Maybe Kentucky shouldn’t have allowed the Sandhill Crane hunt? An avian visitor to the state senate let its displeasure be known.
Via Lowering the Bar.
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.
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I would like to let 10,000 Birds’ good readers know that, while Kentucky was prepared to have a “harvest” of as many as 400 sandhill cranes, the season just ended with only 50 reported shot. Could it be that the “thousands” of Kentucky hunters KDFWR claimed were clamoring for a hunt were imaginary? Virtual? Fabricated?
They required hunters interested in hunting Sandhills to enter a lottery, from which 400 names were drawn. The cap on the hunt was 400 birds, but each hunter selected in the lottery was permitted to take 2 cranes during the season. This put the hunters in direct competition with each other, and the scene was additionally set by requiring the hunters to check in daily to see if the cap had been reached, at which time the hunt would be terminated for the year.
From my experience, there are very few game wardens out there enforcing regulations. Hunters were required to report their kill, but were on the ‘honor system’ to do so. I suspect that numbers were brutally under-reported and think it would be awesome to have a website where locals can report their own field observations of hunters taking these birds. Then we can see if the field observations measure up to the reports. There are lot of eyes out there, but no forum through which to distill them.
@Chris: If you want to help gather some tales of what is happening on the ground we would be more than willing to help gather them here…