Ks wiha fees?

P

Pointer Man

New member
I have been hearing a lot about the poor conditions of the WIHA program in Kansas and by poor I mean that they are not increasing the acreage of WIHA in the state and that many of the acreas are actually going to be expiring or not renewed. I know that in other states a seperate fee in charged in order to hunt WIHA land (I believe Colorado does this). Would the majority of people be willing to put up $15-$20 if we could be guaranteed the money would go toward expanding the WIHA program? Just and idea, thoughts, concerns,....?

:cheers:
 
Pointer Man said:
I have been hearing a lot about the poor conditions of the WIHA program in Kansas and by poor I mean that they are not increasing the acreage of WIHA in the state and that many of the acreas are actually going to be expiring or not renewed. I know that in other states a seperate fee in charged in order to hunt WIHA land (I believe Colorado does this). Would the majority of people be willing to put up $15-$20 if we could be guaranteed the money would go toward expanding the WIHA program? Just and idea, thoughts, concerns,....?

:cheers:
Click to expand...
Even though I don't hunt any WIHA I would still pay for it. It would have to go directly to the WIHA Program though. If this would get passed everybody would have to pay it since the state can't track who hunts what field and so on.
 
Pointer Man said:
I have been hearing a lot about the poor conditions of the WIHA program in Kansas and by poor I mean that they are not increasing the acreage of WIHA in the state and that many of the acreas are actually going to be expiring or not renewed. I know that in other states a seperate fee in charged in order to hunt WIHA land (I believe Colorado does this). Would the majority of people be willing to put up $15-$20 if we could be guaranteed the money would go toward expanding the WIHA program? Just and idea, thoughts, concerns,....?

:cheers:
Click to expand...

Absolutely!! No question I'd be in support, but I have a hard time trusting folks w/ my money. I'd have to see the results to be in full support. I'd probably wait until the WIHA map came out each year to buy my stamp. KDWP would have to ban outfitters from the lands and set a maximum group size limit before I'd buy the stamp also. If outfitters and/or groups of 40 were allowed to hunt the WIHA, I'd stick solely to private land. If I had no private land, I guess I'd probably buy a stamp regardless. It would be nice to see the expansion of WIHA. I don't think many folks would complain too much about helping contribute to the leasing of more acres.
 
Kansas WIHA Program

Pointer Man said:
I have been hearing a lot about the poor conditions of the WIHA program in Kansas and by poor I mean that they are not increasing the acreage of WIHA in the state and that many of the acreas are actually going to be expiring or not renewed. I know that in other states a seperate fee in charged in order to hunt WIHA land (I believe Colorado does this). Would the majority of people be willing to put up $15-$20 if we could be guaranteed the money would go toward expanding the WIHA program? Just and idea, thoughts, concerns,....?

:cheers:
Click to expand...

With 1.1 million acres of private land enrolled in the Kansas walk-in hunting program, it seems a bit early to talk about how to salvage it. It is the most successful such program in the U.S., dwarfing all others. Moreover, the KDWP website says nothing about a decrease in acreage, significant or otherwise. Nor have I heard anything about decreases in walk-in acreage. I would be interested to know who is saying the program is under evaluation or losing acreage.
 
YES!!

Great thread...

Agree w/ all that the money should go directly to the WIHA program...habitat improvements, prescribed burns and increased land totals.

Also agree that ##$$%% outfitters should not be able to take their "clients" on these properties period!!

Total bull that they (outfitter / guides) can reap profit from these acres...

As far as large groups of pheasant hunters...not sure how to limit this?

I never cared for party hunting anyway...
 
I can't believe that an outfitter would have much repeat business if they took clients on WIHA lands.

That's certainly not what I would be looking for from an outfitter.

I would support a WIHA fee. If there are 100,000 hunters in KS, that'd be an easy $1M that could go towards more WIHA. Assuming they are paying $1.5/acre, that could really expand the program.

However, if we start loosing CRP, and there are many contracts expiring in the next couple of year, they might have trouble finding 1M acres to lease.

Mike C.
 
Pointer Man said:
I have been hearing a lot about the poor conditions of the WIHA program in Kansas and by poor I mean that they are not increasing the acreage of WIHA in the state and that many of the acreas are actually going to be expiring or not renewed.
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Have you been hearing this from KPWD or some other source?

I have not heard or seen anything related to this. One of the landowners has considerable acerage in WIHA and he expects to continue next year.

Personnaly I doubt there is a problem as the WIHA program is the jewel in their program. It is a great draw for in-state and out-of-state hunters.

Why would an additional fee be needed? With the CRP being reduced I would think landowners would embrace a program that paid them for access to thier fallow fields.

Where are you getting your information?
 
The argument of outfitters guiding on public land has been around for years. I grew up around Cheyenne Bottoms and would hunt ducks and geese there. All the time you would see guides using the marsh with their clients. There is some very good public land but for a business of that sort to profit off of it when its the public that has paid for it just seems like it would be ethically wrong but it is a business. The stamp idea does have some merrit but there's already so much WIHA already that it would be impossible to enforce the stamp. They would have to again raise the price of purchasing a license. Right now it does not seem that the state has any problem leasing ground in the form of money. The private sector is always going to pay landowners more then the state is theres just no way around that.
 
just FYI. colorado is going to do away with the fee in 2010. The Walk in will be in place but a seperate fee will no longer be required.
 
Since CO is dropping their fee I"d be happy to pay one in KS. :D They have a lot more WIHA than in CO. Although CO has the best WI Atlas' of the one's I've used.
I think the program worked pretty well in CO. For awhile even folks that did not hunt but used the State Wildlife Area's were required to buy a walk-in stamp. Which was nice to take a bit of the burden off the sportsman/woman.

CO WI is not open to Big Game so it is a bit different than KS.
 
I was mainly concerned about the tight budget that is facing the state and I don't to see the program dwindle if they reduced the price they are paying for the current WIHA land. I read a short note on the KDWP related the fee increases and I guess I figured that if we payed an additional cost directly for the WIHA program that money wouldn't be taken away and spent on something else. It was just an idea and I was curious if anyone else had concerns or not. I am glad I live in a state that does have a large amount of public land to hunt and I wouldn't want to see that change.

http://kdwp.blogspot.com/2009/01/comments-invited-on-proposed-fee.html
 
fees

I would pay an additional fee for WHIA. Right on, it has been the best thing to happen for Pheasant hunting ever. I LOVE Kansas.

By the way I sure wish we could get rid of the tour buses, etc. Mass hunting is just not fair chase. Hope I didn't p.... in someone's Wheaties.:)
Recently I spoke to a Wildlife man and he said 5 people should be a limit. I agree. 1000%


Gman
 
Fee

I live out of state and pay $75 for a license, and $185 for some lease ground, plus all the related hunting expenses and taxes. I can't see paying more, without knowing how the money is being used. Where does the money go from the license? Does the money go to a general fund or is it directly used for WHIA? How about those acres of WHIA that doesn't support feather or fur, you've all seen it, cows in pastures, barren rock bluffs, winter wheat, this is being paid for as well. Kansas is great, don't get me wrong and I would gladly pay an extra fee for more acceptable ground.
 
We just have to remember, not all the WIHA ground is for Pheasants or Quail, geese, ducks and deer get shot off of the land as well. If Kansas does implement this extra charge, everyone would be charged not just us upland hunters!! I support the extra money if, like I said earlier, I get to see how our money is being spent!
 
kiotehntr said:
We just have to remember, not all the WIHA ground is for Pheasants or Quail, geese, ducks and deer get shot off of the land as well. If Kansas does implement this extra charge, everyone would be charged not just us upland hunters!! I support the extra money if, like I said earlier, I get to see how our money is being spent!
Click to expand...

Kio,

Good luck on seeing how any branch of goverment spends their money.:)

Gman
 
Would not mind a stamp or small fee as long as there is more in the way of good grain stubble habitat. Not much in the way of food plots where I go. Just remember you pay $100 bucks to hunt two five day periods in South Dakota, I think Kansas is a good deal.
 
KansasBrittney said:

Absolutely!! No question I'd be in support, but I have a hard time trusting folks w/ my money. I'd have to see the results to be in full support. I'd probably wait until the WIHA map came out each year to buy my stamp. KDWP would have to ban outfitters from the lands and set a maximum group size limit before I'd buy the stamp also. If outfitters and/or groups of 40 were allowed to hunt the WIHA, I'd stick solely to private land. If I had no private land, I guess I'd probably buy a stamp regardless. It would be nice to see the expansion of WIHA. I don't think many folks would complain too much about helping contribute to the leasing of more acres.
Click to expand...

Great post - Applause for Kansas Brittney!


BritChaser said:

With 1.1 million acres of private land enrolled in the Kansas walk-in hunting program, it seems a bit early to talk about how to salvage it. It is the most successful such program in the U.S., dwarfing all others. Moreover, the KDWP website says nothing about a decrease in acreage, significant or otherwise. Nor have I heard anything about decreases in walk-in acreage. I would be interested to know who is saying the program is under evaluation or losing acreage.
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Of course the KDWP doesn't say anything about a decrease in acreage. Why would they? But if you'll recall, they sure talked about it when the program was increasing. There was a big push to get to 1 million acres and the KDWP leased pretty much anything they could to get to that magic number. This was for marketing reasons. After hitting 1 million, the program appears to have been "put on the shelf".

I don't recall anybody saying the program is being evaluated, however I'm the one that said that acreage is shrinking. What do I base that on? The actual numbers. I've been keeping a spreadsheet for every county showing the acreage and number of WIHA's in every county since program's inception. It's one of the ways I find new areas and which areas have been deleted without spending hours comparing year to year maps. It's easy find out how much total land the program has by simply totaling the columns.

In addition, I have made transparencies that can be used as overlays showing the change from one year to the next. This highlights the new spots and also lets me know what spots have been pulled from the program. This along with copies of every WIHA atlas since the beginning has proven VERY helpful.

Bottom line, total WIHA acreage is shrinking very quickly. What isn't shown on the maps is that the spots with good habitat are shrinking at an alarming rate. Many of these spots get hunted/tried out until the contract expires then they get leased up.

For those of you who believe we're not losing acreage, take you favorite county and check it against last year's map. See how many new spots you find (there are some). Then see how many spots are gone. Now, look at the difference.

Perhaps an easier way is to simply check the total acreage available in a given county at the front of each WIHA booklet and compare it to the same county last year...or the year before. Just because we've currently got the best program in the nation doesn't mean that it will stay that way. Some might even argue that the best hunting offered by the WIHA program is behind us. That's scarey.

While the program is successful, it needs some work if we're going to continue to try and sustain both a good upland bird population and good hunting.

Point!
 
good thread pointer man:thumbsup: I think there are some good points in every reply. From my experience, if there is a good wiha spot word travels FAST! case in point: we own some land in Barton Co that is wiha, this spot is notoriuos for holding large number of birds in the early season. My uncle lives across the street from it and we make sure we are the first ones in there on opening day. (someone got it before us this year, they had to of camped out) Back to point, we walk that field the first thing in the morning the first couple of weeks of the season, after that its useless because everybody and their brother knows about that spot. We have set on the front porch eating lunch and have seen three to four groups of hunters walk the area in less than two hours. Thats fine by us cause they usually push the remaining birds into our private land:thumbsup:

I can only imagine that other honey holes get hit just as hard. If we get more wiha, then the honey holes wont get hit as hard as they do. I'm not saying that there isnt enough ground but what I am seeing out there is more and more goose and turkey land becoming wiha and less for upland birds.

I would not have a problem paying an extra 5-10 dollars per year to see that the wiha expands and more upland cover is enrolled into the program.

Just my two cents
 
A couple of things. I think the old adage "if you aren't growing your dying" holds true here. If the program had always pushed for more and more acres every year then it would never be in a situation of decreasing acres over the past couple of years.

I would definitely pay and support an extra fee if I knew that the money would go to its own separate fund and the entirety of the money would be spent in the year that it was brought in. Money that lays around in government coffers generally finds itself being diverted somewhere that it was never supposed to go.

The WIHA program brought me to Kansas but the kind people and great relationships that I have established have kept me coming back. I definitely miss some of the pieces that used to be WIHA and I hate to see the program diminish from where it once was as the best program of its kind.
 
. . . I'm the one that said that acreage is shrinking. What do I base that on? The actual numbers. I've been keeping a spreadsheet for every county showing the acreage and number of WIHA's in every county since program's inception. It's one of the ways I find new areas and which areas have been deleted without spending hours comparing year to year maps. It's easy find out how much total land the program has by simply totaling the columns.

In addition, I have made transparencies that can be used as overlays showing the change from one year to the next. This highlights the new spots and also lets me know what spots have been pulled from the program. This along with copies of every WIHA atlas since the beginning has proven VERY helpful.

Bottom line, total WIHA acreage is shrinking very quickly. What isn't shown on the maps is that the spots with good habitat are shrinking at an alarming rate.
Click to expand...

Serious analysis. We have our very own WIHA/pheasant quant.:cool:
 
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