2013 WIHA atlas

Didn't see any news as to whether there was a net gain or loss of WIHA. KDWPT said "over a million" acres of public land which is not necessarily WIHA. On first glance I saw a new, rather isolated 80 I might stick my nose in sometime this season.
 
they are now contracting more worthless crop stubble to keep the acres inflated...no secret, look around this season.
 
I guess the KDWPT's old habits are hard to break. Before no-till with its mass herbicide application, weedy wheat stubble, especially the terraces, provided great hunting. It is frustrating, especially with the drought, to drive up to a walk-in spot and find nothing but short, thin stubble or stalks with alot of bare dirt showing and not a weed in sight. In defense of the KDWPT, it would require lots more money and labor to monitor fields from season to season and take fields out of the program due to lack of huntable acres. Moreover, if that kind of active monitoring was going on, far fewer landowners would participate in WIHA due to the hassle. One solution for the individual hunter or hunting groups might be to subscribe to Google Earth's real time service to monitor WIHA acres pre-season from season to season. You could at least avoid waisting time and gas driving to tilled fields or green wheat.
 
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They changed the format a little. I like that they added road names/numbers--I think.

There seem to be a couple of new ones in my areas. Maybe it just looks like it because the pages don't line up the way they used to. In other words, what looks like a new one might just have been on a different map last year.
 
BritChaser said:
I guess the KDWPT's old habits are hard to break. Before no till with its mass herbicide application, weedy wheat stubble, especially the terraces, provided great hunting. It is frustrating, especially with the drought, to drive up to a walk-in spot and find it to be nothing but short, thin stubble or stalks with alot of bare dirt showing.
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boy, you are so right...I used to shoot tons of birds out of weedy wheat stubble and foxtail choked milo stubble...it was awesome! :thumbsup:
 
hunter94 said:
boy, you are so right...I used to shoot tons of birds out of weedy wheat stubble and foxtail choked milo stubble...it was awesome! :thumbsup:
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No kidding. I might just be a dumb construction guy, but sure would prefer less acres of better ground. But I guess that would go against the way they market it to out of staters. Wonder how many people have traveled in to find their million acres to be a little less than advertised. More is rarely better
 
Howdy gents....

I am very appreciative of the WIHA program and the access it allows.....However, I sure agree w/ Carptom that more productive acres would be great.
The program would really be more beneficial to all if the quality of habitat was improved. And if only quality acres w/ habitat: CRP, buffers, weedy stubble and native grass pastures, choked w/ wild plum thickets......were allowed into the program!
I like you guys have been so disgusted to drive over a 1,000 miles only to find useless short stubble or waste ground veiled as WIHA.
Now....I have also hunted some WIHA ground that was excellent and killed limits of phez and quail there...
Letters to the KWDPT and Local conservation offices would be a good start, attending conservation, PF and QF meetings and lobbying our elected officials to write better conservation into our farm bill.
 
Here's some of my own personal opinions. First, I think in many ways the WIHA program has mirrored the CRP program. The early contracts starting in 1985 in CRP were not structured for upland game habitat. It was then a soil conservation program for the most part. Once our wildlife interests became part of the planting system, some better habitat was established. However, often times the maintenance requirements were either poorly planned or poorly supervised and many of these plantings evolved through succession into dense stands dominated by tall native warm-season grasses that functioned as poor bird producers and had declining attraction for birds. I lived through this evolution on private land I hunted until about 2000. The first 3-7 years were pretty fantastic then it faded to a fraction of it's original glory before year 10.

Now the business side. The advent of out-of-state deer hunting in Kansas turned the tide on the quality WIHA's we once enjoyed in some respects. With incoming hunters renting prime CRP land to hunt deer, the State could not compete with individuals paying 5-15X the price for choice offerings. This is often why most of the offerings are further west as the deer options dwindle there and are outweighed by birds.

The drought has hurt us markedly. Last year was the worst year I've survived. Releasing CRP for haying and grazing by the FEDS, led to many lost hours driving from WIHA to WIHA looking for one with enough cover to turn a dog out on. I drove to 17 in a row one day that did not have the cover needed to hold 1 bird. The up side of that is that the haying and drought combined to stress that native grass in many of those CRP patches, giving the forbs an opportunity to again shine and those tracts should be significantly improved for bird production for several years. Unfortunately, much of the western 1/3 of the state is still mired in that drought. Yes, the FEDS have again released 66 counties for haying and grazing. We will again find CRP and WIHA acreages that have been hayed or grazed out of usefulness for this fall. That's life! I feel for several of my young dogs as they may never reach anything near their potential because these down years will provide them limited bird contacts. However, I will soon be out there tuning them up and hardening up my legs and lungs to reach for the far side of a section of grass hoping to hear that cackle or whirr ahead of a solid point!!! HI REED!
 
as for spring turkey KS WIHA they are top notch i have killed all my KS birds on WIHA & i have seen loads of great turkey WIHAs that all hold birds...

as for the fall WIHAs i was not impressed at all with the fall WIHAs about 98% of then spring WIHAs i hunted looked better for qauil/pheasant then the fall WIHAs did wear it was legal to hunt those species...???

there was 1 that was enrolled in both fall/spring that would kick ass in any season ive seen on 1 stretch of road around the WIHA mule deer & whitetail, prairie chicken, bob white quail, pheasant, wild turkey coyote & loads of waterfowl game rich!!!
 
The quality of the WIHA's have definately headed down hill. Last year I saw a ton of disced up fields, hayfields with no cover, ect enrolled in WIHA. Never understood why our money was going toward leasing such land. But, I never thought about keeping the numbers inflated for out of staters to see.


You can kill turkeys everywhere in this state. Turkey WIHA's in my opinion are a waste of dollars. I've never ran across a farmer who would not let me turkey hunt. That and every lake in the state has a healthy population of those birds. Doesn't take anything special to shoot a turkey here.
 
As PD stated, out of state deer hunting and leasing has destroyed most everything.


The other fact, Sam Brownback is a POS and needs his butt kicked out of office.

:cheers:


Because of the past and recent poor history of KDWPs WIHA -- I spend hours on google earth studying before I ever get in the vehicle. Takes my time yes, but saves a helluva lot of seat/windshield time and dissapointment. Most tracts are completely worthless anymore for pheasants/quail. If you do find a nice one for Pheasants or quail after the first month its likely been pounded to the point everything is dead or has moved over to the neighbors if suitable habitat is nearby. Thats what daily hunting will do.

Turkey, and PC's on the other hand you can have some luck....that and deer if they havent been run to hell and back with pickup trucks.


Everybody that wants to hunt birds is being forced onto very few suitable WIHA properties.
 
well, not sure it is all that much doom and gloom, but I have not hunted KS. for past 2 years due to the drought and lack of cover/birds...absent those conditions, things would not be as dire, although the quality of WIHA is going south, for sure....go middle week, you can still knock on doors and get on birdy looking property, except for deer season, more often than you might think...yes, you will get turned down, get a yes, drop off a token of your appreciation, you might be welcome back again or next season...it takes some work guys, and time...but it is what it is...make some adjustments, covet contacts and slowly make a list of landowners who will welcome you.

and if you see a farmer who needs help, stop and do it...good for hunter relations and maybe beneficial for you!
 
bad land

you either put up with it, stay home, or buy your own land, see how that works? sure we all have problems but most of us are hunting off someone else's work and or money. ya, mistakes were made in the original crp planting, mostly they used a mix that wasn't much benefit to wildlife after a few years but wild life wasn't the original intent, it should have been. about the barren field, try controlling the weather, see where that gets ya. another thing you guys are over looking is crop rotation, most of these contracts involve several year sign ups. last year i lost several thousand acres to crop rotation, mostly land not planted, this year i expect to be in hog heaven on that land. i guess i'm saying, do your homework and start being just a little moe thankful you have any opportunities at all. you could be living in new york city or even worse chicago

cheers
 
Another thing you need to look at is is that great piece of ground you love to hunt so much owned by same landowner who owns that crappy piece of grass 2.5 miles away
 
CRP map

I've been lookin' under every rock and welcome mat for a CRP map.

I understand the 2008 Farm Bill issue. Does anyone have a pre-2007 map or another way to locate such a map?

Many Thanks!
 
So, the Spring Turkey WIHA is worth checking out? I'm down around Tulsa. The southern WIHAs would be closer....Do you have to go to those NE SpringTurkey WIHAs to get into some birds or are the ones down south pretty decent also?

I'm considering a trip to either Missouri or Kansas next spring....can't decide.

I haven't pheasant hunted up there in a few years, but we hunted from 2001-2009 exclusively on WIHA. Killed limits of birds many of those years. I am only speaking from personal experience here, but my opinion is that it was harder and harder to find quality habitat on those WIHAs we hunted every year. We were very frustrated in '09 and didn't go back in '10. Wish I had now because that was the last year before the great drought. Either way, I wish we had something like it down here in OK. Lots of good memories walking those WIHA fields. Be thankful for it.
 
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akp said:
So, the Spring Turkey WIHA is worth checking out? I'm down around Tulsa. The southern WIHAs would be closer....Do you have to go to those NE SpringTurkey WIHAs to get into some birds or are the ones down south pretty decent also?
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Western Kansas has lots of turkeys.
 
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