Huntmorevizslas
Member
Great exposure for a young dog...
Opening Weekend in Kansas
- Thread starter OneEyedHunter
- Start date
Spent opening weekend hunting WIHA's in Cowley, Elk, Chautauqua and Wilson counties for quail. Saw one other bird hunter in all of the places and miles I covered. Didn't see a single quail or ditch parrot the entire two days. Thinking quail may be a fictitious game animal just to collect license revenues. Not gonna give up. Need to do more home work it sounds like.
Just dont hunt SE ks if it's public - could be wrong - but their hunting for quail went down the sewer late 90s early 00s - I keep seeing bs online about it coming back but I doubt it - garbage soybeans everywhere - farm fence row to fence row, cool season grasses everywhere, intensive grazing and on top of that big ag's Chemicals and GMO's everyone has been brainwashed into using - a recipe for no Quail.
westksbowhunter
Well-known member
It went down the sewer in the late 80's. Last good year was 1988.
I cant imagine what it was like in the 80s - I got in as a teenager on 2 or 3 hunts with family about 93-95 and holy cow - the only thing I've experienced that was close to how many birds we saw was a hunt in Oklahoma in 2015 or 2016 when they had their banner year.
I’m sorry to hear that. I saw several good sized coveys while deer hunting this weekend in Chautauqua County . There are quail in southeast Kansas, and good numbers of them in many areas. We don’t have much public hunting down this way though, and what little we do have gets run out in pretty short order.
gettinbirdie
Active member
I've never seen so many birdhunters like I saw this weekend. We put alot of miles on the truck trying to elude hunters and find ditchparrots.
2 of us with 3 shorthairs on public land, 2 mornings and 2 evenings in a 3 day period-put up 20 roosters, 30+ hens, and 3 big covies of quail. We finished with 5 roosters each and a handful of quail out of the deal. Gonna wait a couple of weeks, Hopefully it settles down a bit before we go back.
2 of us with 3 shorthairs on public land, 2 mornings and 2 evenings in a 3 day period-put up 20 roosters, 30+ hens, and 3 big covies of quail. We finished with 5 roosters each and a handful of quail out of the deal. Gonna wait a couple of weeks, Hopefully it settles down a bit before we go back.
westksbowhunter
Well-known member
KDWP used to always put out harvest numbers for upland birds. Now only a forcast to keep people coming. They hide the truth .Last one I recall was 2018 where somewhere around 300,000 pheasant were shot. Wasn't that long ago where that number was close to a million. I have no idea on quail. I assume under 100,000. That number was 4-5 million in the 70's and 80's. I read that Kansas meadowlark numbers were down 70%. All boils down to habitat. Regardless of weather and hatch, numbers will never rebound without habitat.
cheesy
Well-known member
I grew up in Wilson County, Dad still lives there. He hasn't kept a bird dog in over 20 years, and there wasn't anybody that loved to quail hunt more than him. Used to know of 10+ coveys there on our home place when I was growing up in the 90's. More when he was growing up in the 60's. There might be 1 there now.
westksbowhunter
Well-known member
That's the norm. No grasses, no hedge rows, no old homesteads. The landscape looks totally different than it was 40-50 years ago.
s.davis
Well-known member
364K quail, 295K pheasants in 2020.
westksbowhunter
Well-known member
Well the quail are higher than what I thought but pathetic overall all. 1.1 million pheasants in 1982. 674,000 quail in 2004. 1966-3.9 million Quail 1970-2.7 million Quail 1980- 1,186,000 Quail
Along with that there are trees where there never used to be. My grandparents farm north of Fall River is covered up in trees and scrub bush. Not much pasture left. We used to find several coveys of birds on it back in the 70s and 80s. They sold it and the last time I was down there it looks totally different