Limited out with 44 birds and 11 hunters = pheasant
midseason reports
- Thread starter BrownDogsCan2
- Start date
Limited out with 44 birds and 11 hunters = pheasant
I’ve not been out much at all. I’ve been training my lab and setter I got last year as a puppy. I have been out with the setter the last two weekends and he’s stuck a few coveys and one hen pheasant. He’s got some birds shot over him and his mouth around some so he’s pretty fired up finally. As a little guy he was never a ball of fire but he’s turning out to be a pretty nice little dog.
Hunted WIHA north of Russell a couple weeks ago and found several coveys of quail and a few chickens fly to the milo fields. Also hunted Webster lake area WIHA and saw around 7( pheasant on a couple different days. First time to hunt Kansas in over 25 years and we had a great time with lots of dog work, best hunt I’ve had in a very long time.
Jakeismydog2
Member
post specific locations like that and you might as well never go back to that spot as those poor coveys are going to be slaughtered.
That was more than likely my only trip to Kansas this year and was more than glad to be of encouragement to fellow hunters. As a matter of fact the last day there I ran into a couple older hunters that wasn’t having much luck and I gave them my map I was using, call me a fool I guess but them older fellows were sure grateful.
s.davis
Well-known member
Just food for thought, there's a pretty significant difference in showing a couple people a good WIHA spot or giving them your map, versus posting it on the internet where untold numbers of people might read it. I used to not really understand it myself, and I would often refer to a county I was hunting in online, thinking, 'o well, it's all public access and no one owns the birds there'. But it really does have an effect. Based on your post, that WIHA tract and the couple others around it will probably get at least double the traffic in the upcoming weeks that it would have "naturally". At best, the birds will get pressured off those tracts to adjoining private land. At worst, those covies will not survive the season.
You might not be returning to Kansas to hunt this season, but the people who do would almost all appreciate it if you would not hot-spot.
You may very well be right, but I did say north of Russell and there’s a lot of areas north of Russell and other than two gentlemen who got the map no one else knows exactly where. Having said that your point is taken, I will share my hunting areas on a personal basis and not on this forum.
Lord Louis
New member
Don't worry, you didn't do anything wrong. Like you said there are a lot of places 'north of Russell'. WIHA hunting areas get hit very hard anyway, I doubt your post on here will change that at all. I hope you can get back to Kansas and hunt again.
Uplandhunter67
Active member
We’ve been doing fair to good chasing birds. When the weather turned cold we were seeing many more birds bunched up. The weather warning seemed to have spread them back out. Hunted NE on Saturday and did well. Hunted the second half in KS WIHA and didn’t flush a single bird. Sunday managed to flush five hens and saw a rooster in the distance sailing back into cover. Looks like cold weather is moving back in so we’ll see how the game changes.
Rusty Trigger
Member
Thank you DD74 for taking the above advice. I used to hunt an area of the state for at least 20 years with great success multiple times during the season. Hours and hours in the field and new all the honey holes and how the birds used different areas during different times. A member of this forum started posting about his success in those areas and the hunting traffic went up greatly. Talked to hunters in the field and hotels and many mentioned they internet scout. Since then, those areas don't produce anymore. Lots of factors causing that, but the increase in hunting pressure meant you where hunting something that gets hunted multiple times a day in some cases.
Yes - second this - have witnessed it with a former newspaper writer -though he likely had decent intentions since he did not hunt the same WIHA and was on Private he never realized what writing about a somewhat "specific" area can do - his articles were blasted out on QF, PF on FB instagram, the paper etc - The particular year in question I had been hunting a paritcular wiha about every other week or so since the beginning of Dec - his article came out 2nd week or January - When I started hunting the WIHA (it was one of few in the general area he wrote about) there was no traffic to this wiha - and as I hunted it occasionally I could see I was the only one who had been there as no new tire prints, no new boot or dog tracks etc. Multiple covies of quail with large #'s - I'd usually take one or two out of each covey (they were 20 plus or more each) and that was it - anyways after the article exactly 2 weeks I made it back - lots of new tire tracks - I found 1 covey of birds - smaller covey - hunted it one more time towards the end of season - no birds found (probably pushed off property) any many more boot tracks/foot prints/tire tracks. (The icing on the cake - following year the WIHA was disenrolled and had leased signs on it if I recall - timing seemed to surely corroborate to the fantastic bird report and the place was a gem of a bird hunting property - funny thing was the property had been in WIHA for years before that - no issues)
So yes - it can and does play a significant role - with the widespread adoption of facebook/social media and the older generation even getting in on facebook as of the more recent years this whole internet scouting/hotspotting is more of a recent phenomenon. Wasnt an issue a few years ago as you were simply limited to the spread and speed to which information could spread when you were limited to print media (actually having to buy a paper or a magazine and read an article - imagine that) to word of mouth - now you have people posting go pro videos of entire hunts, tail gate photos, talking about cities/counties online with basically a roadmap of where to go. It does have an effect though others would like to argue to the contrary.
I remember a farmer telling me that he noticed things where years the birds would be great/bounce back - he wouldnt see much traffic if the #'s had been in the dumps for a while - but year 2 and year 3 traffic would grow exponentially - then probably die off again due to the changing seasons and populations not matching previous magazine article reports etc and of course weather from year to year is a big factor. Anyways info used to travel a lot slower -not it's virtually in real time - If anyone would undertake such a study I think it would be an interesting one to read the effects of internet scouting/hot spotting on hunting pressure/wildlife in a given area. I'd bet if I could talk to the same farmer now his observation would be that traffic increased sooner rather than having a lag.
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