Well boys, I see all our neighboring states got into the Federal grant money for open field/waters, Walk in Hunting. Missouri nothing. I decided to call the Missouri Department of Conservation and ask why. They are still going to get back to me. I don't want to tell you what a run around it is to find a live person at MDC, who knows anything. Suffice to say the usual suspects are pushed forward as roadblocks. First the MDC tried a program to pair up hunters with landowners who reported deer damage, but no landowners were receptive. This convinced them that such a walk in program would be poorly recieved. Second, I was told that compared to Kansas and Nebraska, we had a huge amount of public ground. I looked it up, and 93% of Missouri is privately owned. 75% of Missouri's public ground is in the southern 3rd of the state and valuable for hunting only deer and turkey. The rest is managed for either waterfowl exclusively, and closed for other hunting, or managed for multi species, ( read deer and turkeys). I have reached the point of disgust. Missouri's band aid approach with a whopping 10 quail emphasis areas is a joke. The "only" pheasant emphasis area is Bilby, which is great, and crowded, and a lot more could be done with it. smaller corn and bean fields for one, leaving more real prairie grass and annual weed fields. Even Bilby follws a trend I notice on MDC properties, with really healthy stands of fescue waterways. if I hear from anyone further from MDC, I'll let you know. As far as the MDC, it's no wonder that we have no quail/pheasants and darn near no quail hunters. Would it kill them to pilot a program to provide access to private ground, with little expense, to provide a worthwhile experience for upland hunters? It kills me to see Kansas with a more progressive view than Missouri has. We used to be the Premier Conservation program in the nation, now????? We are going to stock elk in the Ozarks, yet another glamour species.