Anyone ever done a trip to Cheyenne Bottoms? Thinking about a trip during the week a couple weeks after the opener. Maybe show up Sunday afternoon, scout then hunt Mon-Wed is there a lot of walk in opportunities or is a boat necessary? Also any recommendations on lodging/ places to eat close by? Been reading a lot on the Kansas outdoors site, but would like any tips or stuff to watch out for from guys that have made the trip.

My grandparents live in hoisingtion. Just a few miles down the road. Not much choices to eat out that way. But there are a few little hole in the walls. Hit up the tap room in hoisington for a few beers.

Cheyenne Bottoms is a place that every public land hunter should experience. You can absolutely hunt without a boat and several of the pools are walk in only. I live about two hours east of it and hunt it regularly before our season opens. It will get crowded at times especially around openers.

More ducks than stars in the sky!

Got this shot last year in June

Does it get very crowded in the middle of the week?

Opening week it could, but it's a huge place. Water and marsh as far as you can see. If you take a non motorized boat, you can get far away from the people who wade in from the levee roads.

This is an old one, but scroll down to "day 13" and you can get an idea what the place looks like.


https://texashuntingforum.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/ubb/showflat/Number/113048

It’s a pirogues dream.

FIFY

Some friends of mine just went up there this past weekend and hunted with some well known locals. They said there was a ton of other groups hunting it, but everyone still did well.

Yes.

Not sure why, there's no ducks in Kansas

Sniper John, that is an amazing trip. Got me excited, I’ll be taking a kayak for sure

Two things....I went back in 2017 or 2018 for a week...we spent three days and came home. There weren't a lot of birds, it's public with a bunch of pressure...generally speaking it was a ton of pass shooting which is just not my thing when hunting big ducks. Would I ever go back? Nope, but it's worth doing and seeing once. Good luck.

KS counts from my experience is to get out of state hunters to come and buy licenses...take their reports with a grain of salt. This just isn't based upon the Cheyenne reports but reports from a bunch of different places up there. We put 400 miles on the truck in one day looking for birds. There just weren't many up there when we were.

We stayed at the Rodeway Inn & Suites in Hoisington, they were flexible with us leaving and was super about the dog....when I take the dog, she goes where I go and they were very accommodating of that.

Kansas has turned nuts in the past 5-10 years. I lived there 98-06’ and the hunting was great. Going to duck hunt at the bottoms is kind of like coming to Texas to bass fish Fork. Maybe, maybe just maybe you’ll hook a great one and a fish of a lifetime but kore than likely it’ll be underwhelming at best. Watch the waterfowl reports up there, they are updated at least weekly in the season. Drive to where the birds are. Cheyenne is worth the trip to see it, but don’t bang your head against the wall with 10,000 other hunters if reports say 10,000 mallards are holding on reservoirs 1.5 hrs away

If you do go, there is a good little hole I’m the wall in beaver, the new place in olmitiz for a drink and dinner, or the Odin store, these arnt fancy places and you won’t find fancy for hours in any direction but when I go to visit family those are the places we go. I’ve never hunted Cheyenne bottoms because if we go see family I’m always pheasant or quail hunting up there

We should do a big THF hunt there.

Guy,

You bring the boat and I got us a place to stay we can go hunt for a weekend.

I'm in with enough lead time

I own a little over 300 acres outside Henderson which is a ways from the bottoms but the ponds are always loaded up up with geese and also have access to several thousand acres of Amish farms around Henderson that I've been hunting for years. I've taken a few guys from THF up there and we've always seen lots of birds.

Go ahead, give Cory a call

I think I want to take the momarsh to this place, and camp. Looks like a great adventure, a bucket list thing.

Do you mind towing me in my yak?

The free camping, at least when I passed through there, was nothing more than an open grassy area along the side of the public gravel road. I would not plan on leaving anything behind while out hunting or left unattended.
Not talked about much is the "firing line". The southern border is a goose pass shooting zone. Expect extremely long shots and the usual nonsense. If you even consider it, I would only try it on very windy days that could push the birds low enough and when you know the birds are flying south out of the refuge.
If going there as a destination, I would consider having a plan B in case there are no huntable birds or you find the hunting pressure is overwhelming. There are multiple places to hunt within a day's drive from CB. I stay mobile and will inquire with the GW, call the biologists in other areas, talk to friendly local hunters, and talk with the area bar owner, etc. Then rather than fight it out where I am at I will move to where the locals hunt, where the birds are, or where the hunters aren't. And you can always go pheasant hunting too, even at CB.

We had planned to hunt CB last year but after reports we ended up at Neosho in southeast KS. Birds were very educated. We're going back next year and may hunt the bottoms if the birds are there.