The controversy over hunting sandhill cranes in Tennessee has been a top-of-mind subject among hunters and birdwatchers for months. A limited hunting season was approved, and several area hunters have described their experiences hunting and eating Tennessee’s newest game bird since the season opened Nov. 28.
However, the subject will soon be in the national spotlight as one of TV’s most famous chefs samples the bird known by some as “rib-eye in the sky.”
Andrew Zimmern, co-creator, host, and consulting producer of the Travel Channel series “Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern,” visited the area to take part in a sandhill crane hunt Monday and to cook up some crane for his TV show.
One of his guides for the hunt, Chris Nischan, said, “I’ve been involved in a lot of major outdoor television productions, but I’ve never seen a production like this. We had three GoPro cameras and three full-size HD cameras pointed at us every second. They even put a camera-equipped drone up in the air to get shots of us shooting as the drone flew overhead.”
Nischan was joined guiding by Maj. C.J. Jaynes, a law enforcement supervisor with the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency. Both men have hunted sandhills in other states. Outfitted with four dozen wind sock-style sandhill crane decoys, the trio was hunting in Meigs County on a private farm adjacent to the Hiwassee Wildlife Refuge, home base for as many as 10,000 or more sandhills that migrate through the area every year. Continue reading……
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