Looks like the big birds are in..."rib eye of the sky" seems like very few folks hunt these? Does any one in this forum???

Hey Cuz, do you need a hand hunting them cranes??? Rib Eye In The Sky is right. Man if I could eat crane all the time I'd give up beef in a heart beat.
Nice pictures by the way too!

stupid birds, i sit in my deer stand and they are loud and run all the deer out of the fields, but we do keep some t shot in camp just in case they fly over

I hunt them alot in the Levelland area. They are a blast, I don't really enjoy eating them though. Maybe I am doing it wrong. I have also not found them to be too stupid, we kill alot but we earn them.

We saw a few flocks last weekend out in Cottle County.

I use to hunt them back when I was in college in Lubbock. But, every time we cooked them they tasted like crap. What's the secret on this "ribeye in the sky"? How do ya'll cook them?

Forthebirds:

I re-read the post and realized you meant they are stupid cause they scare off the deer. I misunderstood

no problem m3,we used to hunt them all the time and like most birds somedays they would just come in and other days they just didnt like somthing. most days we could get a limit of cranes though. but right now the cranes are in the winter pasture where i am deer hunting and 5000 loud birds are great for covering up any sound but seem to keep the deer out but on this board you cant hurt my feeling

PM me after X-mas, we might be able to put you on them for a favor to the rancher... We occasionally hunt them but, they do not like decoys, you can not call them unless you are near an alien spaceship.. lol... But they are so good to eat, and we found that low level pass shooting seems to work the best. Like laying right next to a fence they are flying over... The other option is our bit blinds if they are in the right area. They say cranes are the oldest migratory game bird species in the world....

I used to hunt crane all the time when I lived out by Levelland. One of my buddies and I had good luck with decoying them with 3'x3' pieces of gray cloth. We'd set out 300 to 500 pieces of cloth, slipping some over Maize stalks, laying some flat and even bent old clothes hangers into a "crane-shape" and draped them with the cloth, but most of them were just flat on the ground.
We did find that most of the time, this method worked best when it was a little (or a Lot!) foggy.
I've had them come in so close that I could have knocked them outta the sky with my goose gun.

Cuztheyfly,

Cranes will decoy and you can call them, but they have exceptional eyesight. On opening weekend in spearman, we decoyed and shot 12 of them in 25 min. Once the sun comes up they get much harder to decoy. We limited out on the other day with 18 in 40 minutes.

david

Good point, chocolatelabs,
I forgot to add that once the sun was up and the light was good, we'd pull up the spread and go quail hunting!

We never tried calling them, so I can't speak for how well that works.

You're right about their eyesight.