Season Assessment

[westksbowhunter]

Been out pheasant hunting 5 times now and have spent over 30 days bowhunting in pheasant country. My assessment is that numbers in the counties I hunt are down a bit from last year. Had we not had that cold front and wet cold weather during the early hatching period, I think we would have had a bumper hatch. CRP fields look good but fire weed is not existent this year. Just don't have the weedy cover. But there are a few birds to hunt and lets hope for a good hatch in 2026 and continued wet weather, just not at the end of May or early June. There is about a month there where we need warm and very dry weather. We just want a very raining late June and July.

 

[BrownDogsCan2]

That’s too bad. Opener we were looking for chickens. I haven’t been out but once pheasant hunting and much closer to me. It was about like it always is.

 

[Chessie 67]

In the area that I hunt, my observation from hunting 5 days on the opener was that there were more pheasants than the last few years. They were harder to corral as there was still standing crop about everywhere. Looking forward to returning between Christmas and New Years and reassess. The quail were definitely better than last year with some really large coveys, but still not like 3 and 4 years ago.

 

[Kansan]

We only have quail in my part of southeast Kansas. We got in to 8 big coveys around home the other day in a short, few hour hunt. Pretty spectacular for SEK in the 21st century.

 

[GetTothePoint]

The area I go and am fortunate to have some private access had quail numbers better than I've seen in a lot of years, saw a few distant pheasant but really hot the days we were out. We had great success on quail on private then hunted some public ground in the exact same area and didn't see a bird. Second year in a row that has been the case

 

[westksbowhunter]

I hunt all private ground

 

[GetTothePoint]

I hunt all private ground

I crossed to the dark side on that trip and over dinner we leased the waterways and some pasture from the farmer we have permission on. The existing farmer hays them and briefly runs cattle on the little pasture there is. It feels dirty and is the first "pay to play" situation I've had to do but I'm sick of the public situation and driving to another state all the time gets expensive. We've always had permission to hunt these places but for years I've wondered about the added success we'd have if they'd leave the waterways alone. Now we'll find out I guess. With this and a adjoining property we have permission on I can at least kill a weekend on private.