• Tim Eisele
• // April 16, 2025
• https://www.outdoornews.com/2025/04/16/commentary-no-season-needed-on-sandhill-cranes-in-wisconsin/

https://instaread.co/player?article=commentary-no-season-needed-on-sandhill-cranes-in-wisconsin&publication=outdoornews&pay_wall=false&article_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.outdoornews.com%2F2025%2F04%2F16%2Fcommentary-no-season-needed-on-sandhill-cranes-in-wisconsin&version=1744898400000

The proposal for a hunting season on sandhill cranes, like all hunting seasons, should be made based on biological information and sociological concerns.

To paint people who oppose a hunting season as anti-hunters or as those without an interest in hunting, is dead wrong. I hunt, am from a family with a history of hunting, and I oppose opening a season on sandhill cranes in Wisconsin.

I don’t believe a season on sandhill cranes is right for Wisconsin. I realize other states with big populations of sandhill cranes, such as Nebraska, also have declined to have a season on sandhills. So not opening a hunting season on this unique bird is not unusual.

If the reason for a hunting season is solely based on crop damage, there is a seed additive, called Avipel, that farmers can use to treat their corn and help deter cranes from eating tender young shoots.

RELATED COVERAGE FROM OUTDOOR NEWS:

Commentary: It’s time to establish a hunting season for Wisconsin’s sandhill cranes

Wisconsin’s sandhill crane hunting season bill takes another step

Crane hunt in Wisconsin? Committee gives green light as process takes another step forward

To further help farmers, Gov. Tony Evers has proposed adding $3.7 million each year to the new state budget for an abatement assistance program for corn producers. It will help to reimburse producers for the purchase of the seed treatment that discourages sandhill cranes from eating the seed.

This is just a start. Hopefully, in the future research will come up with additional ways to deter sandhill cranes from damaging other crops, such as potatoes.

The Wisconsin Legislative Council Study Committee on Sandhill Cranes should have recommended updating the agricultural damage law to allow farmers to get reimbursed for damage caused by sandhill cranes.

Currently the law requires a species to be hunted in order to pay crop damage to farmers. By adding cranes, without requiring that a species be hunted, would have helped farmers throughout the state much more than a limited hunting season in the fall when damage takes place in the spring.

Even that law has an inconsistency because it allows damage from mountain lions to be paid out, yet mountain lions are not legally hunted in Wisconsin. This was another opportunity for the legislative study committee to REALLY study the problem and come up with alternate solutions.

There are other alternatives to help farmers – one that is on this spring’s Conservation Congress April 14 agenda, that of issuing a conservation stamp to help pay for ag damage caused by cranes.

This would allow all citizens to contribute to help pay farmers for crop damages. And, indeed, wildlife belongs to ALL citizens, as noted in the North American Model of Wildlife Management. Everyone should be involved in funding damage to crops that everyone consumes.

Wisconsin is not ready for a sandhill crane hunting season.

Why not? Because sandhill cranes are special. They have long been considered a non-game bird. They have not been hunted for decades. To many citizens, they are a harbinger, just as are robins, of the arrival of spring.

Just because the federal government allows states in the Mississippi Flyway to hold a season on sandhill cranes, does that mean that Wisconsin has to participate?

Would such a season pass the smell test?

Precedent shows that years ago other states in the Mississippi Flyway held an early season on teal, but Wisconsin held off because it was considered an important breeding ground for blue-winged and green-winged teal. What is hunted in one state is not always appropriate for every other state.

Human attitude surveys show that citizens have legitimate concerns. A study conducted by the UW Survey Center in 2024 found only 17% of state residents would support a sandhill crane season, while 48% opposed it.

To say that all hunters support a crane season is misleading. In 2017, the Conservation Congress asked a question about beginning a crane season and it won, but just barely by 300 votes: 2,349 voting yes and 2,049 voting no. It was rejected in 18 counties.

Although open to the public, anyone who has attended the spring Conservation Congress meetings realizes that most of the people who attend are hunters, trappers, and anglers.

What is not needed is a season on sandhill cranes.

What is needed is to bring hunters and non-hunters together so that both carry their fair share of funding for natural resources management, not further divide them.

In Wisconsin, natural resources management is funded by license sales. If you don’t have a hunting, fishing, or trapping license in your pocket or purse, you are not the major funder for wildlife management, fisheries management, and conservation law enforcement.

We need non-hunters to have some skin in the game. I’d point to Minnesota’s 3⁄8 of 1% on the sales tax that helps to continue natural resources funding in that state.

Wisconsin needs hunters and non-hunters to work together to support natural resources. A sandhill crane season will only cause a larger divide between both groups.

Tim Eisele, of Madison, is a freelance outdoor writer/photographer and a third-generation Wisconsin hunter whose love has always been waterfowl hunting.

And what that means for human health

• Manage alerts for this article
• Email this article
• Share this article

By Torie Bosch

April 16, 2025

Editor, First Opinion

In 2024, as zoos were hit hard by H5N1 bird flu, big cats were particularly affected: tigers, lions, a cheetah, and a panther all died after being infected with the same virus that has caused egg prices to skyrocket.

House cats are vulnerable to H5N1, too, as Meghan F. Davis, a veterinarian and epidemiologist with Johns Hopkins University, and co-authors recently wrote in a First Opinion essay. In this episode of the “First Opinion Podcast,” I spoke with Davis about the lack of surveillance of H5N1 in pets, why cats seem to be at such risk from the virus, why it’s so dangerous to give your pets raw milk and raw-meat pet food, and veterinary medicine’s key but often overlooked role in human health.

advertisement

“Cats are not part of, for example, the surveillance structures that we have in place for people,” she told me. “We don’t invest nearly as much in veterinary research, whether it’s for clinical or public health benefit, as we do in human, which kind of makes some sense,” she acknowledged. But proximity to a sick animal can put people at risk — and as any cat owner knows, cats have a way of getting right up in your space. If we don’t understand H5N1 in cats, it will make it harder to combat it in humans. Davis is worried enough that she has closed her “catio” — a protective outdoor space for cats — for now so her animals won’t get exposed to avian flu by migrating birds.

Be sure to sign up for the weekly “First Opinion Podcast” on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. And don’t forget to sign up for the First Opinion newsletter, delivered every Sunday.

Stock photo

Staff, Piscataquis Observer •April 14, 2025

   https://observer-me.com/2025/04/14/sports/maine-extends-gray-squirrel-hunting-season/

By Julie Harris, Bangor Daily News Staff

The Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife expanded the hunting season for gray squirrels by a month and shifted youth waterfowl hunting dates in the north zone to start and end a week later than last year.

The bounty of food, including acorns, in the last few years has helped the gray squirrel population increase to a point that the department felt the hunting season could be expanded, especially in southern and central Maine. It will be held from the last Saturday in September through the end of January.

The season has in past years ended on Dec. 31.

Hunting of small mammals and birds is more appealing to new hunters and youths than big game hunting, according to the department’s basis statement for the rule change. It also aligns Maine’s gray squirrel season with those in other New England states.

“The one-month season extension would maintain healthy gray squirrel populations, avoid the time of year when females are rearing their young, and allow additional time to hunt outside of the popular big game seasons,” the department said. 

Several people expressed support for the change through emails and a Facebook page focused on small game, according to testimony from Ed Stubbs.

Bag limits will remain the same at four daily and eight in the hunter’s possession at one time.

The eight members of the Inland Fisheries and Wildlife Advisory Council who attended a meeting on March 18 voted unanimously to approve the expansion. A public hearing was held on March 6, where there was no opposition.

The season change does not affect hunting gray squirrels by falconry. That season will remain from the last Saturday in September through Feb. 28.

There is no open trapping season for gray squirrels.

In a second rule change, the department altered the dates for migratory bird seasons to comply with the 2025 calendar. Most moved by just one day, except for north zone youth waterfowl season, which will shift a week later this year from Sept. 14-Dec. 7 to Sept. 20-Dec. 13.

For other migratory bird seasons, it was simply a day shift. For example, woodcock season was Sept. 28-Nov. 19 in 2024 and will be Sept. 27-Nov. 18 this year.

Most migratory waterfowl bag limits are the same, except the number of pintail ducks has increased from one to three daily, and those on black ducks, scaup, scoters, eiders, coots and mergansers have special exceptions to the daily bag limit of six ducks. 

Be sure to check on the specific bag limits and zone restrictions in the migratory game bird laws. They can be found at https://www.maine.gov/ifw/hunting-trapping/hunting/laws-rules/migratory-gamebirds.html.

Hunters also were warned to be aware of avian influenza. It has been found in southern and midcoast Maine in particular. There are no confirmed cases in the Bangor area. State upland biologist Kelsey Sullivan said during the public hearing that hunters should be diligent about processing meat and cleaning.

The migratory game bird rules are revised to implement the Federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the framework for them is provided by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The public hearing was held March 4, and included a presentation on the migratory game bird populations. 

The changes were approved on April 9 without opposition.

All changes for the gray squirrel and migratory game bird hunts went into effect on April 14.