Chick Sightings?
- Thread starter RWB
- Start date
westksbowhunter
Well-known member
Well I went out scouting for deer again today and saw a hen flush out of a corn field. One lone hen.
Uplandhunter67
Active member
I have driven 300 miles on back dirt roads going to my various chicken spots and only seen one bird fly across the road.
On my walks for prairie chickens I have not seen any sign, heard crowing or cackles, or flushed a single bird.
Lack of these things is very disheartening…
On my walks for prairie chickens I have not seen any sign, heard crowing or cackles, or flushed a single bird.
Lack of these things is very disheartening…
Would you want to share what part of the state you were in?
Uplandhunter67
Active member
Northwest…. Rained most of the spring and part of the summer then just stopped and has been hot and dry ever since.
Thanks for the reply.
I have been in contact with a few different people, landowners, combine operations , and my son who travels through the Midwest.
Pheasants are in very bad shape. The drought maybe the blame, but , if my old memory is correct, ones use to bounce back during a drought when you also have a wet summer early fall.
In my humble opinion, the emergency haying of the CRP , then allowing to continue this fall, will be the main reason why the population has declined so drastically. I don't have any science to back this up, just stating my opinion.
Uplandhunter67
Active member
The fields that were grazed to the quip have come back with a vengeance. The grass is waist high in most places some even shoulder high after one wet season.
I think like you that the grazing and haying during the drought crushed the pheasant population. You can still find birds in pockets but in those areas that had not been molested by machinery or animals.
I’ll keep chasing chickens for now and maybe not even take a walk for pheasants. If one gets up in front of me I can’t promise I won’t take the shot. Hard to pass on a big ole cackling rooster in range of the gun.
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westksbowhunter
Well-known member
That is only one small corner of the state. The rest of the state really didn't see much rain and grass has not come back with a vengeance. Grazing and haying during the drought does have an impact but the sole reason that pheasant numbers have plummeted is because we have lost over 2/3 of our CRP. And just a reduction of habitat in general. The ditches with plum thickets have disappeared, old homesteads pushed out for more farm ground, shelter belts have disappeared, etc. Farmers are spraying more and more frequent with a disregard of wind drift. Many farmers are even beginning to over spray the ditches when putting out chemical. One farmer here sprayed his wheat this spring and killed a 150 yd shelter belt at the lake on state ground. Mowing of county ditches should have been stopped decades ago in the month of June and July. Wheat stubble doesn't even exist anymore. Back in the 70's and 80's, knee high wheat stubble was everywhere and provided great winter habitat. Your lucky to find any that is ankle deep now. Before CRP came, that wheat stubble was the cats meow.
They mostly use stripper heads at points I hunt further west than you, leaving the stubble nice and tall, and I see more birds out that way, too. I have no doubt that the tall wheat stubble is why the birds are there. I wish more folks further east would use stripper heads for that very reason.
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Off the topic of chick sightings, but on-topic of stripper heads. My normal hunting grounds are south and maybe a bit east of westksbowhunter and the farmers I know have experimented with stripper heads but don't use them much. They talk about all the extra standing straw causing problems. Their planting equipment struggles to penetrate the straw and the extra shade on the ground makes the mud last longer. Seems to me in these drought years we're been having that extra shade would be a good thing. But I've never farmed for a living and I can barely keep the fescue in my yard alive.
I've never seen wheat stubble that looked like good habitat to me. Always looked too short. We've always hunted that central area around Edwards and on up to Rush and over to maybe Hodgeman. Not saying there wasn't some around but I just never really noticed any that looked that good. We've killed a couple over the years in some that we've tried though.
BrownDogsCan2
Well-known member
I’ve heard the same thing. One of the farmers I hunt on in Ness County stripper heads I asked him about it once I can’t remember what he said but It didn’t sound like it was that big of deal. I don’t think he double crops anything though.
Last year his wheat was harvested conventional. I don’t why maybe it was little thin and he was losing a bit of yield. Looked like pretty good wheat to me.
Where I worked on a farm in far western Kansas, they like the stripper headers because the tall stubble serves as a mulch to retain moisture, and keeps the soil from blowing too bad. It also helps hold snow a little better. Most everyone in that area uses strippers.
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Nick
Active member
When I started pheasant hunting (12 years old) in the late 70's/early 80's we had a bunch of private ground in Norton. We shot a lot of birds out of wheat stubble and it was great cover.
Wheat stubble can be great. It just has to be tall enough. These days that means a stripper header on the combine. Back when I started hunting--1980--that wasn't the case. The more weeds the better. In fact, one of the more memorable walks I've had in the last few years was the edge of a wheat stubble in Western KS. Intentional or otherwise, there was about a sprayer-width (120') along a road that was missed when they sprayed for weeds. The kochia and annual sunflower were almost impenetrable.
carptom1
Well-known member
We were hunting the same are at the same time. Shot my first birds out of big stubble fields. The best ones had been left a year and had sunflowers and tumble weeds. Didn’t need CRP with that around