don’t have any science to back this up, this is purely anecdotal from hunting, but we learned that if it was a decently high wind, so like your average wind on any given day is probably 15 to 20 in that range. But if it’s anything above that, be paying attention to the direction of the wind. Because if they’re all roosting on one saline lake out there and they pick up and go and the wind is decently whipping, they’re going to go with the wind. So look for the feeding areas that they’ve been using that are in that direction because they’re not going to fight that wind trying to go somewhere else when they have alternative opportunities. So there’s some tips for them.

Ramsey Russell: How many decoys do you typically put out?
Courtnay Conring: Anywhere from, I’ve done as small as 10, but I mean, if we can get up to 30, that’s great. Those usually crane volleys, you’ve seen them. I feel like a big volley would be 50 birds. Yeah, a wintering one. So you’re looking at, I would say most of them come in that 10 to 20 range. So I usually shoot for that with decoys too.

Ramsey Russell: There are some companies that make some great silhouettes and make some amazingly realistic full bodies. I’ve hunted over both. I’ve not yet ever hunted over stuffers, but I’ve hunted over stuffer geese and stuffer ducks. And I don’t think anything works better. They see something in those real birds. That just, I think they come to. When you make these stuffers, are you having to replace them regularly, or do you cure the skin well enough that they try to last longer?
Courtnay Conring: Yeah, I try to make them last as long as I can. So typically, what we’ve done is we’ll skin them out and then put borax on them. Then you’re wrapping them back around like a football, which we’ve learned. Like a Nerf football works pretty good. Wrap their bodies back around that. And if we can, or usually what we’re doing is you get them all the way up to their head. Once you get to the head, you try to skin it out and then put the head in beetles and then pull it back out, spray paint the beak back black, stuff it back in the body. And then you have like, you can use either spray foam and a coat hanger or some of that pipe insulation-type stuff for the neck. And then, again, borax everything. Then close it up around the football and I’ve just used staples, like the heavy-duty wood staples on them and pin the wings down. I do try to get the wings. I’ll do the wings separate and then I’ll put them back on the bird. And so when you get the wings out, you clean all the meat off the wing, put as much borax on them as possible. Because really, what wears down those decoys, probably worse than anything, is the grease that just kind of comes off of it over time, you know. So as much of that meat and stuff as you can get off, I recommend doing that. And then, yeah, obviously the legs aren’t there, so we just use rebar or something like that to stuff in the football and put a little PVC insert in there to keep it where it’s supposed to be. Then store them in Tupperware containers with mothballs and desiccant packets to keep them from getting too moist.

Ramsey Russell: You don’t have to put out too many stuffers, do you? Relative to silhouettes?
Courtnay Conring: No. Like when we use silosocks in Lubbock, it was usually around 35 to 40 of them every time. But every time we hunt with them, I don’t have near as many of those. Me and my friends collectively don’t have near as many of those. So it’s closer to around 10 to 13, I think, is the most we probably put out with just the stuffers. But they work really well, like you said. I think there’s something to those feathers slightly moving in the wind because, you know, cranes have those little tail feathers that kind of look like a bustle or something in the back. And I think those feathers kind of blowing in the wind and probably to some degree how the light hits the feathers, all that pairs into it. We talked about it earlier. Cranes have really good eyesight, best we can tell. And so having those realistic birds, it just seems like having those means more than probably anything else if you can have them.

Ramsey Russell: Do you feel like when you sandhill crane hunt, you go to greater extremes for concealment than you might otherwise for ducks and geese?
Courtnay Conring: Absolutely. And it just goes back from being burned on my study sites, you know, and hunting them in Texas and seeing what I’ve seen. I’ve probably hunted them all fairly equally amount, and it just seems like they’re more wary. And when you think about it, like, it kind of makes sense. I think they’re the oldest living birds. Like there are remains that they’ve found, like fossil remains, that are 2.5 million years old that are skeletally identical to what the birds we have now are. So when you consider that these birds have been living like this for a long time, like, they’re doing pretty good at it.

Don’t Send Dogs After Sandhill Cranes

…just knowing the bird, I’m not sending one on a live bird. 

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, they are. I had no idea. No idea. What are your thoughts about using a retriever for sandhill cranes? Because, now disclaimer, I run Char on it. I’ve run all three of my labs on sandhill cranes. I had a springer back in the day that would fit, but I never did send, I’ve never, I don’t let Char, I don’t let any of my retrievers go on live birds. Sometimes you wing one down, and I’m as worried about them flying into the bird and the bird just turning to look at them and, boom, stabbing them or hitting a soft spot like an eye, as maybe I would think those birds have got that dagger-looking beak that they might use for a defense mechanism. So I don’t send my dogs on a live crane. But Char has picked up tons of dead ones, you know. Do you use retrievers? A lot of people say, no, no, no, don’t use retrievers or you need goggles for them or something like that.

Courtnay Conring: Yeah. So I don’t have a retriever, so I’m not going to tell you what I have done, because I don’t. I haven’t used a retriever in the places that I’ve hunted. But I’ll tell you what, if I had one, what I would do, and just knowing the bird, I’m not sending one on a live bird. Because there’s been too many times that I walked up to a live bird, and that thing’s carrying on, hitting that head like a dang cobra and stuff.

Ramsey Russell: And that’s exactly a good description. Yeah.

Courtnay Conring: I mean, it is they’re cocking that head back, and then as soon as you look at them, like, I was pulling a bird out of a rocket net one time, and I got a hold of it. The one thing you need to do when you’re pulling them out of a rocket net is get control of that head. Because what happens is, you’re getting all these gangly legs and wings and everything out of the rocket net, and then you finally get that cleared away, and there’s the head. And that crane has just been sitting there waiting for you to look at it.

Ramsey Russell: Strike like a snake.

Courtnay Conring: Yeah. It’s waiting for you to look at it. So it sees your eyes, and that’s where it’s going. And there’s no reason it wouldn’t do that to a dog too. Wow. So, for me, I wouldn’t send a dog on a live bird. I’m going to try to finish that bird off before the dog retrieves it.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, yeah. I’ve never sent her on a live. She’s hunted them several times. And it’s funny seeing this little 45- to 48-pound lab coming back with a big old sandhill crane, though she has where she gets them and her mouth around the breast. I can tell you that it’s usually up by the wing or the neck. And then she’s got all this neck and all this wing and all these legs dragging and tripping her up. But she comes back with it, you know. One of the tools I’ve seen from serious sandhill crane hunters, you know, that you wouldn’t think to put in your arsenal or your tool bag, is a little short aluminum bat. Just a little short billy club for banging them, you know, when you pick them up, they’re not, I mean, you ain’t gonna shoot them again, you know, so you need something to kind of subdue them, you know. And I’d say that’s a pretty popular thing to bring. But, Courtney, I have greatly enjoyed this conversation. I’ve learned a lot about sandhill cranes. Where would you think, and last question, where would you suggest anybody, where would be some of the best places to go hunt sandhill cranes for those guys looking to go and give them a try?

Courtnay Conring: I want to say the Texas High Plains.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. Texas, Oklahoma.

Courtnay Conring: Texas, Oklahoma. There’s somebody who’s probably going to be mad at me for saying this, but Kansas is an underrated place that people don’t talk about enough. And you can probably still get some public land opportunities throughout parts of Kansas. Texas, you’re probably going to be paying a guide. But that being said, they’re going to probably know where your birds are.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right. Those guys out, especially up in the Texas Panhandle, they specialize in sandhills, you know. And we’ve got an outfitter, Spec Ops, down in Uvalde, Texas, that puts a whooping on them, you know what I’m saying? I mean, down in coastal Texas, down around Matagorda, those guys, they target sandhill. It’s a big part of what they do. And so I would have to say Texas, Oklahoma, I’ve never heard Kansas. That’s a great one. New Mexico, if you can find somewhere out there to hunt, there’s plenty of sandhills to hunt. They’re a fun bird. They’re great to eat.

Courtnay Conring: Yeah. And I know people who love hunting them in Montana. I’ve got friends who love going there to hunt them. So that’s another option.

Ramsey Russell: Canada, Saskatchewan. It’s funny how some provinces, Saskatchewan is the only province I know that allows sandhill crane hunting. I think they’re protected in Alberta. Maybe because it’s just not a core flight. Maybe it’s just a little off of the core migration area. I don’t know.

Courtnay Conring: Yeah. Yeah. Or maybe it’s just part of that breeding range for that Rocky Mountain population. Maybe they don’t, it gets tricky hunting on, in their breeding range, you know.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right. That’s right.

Courtnay Conring: I want to get them past that.

Ramsey Russell: Courtney, how can anybody listening connect with you? Do you have social media?

Courtnay Conring: Yeah, I do. I’ve got an Instagram. You can connect with me at Courtnay_Conring on there. And my name’s spelled funny. It’s C-O-U-R-T-E-N-A-Y on there. So Courtnay_Conring on Instagram and Courtney Conring on Facebook. And yeah, that’s probably the two best ways to connect with me.

Ramsey Russell: That’s great. Thank you very much for coming on board today and sharing your thoughts and insights on sandhill cranes. I’ve enjoyed it. Thank you.

Courtnay Conring: Good. Well, I’m glad. I enjoyed doing it. I love talking about hunting and wildlife, so it was a great opportunity for me too.

Ramsey Russell: Folks, thank you all for listening to this episode of MoJo’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast. We’ve been meeting with my friend Courtnay Conring about sandhill cranes. See you next time.