Kansas

Have any of you ever pheasant hunted in southwestern Kansas around the Houghton area? Going there for the opener on November 14th and I've never been to Kansas. What is the land like? Any reports on birds from that area?

Thanks

TXPAN

I hunt north of there in Sherman county. Should be similar. All agriculture with wheat, milo and corn. Also some CRP. Should be a very good year as conditions were quite good.

The landowner I'm in touch with also has some land in Sherman county. I am so excited I can barley stand it!

We hunted Liberal north to Garden City and points west for a few years during the drought. Great bird area when populations rebound. It was a grind for a while. Mostly Pheasant. Larger quail populations are farther east. Good luck and have a blast!

I'm going to be in Kansas first week in December, can't wait. Half day pheasants and half day waterfowl all week long.

I would be right there with you if I could get a week off haha

Going opening weekend again. This will be the last year if I don't see marked improvement. We go to Atwood usually. Last 3 yrs have just been too poor to keep making that 10-11 hr drive.

I have been going to NW Kansas in Sherman, Wallace, Logan and Thomas for the last 4 yrs. Sherman and parts of Wallace and Logan had good birds numbers last year. This year in western Logan and southern Logan the numbers are way up but they got more rain than Sherman and Wallace. Western Wallace, western Sherman and parts of Wallace did not get the rains that they had east of them. The southwestern part of the state was and has been really dry for sometime now. I never see many birds on the roads traveling through that part of the state for the past 4 yrs now. The areas that had the rains, had really good dryland corn and milo. All of it seem to make pretty good crops. The areas to the east of Sherman and Wallace had 22"-28" rain for the year when I was there in Sept. I saw more birds in the CRP next to standing grain than I did in the CRP alone. Some WIHA's had a lot of birds, but saw more on private land CRP.

ranchman I appreciate that detailed report. The guy I'm going to be hunting on said he has seen more birds sitting in his combine seat this year than the past 5 years combined, however, that may not be that many! He said they are plenty huntable so I guess we'll see how it goes. It's only about a 2 1/2 hour drive from door to door for me so even if it's not a blowout it'll still be easy and fun.

You guys hunting public or private?

Hunted Hugoton area for several years. Had best luck south of town to the Okla. state line. West of there is tumble weed country, more scaled quail country than pheasants. The WIHAs are fewer now than in the past but some private land owners are receptive, others can be real jerks. North of Liberal can be okay but east of there is pretty poor. Expect to meet the Ranger, they stop everybody. However, what they are looking for is information: like how many birds have you got, where you are from i.e out of state, etc. They use that info to compile a report. You may notice them filling out a big spread sheet after they have stop someone. The young ranger at Hugoton can be a pain, hopefully he has mellowed some.
We quit that area in 2012. That area was the heart and ground zero for the drought. The drought really knock down the bird population along with the emergency CRP harvesting. Almost all the cover was gone. It use to be good but will require some time to rebound to what it was. But you might see some blue and bobs along with pheasant. We always did.

We've hunted all over Southwest Kansasover the last 15 years, and over the past 3 years northwest and south-central as well. '11 still had birds around hugoton if you were willing to work for it, but they all but disappeared after that. I've never seen pheasant fall that far. It'll take at least another year of good rain to bounce back imho. I'm going to nm instead this year to chase the blues while we got 'em.

area northwest of Dodge City had horrific hail and storms this summer, around the Kalvesta area was 50-70% hail loss, one storm blew in with 100mp wind.

We will be hunting mostly private land, but the landowner said that we might have some luck in the walk in areas early in the day. I'm a law follower so the ranger thing doesn't bother me. I guess we will take a trailer full of dogs and see how it goes! Thanks for all the input.

We had the same kind of storms all summer in Amarillo

Back from Kansas, we had a blast. Left work at noon Friday and got on the road by 1. We scouted all afternoon and saw boatloads of birds. Got up early Saturday and worked a public walk in area about 5 minutes after shooting light. We killed 3 roosters there and moved 20 or 30 out of that patch of grass. Worked private areas the rest of the day and averaged about 2 roosters and 2 or 3 quail per spot, but called it quits by about 3:30 because the wind was getting out of control. Went out early this morning again and fought the wind till about 11:30 then called it a day. Made it back to Amarillo by 2:15 and caught a good nap! 8 of us ended up with 22 pheasants and 18 quail for the weekend. We heard shooting all day both days and saw a lot of birds get out ahead of us. It was good enough that we may go back in a couple of weeks. Overall it was a great trip and a blessing to see that many birds back in an area where they were once so prevalent.

TXPanhandler, that is great to hear there are some birds. I am hoping to make it to Kansas for Christmas. What part of the state were you in?

Headed up there today!!!! Nice post.

West of Liberal, extreme southwest

Good job...I believe it was a do it yourself hunt.????

Here is my report from another thread.



I'm glad yall had such a good trip. I wondered about staying south this year but we've been going to Atwood area for 5 yrs now and stayed with it this year. I may try to get one more in this season but will have to see how that goes. On the other hand, it was a great trip because my dog who is 4 this month, managed to flush, mark and retrieve her first pheasant Sat morn on the first field and first bird we found. It was awesome!!! It has been a long hard road since she came home from the trainer gunshy at 1 yr old. I have been patiently working her through it and it paid of. She is 100% cured of her gunshyness. She worked very well and every field we hunted she just got more and more sure of herself and figuring out what I wanted from her. I did find out that her "whoa" is broken when she finds a runner. Twice I had to call her back with a shotgun blast from 3-400 yds out at a dead run after a running bird. Luckily, she wanted to retrieve bad enough that she immediately came back to the sound of the shot. Her performance was enough to make the trip memorable for me.

Thanks for update...
Is there any out fitter you can recommend..?

I don't know of any except Beaver Creek Outfitters out of Atwood and I don't know anything about them. I've heard that Scotty Carlson of Carlson Chokes in Atwood does outfitting but no knowledge again.
We do Walkin Hunting Areas and hunt a little private on locals we have met over the years.

We hunted not far from there about 5 or 6 years ago.
At that time the CRP up there was about shoulder high. We had to kick our way through it, pushing birds to the edges. Nearly wore out a pair of boots.
The dogs would just disappear in that stuff.

Very tough hunt.
But we shot the birds. Lots of 'em.

My take from yesterday afternoon east of Dodge City. The dogs did better than me, even though the birds were in heavy thistles (tumbleweeds) and sand burrs.

I don't really know anything about outfitters or any of that. A lady I work with that's originally from Hugoton told me her son in law was a big farmer up there and I set the whole deal up with him. I'm sure somebody guides around there but I wouldn't know who it is. This guy drew me a map of about 10 sections and said have at it so thats what we did haha

nice...