On a Sandhill crane hunt years ago with my son. We got put with another father/son. These were two of the biggest goobers I have ever encountered in my entire life. The story is even better because these idiots both went to t.u.
The set up to how all this happened is too long. Suffice it to say that we were kind of spread out.
Two whooping cranes just show up out of nowhere. They come right over me, headed right down the line of shooters. And, they can't be more than 40 feet high. My son is about 17 at the time. I tell him not to shoot. He starts to raise his gun, recognizes the birds and realizes what I said, and doesn't shoot. He then realizes these two guys down the line are about to start shooting. He's yelling his head off but these clowns have all kinds of hearing protection in place. They both stand up and just unload their 12 gauges on these whooping cranes. We are completely horrified, just knowing these birds are dead and somebody's going to jail. Turns out these fellas weren't too good with a shotgun. As far as I could tell (and confirmed by my son who was much closer to them), they never cut a feather. Neither bird ever acted like it caught so much as a single piece of shot.
We laugh about those clowns every time we see/hear sandhill cranes! To this day we don't know how those guys didn't kill both of those birds.
