Kansas Hunting on Public Lands – Be mobile!

I recently returned from a trip to Kansas to hunt public walk in hunting areas (WIHA).  Our trip was successful so here’s a bit about how to approach that hunt should you…want to do it for the first time yourself.

First of all you need to do your homework and see what the state wildlife department is saying about bird numbers.  That’s enough to get you excited.  Then you will need to do more homework via networking to see what areas are better than others.  After getting the necessary ‘intel’ on where to go approximately, we set the wheels in motion.

My friend Rusty has a camper and truck to pull it so we elected to take it instead of my horse trailer gooseneck.  Kansas WIHA’s allow foot traffic only so no need to take horses.  We decided to take a total of 9 dogs, most of which were in training.  This was going to be a budget trip so we loaded up plenty of left-over Thanksgiving foods to feed ourselves while on this 5 day trip.

We didn’t really have specific WIHA tracts to hunt so decided to be mobile and move on a moments notice (kinda like my son’s unit with the 2nd stryker cavalry regiment).  Mobility is the key when hunting new areas.  Our emphasis was on bird work not number of birds in the bag as so many measure their trip.  That’s a bad idea.  You want bird contact for your dog as that is what makes your dog better.  You don’t have to have a bunch of birds in the bag to have a good time and get your dog the necessary experience.

Since I take dogs to Montana every year to hunt wild birds I can pretty much look at the land and tell you whether it holds many birds of the species we are pursuing or not.  For pheasant, you want to make sure you are near cut grain crops.  Good thick CRP lands are essential for roosting and loafing.  Most of the WIHA tracts we looked at were CRP tracts next to grain but they varied in quality (height and thickness of grasses).  Water nearby is a bonus but not essential.

Understanding your quarry and their behavior is very important.  Being their early to catch pheasant on the roost before they travel to the cut grain is important but not 100 percent fact.  Many times we produced birds mid-morning in CRP cover.  In general, you need a couple of dogs on the ground and at least a part of 3.  A party of 4 would be better.  We were not doing driven hunts and did not have blockers as it was just 2 of us.  We had a 3rd person part of the time and went well.  The intent of this writing is not to tell you how to hunt pheasant but to encourage you to do it in years where there are plentiful bird numbers.

Back to mobility.  That is so key to having a good hunt when relying upon the production of public lands.  We hunted around one Township and was only finding about 2 birds per CRP tract and one covey of quail.  We spoke to a farmer and asked him about that area and he related there was an isolated hail storm about the time the chicks hatched so their numbers were down.  I didn’t recall seeing that written anywhere but I believed him.  At 5:00 the next a.m. we traveled some 90 miles away to another area with a good report.  It proved to be the right decision.

I was beginning to believe that going hunting on WIHA the week after Thanksgiving was a bad idea but it turned out great.  The final 2 days we were averaging 30 plus flushes per day on WIHA.  If a tract met our ‘look criteria’ as noted earlier in this article, we would stop and hunt.  If it looked marginal, we drove to the next nearest tract of land.

Hope this article gives you the encouragement to go.  You don’t need to plan a whole lot, you just need to go!

Happy Hunting,

Give your dog a treat for me and tell ‘em ‘Good Dog!’

Dave