Emporia

treedaddy

treedaddy

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I will have a chance to hunt private land near Emporia in December. How is the quail population in this area and are there any pheasants in that region?
 
treedaddy said:
I will have a chance to hunt private land near Emporia in December. How is the quail population in this area and are there any pheasants in that region?
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Depending on which side of E-town you're on, you could find a rooster. They've always been few and far between there, but I had a couple spots that were good for a rooster each year. I hunted quail 25 miles N of there and we did poorly there compared to usual. It hasn't been "good" for awhile now. It seems worse yet this year.
 
There are some quail, but very spotty. If the private land hasn't been hunted hard, or at all, you could be surprised. But it's pretty much the same as everywhere else on this side of the state. They are around, but nothing like it used to be. As for pheasants, I haven't seen any closer than Marion to Emporia, and I've been hunting this area 20+ years.
 
There are a few pheasant around Americus and some around Elmdale. I have heard of them as far east as Olpe, but Marion is genereally the eastern edge of their range. I see them off of 150 east of Marion until you hit the flint hills quite a bit.
 
fsentkilr said:
There are a few pheasant around Americus and some around Elmdale. I have heard of them as far east as Olpe, but Marion is genereally the eastern edge of their range. I see them off of 150 east of Marion until you hit the flint hills quite a bit.
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This sums it up even better. The Americus area is where I would see 4 or 5 roosters each year. I have kicked up some (2 in my life maybe) hens around Olpe, but never a rooster.
 
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I seen 1 rooster by 99 and 56 one year ago. Flew pretty wild though. The quail haven't really been where they have been in the past. I haven't went south of 56.
 
fsentkilr said:
There are a few pheasant around Americus and some around Elmdale. I have heard of them as far east as Olpe, but Marion is genereally the eastern edge of their range. I see them off of 150 east of Marion until you hit the flint hills quite a bit.
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When you look at a Google Earth Map of the Emporia or Olpe and scroll out 30 or 40 miles south or southeast of those areas one will easily notice wheat and small grain fields that should readily support wild pheasants. That area looks like good looking pheasant and quail country.

I wonder why Kansas wildlife officials haven't wild trapped 500 or 600 truly wild pheasants (not the fat tame inbreed slow flying pen raised type that make the predators fat) but truly wild pheasants from N. W., S.W. and N. C. Kansas and relocate them to that area southeast of Emporia.

I firmly believe that a healthy wild pheasant population also helps the wild quail population. I am pretty sure that there is a symbiotic relationship between those two species of game birds. A better word would be mutualism, where both game bird species benefit from each others alertness.

Both of these species have learn how alert from each others predator alert signals, the more eyes, ears and noses watching out for predators the better for both species.

I have two reason to support this theory. First look at the wild quail populations of Nebraska and west and N. C. Kansas (traditional pheasant country) you have good to fair quail numbers. In many instances better quail numbers than one might see in S. E. Kansas, N.E. Oklahoma or N.E. Texas.
The second is the number of quail a have seen in past years around Tulia, Texas while pheasant hunting (not this year but past years). I was surprised by the number of coveys we ran across while pheasant hunting.
 
I haven't had access to wild birds, but I turned over a thousand of them loose 20 years ago for several years in a row. A lot of these birds were close to wild birds they were just a few generation away from wild manchurian birds. We has several springs that we did have several hatches of young chicks, and in some places their were birds for several years, but eventually they were all gone. I really think we just have too much thick cover which leads to more predators. I have shot pheasants in Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Texas panhandle and North and South Dakota, and one thing that they all have in common different from us, is they are all more wide open country. Eastern Iowa was probably as close to our cover as anyplace, and there are fewer birds there than anyplace else I have hunted. Its not the minerals in the ground as a lot of people claim, because eggs collected from flight pens will hatch. I don't know what it is, but for some reason there just aren't any pheasants from here southeast.
 
Hunted El Dorado WMA about 10 years ago and saw a few pheasant. If I go , it will be primarily for quail. Hunted Woodson county 2007 and found some nice coveys on private land. Don't know where all I will get to hunt. Got invited to go during the Christmas holidays with a guy from my hometown in Tennessee that has family land in Woodson county and permission on the private land near Emporia. I imagine he will want to try pheasant too, so I guess we will have to go farther west or north.
 
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