Sandhill Crane - Processing 

thanks for the quick and to the point video on processing a sand hill crane. We just got our first one and had no issues with the processing. Legs/Thighs and Breasts. Quick and easy!

@@rbljackson , hope you enjoy. Let us know what you think of the meat. I've also started keeping the hearts and gizzards.

@@strixoutdoors Well its exactly as described. Ribeye in the sky. I was amazed at how similar to a steak it was. I had half of the breast last night, and the other half tonight both cooked to medium rare and it was amazing. Tomorrow, the thighs go in the crockpot!

That's awesome! Good luck to you. Cranes are such cool birds. I can't help but think that some dinosaurs flew and sounded like them.

Thank you! That's a huge compliment. I hope you subscribed and watched some sandhill cooking vids. Good luck this season!

Thanks! I'm really looking forward to cooking them. I plan to have some videos out soon.

They are really good. It's so surprising how much they taste like beef.

Crane is delicious. Steel shot in this case. It's not required for crane but since there was potential for shots at geese we needed to use steel.

nothing, background noise from the neighborhood and surrounding street. I think a motorcycle might have passed by a few streets over.

You can hunt them in parts of Texas. Not sure which other states have a season for them.

Sounds fun wish I had money.

@@chickennuggetinagutter.7864 , I hear ya. Everything is expensive these days. It's about $250/gun for a guided hunt. Limit in my zone is 2 birds. It's a pretty cool experience though. These are some cool birds.

I'm using them to make "stuffer" decoys. Which means a very crude taxidermy job (because I'm not skilled at taxidermy) and then using them as decoys to hunt over. It's going to be a slow process to accumulate enough for a hunting setup but that's the plan. Crane decoys are $100+/ea for full bodies...

Good point

Cranes are an interesting and I think complex topic. I don't know all reasons for the hunting regs around them but here are a few data points: There are 6 crane species in N. America; 3 of which migrate (Lesser,Greater,Canadian) and 3 that do not migrate (Mississippi, Cuban, Florida). The Cuban and Mississippi are considered endangered. The Canadian and Greater are hard to differentiate from each other and are generally considered the same, the lesser is about 50% smaller. These are the species that are hunted along portions of their migration routes. All of these migrating cranes come through a very narrow (~80 mile wide) area in Nebraska. That's ~600,000 cranes each year which account for about ~80% of the world population. For that reason (I think) Nebraska does not have a hunting season for them. Also, the 14 states that allow crane hunting are only for the Central Flyway. No crane hunting for western or eastern populations. Additionally, certain areas within a state (like Texas) do not allow crane hunting. I believe some of that may be due to the presence of those 2 endangered subspecies and also sometimes it's because of the possibility of whooping cranes to be in the same area. Whooping cranes are endangered and I think they will shut down any crane hunting in an area if they are reported to be around.

@@strixoutdoors haha that was way more detailed than I expected. Thanks. Yea MN has a season but it’s up north like almost to kanukistan. Thanks for the info!