Northeast Kansas...ugh

K

kansaslabman

Member
well today i decided to go on my anual quail hunt in Hiawatha in the NE corner of kansas...we have some private permision up there and in the past three years we have seen 3 to 4 covies on about a 100 acre farm...when i got up there there was still tons of ice on the ground so i knew that wasn't a good sign...i spent to the whole day hunting for quail with my two dogs my buddies and we didn't see a single quail all day...it was shocking to hunt a place that produces 3 to 4 covies every year and to go back and not see a single bird.

but thats not all...after having no success at all on that farm we decided to try some public...we walked multiple public hunting spots that looked great for quail and we didn't see a thing except one single hen pheasant...WOW
we managed to bag one duck but that was it and that was the worst quail hunt i have ever had in my whole life
 
Ne Ks

I've been waiting for some bad news from our state. Doesn't sound like the little birds did well in extreme NE KS. I am heading out for midday quail hunt near Willard today. I'm leaving the house as soon as it starts snowing. I'll give a report when I return. I hope the quail where I'm headed haven't suffered the same fate as the birds near Hiawatha!

Thanks for the report KSlabman.
 
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I hope they were just hiding really good..:(
 
Hunted near Willard today. Saw one covey of 15+quail and harvested 3, one died by the dog rather than led poisoning. We didn't hunt the place very hard; I know we walked over some quai. There was so much snow and the wind was blowing hard; I couldn't even see. Terrible drive home......never should have left the house, but gentlemen (and hopefully a few ladies) I LOVE TO HUNT BIRDS!

A couple days of doing the "normal life" stuff, then back to hunting. Where should the next one be? Haven't decided yet.

Best of luck to all. Introduce someone new to the outdoors.
 
morning hunt

Went to Marion lake this morning as the snow started to come in. My lab flushed one covey with 20+ birds but i was on the wrong side of the trees to get a shot off. Had a red tail hawk jump up about 10 yards ahead of me and went right over my head. I did bring home one cottontail! Upland hunting is like a box o chocolates, you never know what your gonna get.
 
Oggie said:
I hope they were just hiding really good..:(
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I would like to hope that too but i got a couple of champion hunting labs that always point quail when they are there. I don't think they would have passed them up...but heres another thing. We just didn't even see many signs of quail. We didn't see barely any tracks or dropping piles. I think i'm going to try further west the next time i go out for quail.
 
kansaslabman said:
I would like to hope that too but i got a couple of champion hunting labs that always point quail when they are there. I don't think they would have passed them up...but heres another thing. We just didn't even see many signs of quail. We didn't see barely any tracks or dropping piles. I think i'm going to try further west the next time i go out for quail.
Click to expand...

From my experience this season quail numbers appear to be way down in NE Kansas which is sad because usually we have great quail numbers...at least in the past 3-4 years it's been great. It is puzzling why the numbers are so low this year, even before the big ice storm 2-3 weeks ago. My crew hunts northern Jefferson and Jackson counties and we have only seen a handful of covies altogether, those covies aren't huge, and we can rarely find the singles. We used to always find singles too, but this year it seems like they just disappear. We are lucky to see one covey per hunting trip now, needless to say it hasn't been much fun this year...always good exercise though! We still talk about the 2004 and 2005 seasons when we shot tons of quail and pheasant. We had two amazing seasons in a row and last year was just so-so, but this year has kind of sucked to be honest. I really hope that bird numbers start picking up again or we're going to have to start driving further west. Hope y'all are having better luck than my crew this season.
 
We all might have to try Texas. My son was supposed to go there this weekend for a hunt, but wasn't able to. His host and a buddy hunted without him and did just fine. The two of them ended up with three roosters, eighteen scalies and three bobs.

DSC01240.jpg


Now, doesn't that make you drool?

Maynard Reece
Dodge City
 
M. R. Byrd said:
We all might have to try Texas. My son was supposed to go there this weekend for a hunt, but wasn't able to. His host and a buddy hunted without him and did just fine. The two of them ended up with three roosters, eighteen scalies and three bobs.

DSC01240.jpg


Now, doesn't that make you drool?

Maynard Reece
Dodge City
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very nice..:eek:
 
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