I have gone to Kansas upland hunting for 14 years. I have gone to South Dakota a hand full of times. I have never thought about Nebraska. I was driving through there 3 weeks ago and I saw several pheasant. Why don't people hunt Nebraska? I was looking at their website and they have 1.2 million acres of public access land and a ton of upland game species. What am I missing?

Location, location, location. Longer drive.

I grew up hunting pheasants in Nebraska and it was lots of fun. One thing that seemed to make some differences was when the farmers started putting in concrete ditches which limited the nesting areas. There are still lots of pheasants there though as there is lots of farming still going on.

I’ve been twice with Blue. I’m going again this year for Turkey. I like It.

I hunted public land pheasant in Nebraska for 7 years, it's tuff hunting. I wasn't able to go until late December every year, so all of that public land was always pretty much shot out by then but I still tried hard. Most locals hit the public land hard early season, then it's pretty much over for them. I walked many miles in the snow & ice, driving from area to area day after day and was lucky if I could kick up one rooster a day. Nebraska doesn't have the pheasant numbers that they used to, at all. My ex FIL was born & raised there and the stories he and his friends told me about the birds in the old days were pretty impressive. It's certainly not that way now. This is due to the way farming is being done there now. The farmers USED to leave hedgerows around their fields, which was a lot of good cover for the birds that was desperately needed (especially in the Winter). Now most farm all the way to the road, taking out the hedgerows. Kansas has more birds, but S Dakota is where it's at.

LOTS of turkey there. The biggest groups of turkeys I've ever seen were in Nebraska. Hundreds of birds per group, and saw group after group down on the Platt River, the Little Blue, and the Republican River. Was all private land though.

How many of you used dogs? Flushers or pointers?

I never got to use a dog pheasant hunting up there. My dogs were my feet.

Why do you say South Dakota is where it's at? It seems that they have lower bird numbers and less public land than Kansas.

This is just according to what everyone has always told me. Coming from Nebraskans that had pretty much given up on pheasants in Nebraska. They all said that if you want to hunt wild birds, S Dakota has more birds than anywhere else. I've only been to S Dakota once and wasn't for a hunting trip, so I don't have any personal experience there. This is just what I was always told. All of those guys may have been hunting private land in S Dakota, I'm not sure.

I could go on for hours about Nebraska upland history and numbers. I have hunted here for 60+ years. I started hunting when I was around 9 back in around 1958. It was not unusual for 5 hunters to kill somewhere around 60 pheasants and around 40 quail here on opening weekend. That was without dogs. Those days continued into around the mid 80's and began to drop off. Clean farming, Ethanol, pesticides, you name it. Ethanol was the start. There used to be milo fields here. Today, except in the eastern part of the state, it is almost 100% corn and soybeans. Even in the east, though, there is very little milo. Add herbicides (Roundup, etc) to the mix and you end up with cornfields that only have cornstalks and dirt in them. No weeds for roosting. Add to that as the earlier poster said, the removal of hedgerows and farming fenceline to fenceline and turning the ground over right after harvest and it wiped out most of our pheasants in a very short period of time. The pheasants have been making a slight comeback but it is nowhere near what it was. Pivot corners, set aside and WMA's here provide enough nesting that we are back to a very marginal amount of pheasants and quail. It is very spotty, though. I live here and am retired so I recently purchased a Vizsla pup to hunt 4 or 5 times a year, but would I drive clear in from another state to hunt what we have? Probably not. I always had a GSP from about 1969 through 1996, but when the last one got old I never replaced him, at that point I decided to get out of upland hunting and turn to turkeys and big game. The only way I would do it is if I knew someone here that knew where there are enough birds to justify a trip. G&P here might be able to tell you in general where to start looking but probably won't have specific contacts.

Kind of funny - back in the day, Iowa and Nebraska used to debate who was the pheasant capital of the US. I was in Iowan the other day picking up the pup. I can see where they might've survived the ethanol blow because their farms have terraces which are quite weedy. Nebraska is so flat terraces aren't required.

Just trying to be helpful. Where I hunt turkeys, you used to see pheasants. I live out here and I haven't seen a pheasant off the highway in years.

Hunting is pretty much free up in those parts. A friend and I flew up to North Dakota to hunt Sharpies and Huns. We met and hunted with three hunters who drove up from Kansas. My friend and I left for the airport. The Kansas hunters said that they planned to road hunt their way home.

Road hunting is pretty common there. Heck, we killed almost all of our birds from the truck driving dirt roads shooting them in the ditches. Not legal, but not really a big deal up there. Not like in Texas LOL. I was kinda freaked out the first time I was asked if I was tired of walking all day and not seeing any birds....said get in the truck & let's go. That's how a lot of folks do it. Grab some beer and drive dirt roads out in the middle of nowhere. Was pretty fun, actually.

They call pheasant ditch parrots for a reason.

Yep, but they sure are delicious!

Have to differ with you skinnerback on Road hunting being pretty common here. Do it in front of a G&P Warden and see what happens. "Grab some beer and drive dirt roads out in the middle of nowhere. Was pretty fun, actually". There are some unsafe non-ethical shooters (notice I didn't call them hunters) that do that sort of thing I'm sure but trust me, if most of the resident hunters here see you doing such a thing, you will be reported. Not trying to start a debate, but you sure don't paint a very pretty picture of Nebraska hunters.

30-40 years ago Nebraska was an excellent ring neck hunt, but like S.E. Ks. the farmers took out all the hedge rows, ruined it for the quail, used to push 20+covey's in a day and were huge comey's.

Its everywhere.

agree

Yeh I figured that would ruffle some feathers.

I'm not big into ditch hunting because I love to watch my dogs work.

X2

I've been told that ditch hunting is legal in S Dakota as long as you are not in a vehicle. I don't know if that's true or not, but have heard that from several people.

Theyd probably double the fine if they saw you doing that with a couple of bird dogs on board. Years back you might have seen that but now in these days of cellphones, pretty much every Hunter knows that G&P has some pretty limited resources and feels a responsibility to get a plate number and call it in. In the case of things like trespassing, I would fear the landowner much more than G&P. Anyway, trying to grow more mellow in my old age so I’m out just wanted folks to know that’s not how we hunt up here. 😊 Looks like somebody found some bobwhites Bill.

I agree that state laws are tough to follow. When I lived in Omaha, I hunted in Iowa a lot. It’s been a few years but you couldn’t hunt there before 8:00 am. Guns had to be cased. I think you could shoot from the road. And you could go on to private land to retrieve the bird if you left gun in vehicle. Nebraska - you can hunt at 1/2 hour before sunup. You cannot shoot from road or right of way and you cannot cross that fence under an conditions without permission. It was excruciating to have to look at your watch to see if it was 8:00 am yet.

I agree Nebraska G&P has limited resources. My ex's family is from Hastings, but we drove all over the state. I drove up there twice a year for 7 years to hunt in the Winter, and fish in the Summer. The only Game Warden I ever saw checked us catfishing one time at a place called Guide Rock (loved that place). We had free access to several spreads of private land for deer hunting (muzzle loader only), so I bought a muzzle loader and got into that. That sure was a lot of fun. I really wanted to rifle hunt whitetails in Nebraska, but yall's rifle season is nuts. Not sure about now, but back then the season was only 7 days long if I remember correctly, which meant everybody and their neighbor's brother's cousin's were out there hunting on top of each other. Muzzle loading later was good enough for me!

Yup. Still 9 days and thats it for firearm. Big game seasons for up here haven’t been finalized yet for this year. I think all of the western states are being inundated with Eastern hunters wanting to hunt out west. They are certainly welcome here but G&P is trying to manage the situation properly. The MZ season is usually the whole month of December but it gets darn cold here by then. Hastings isn’t far from where I live. Maybe one day our paths will cross but like most hunting conversations go, the first liar won’t have a chance.

Man you've got the cold part right in late December. First time I hunted Nebraska it was 3 degrees with a wind chill of -17. That was quite the culture shock for this South Texas boy!

heck I hunted in Ks. and the wind chill was 29 below

Nuts.

I'm a guy that learns from his mistakes and doesn't care about telling the story to others so that they don't follow in my footsteps. About 4 years ago, Opening day of deer season here was an almost constant windchill of minus 20. I was sitting in a ground blind from about an hour before sunrise until 1/2 hour after sunset. The day before I had purchase a Mr. Buddy Heater. Took it still in the box to the groundblind. Yes, I did take the small bottles of propane. It was so frigging cold in that groundblind that I couldn't convince myself to open box and read instructions so at the end of the day, it was still in the box. I figured it was so cold I didn't want to move from my warmest position and read the instructions. I should mention that that particular day, it was so cold that even the deer were smart enough not to come out. All I saw was one coyote as I sat there and shivered all day. Next day was about 30 degrees warmer. Buck came through shortly after dark thirty. Shot him and went home.

Got home and opened box. Read instructions. Attach propane. Hit On/Off switch. Couldn't believe it. Now there is a genuine case of the Dumba$$! Bad preparation. Bad execution.

I have never hunted Nebraska, but when hunting in northern Kansas, several times when I talked to locals about where to hunt, they would give me local advice, but then often follow it with "but we do most of our hunting up in Nebraska".

There are some huntable populations but they are spotty. In the old days they were all over. Now in some areas there are none. Local knowledge would be a huge plus to avoid those areas where there are no birds at all. NE and SW are the two sections I would start my search.

Never Nebraska for me - only Missouri

what parts of Missouri do you hunt Biscuit?
general area.......not gps coordinates.

Prairie grouse opens on Sept. 1. Sand hills are interesting. You can get a estimate of how good the hatch was by calling Valentine National Wildlife Refuge in the late summer and talking to a biologist. You can hunt on the refuge but you need non-toxic shot. (Refuge is a must see anyway--it is easy to see why the Cheyene and Souix loved that spot. Sand hills, springs everywhere, good grass, pretty chain lakes full of wildlife ). Ranchers up there will sometimes still let you hunt their place if you ask. If you go, take dog boots. There are sand spurs everywhere in the sand hills if the ground is disturbed. Once away from the road, usually not a problem. If hunting is slow, it is an easy drive up to Pierre, SD. I wouldn't botther with flatland Nebraska (south and east) Kansas has more walkins and a better chance at quail tho the season opens later. Western SD can be quite good for prairie grouse, tho the Pierre National Grasslands are a zoo opening week.

im from Missouri (southeast) is only reason i ask

I've had the pleasure of hunting Western NE since 2014 with a group that has hunted there since the 60's. (my contact only missed 4 years, 3 being when he was in Vietnam) We hunt a combo of private and public.

Upland has been plentiful - we definitely have some days where we shoot significantly less than others, but we also have several opportunities to double digits in a single push. We bring dogs from TX, as I have been lucky with my last two chocolate labs being upland hunting fools. The labs don't have the endurance as the pointers, but the more dogs the merrier - they truly make it a FUN hunt. Our hunting party consist of 4-25 guys depending on the day and year, with 6-10 being from Texas and the others being family from NE.

We see lots of quail, lots of pheasant, and the occasional prairie chickens.


I absolutely love the trip. Last year was a first for this itinerary, as it was hard hunting, but it was successful. We headed north from Waco about 6:30 pm, and strolled in NE around 4:30, not getting in much of a hurry on the way up. We changed in the first truck stop parking lot we found and were sitting at a public spot at first light. We hunted most of our way west, with just the TX group, and got settled into the motel Thurs evening. Friday morning we were up and hunting early and hunted most of the day, waiting on our NE family to make it across the state. We hunt hard sat and sun, and leave sunday around 5pm for home, driving through the night.

It takes it toll on us for sure, but it always a fun and eventful trip. I recommend it!