Yet again a Whooping Crane has been shot and killed in Indiana. Let’s hope that this time the perpetrator gets more than a $1 fine.
Corey is a New Yorker who lived most of his life in upstate New York but has lived in Queens since 2008. He's only been birding since 2005 but has garnered a respectable life list by birding whenever he wasn't working as a union representative or spending time with his family. He lives in Forest Hills with Daisy and Desmond Shearwater. His bird photographs have appeared on the Today Show, in Birding, Living Bird Magazine, Bird Watcher's Digest, and many other fine publications. He is also the author of the American Birding Association Field Guide to the Birds of New York.
What a moron! Living in Indiana, I know there are no game birds that even remotely resemble a whooping crane! Indiana doesn’t go after poachers like I feel they should so here’s to hoping that they start with this guy!
I certainly hope we don’t start seeing more of these incidents now that Kentucky will be hunting Sandhill Cranes this year. I fear opening up Sandhill Crane hunting in the East will exacerbate this problem.
I just have trouble believing these are hunting accidents. I think it’s more sinister. There are a lot of people out there that take delight in thumbing their nose at the government, and the Endangered Species Act is reviled in those circles. Killing a rare animal is a badge of honor in that culture.
I don’t doubt that you’re correct, Larry, about there being more accidental whooper deaths because of the hunting, but I don’t think many, if any, of the shootings the last couple years have been accidents.
Just today I was discussing my new brainstorm of putting unmanned attack and surveillance drones in Whooping Crane flocks as guardian dogs, as it were.
Maybe people wouldn’t be so excited to shoot them if they shot back.
@Kirby the fact that there are people out there that do stuff like this on purpose and get away with it make me want to puke! I guess I’m rather naive about this kind of thing but after reading your comment, I did some Googling and found that the guys responsible for killing the mother of the first chick in the Eastern population of Whooping Cranes, also in Indiana, back on November 30, 2009 got a slap on the wrist. Just boys out “road hunting” shooting at any animals they saw. Disgusting.
I like your idea Carrie. An eye for an eye. I’ll volunteer to command one of those drones!
I’m probably a bit overly cynical, Larry, but I live in a bright red corner of a generally purple state. I can’t walk into the local gas station on any day of the year without hearing a discussion about how the federal government and the DNR are out to screw everyone with their bunny-hugging regulations. There’s a lot of disdain for wildlife regulations among those who have trucks full of guns and beer bottles. I’m not saying those people are the majority, nor am I saying they represent true sportsmen of any kind. But they are numerous and I doubt we’re very far from seeing an antipode of Ed Abbey’s Monkeywrench Gang. The crane shooting might not be a precursor to that at all, but I still think it’s coming.