Pressure?

ctfisher

ctfisher

New member
Can anyone attest to what the pressure is like on opening weekend in KS?
Will every WIHA worth walking have a truck parked at it?
Will state WMA lands be covered up?

Or is there enough to go around?

Essentially the question is: would you go for the opener when there are the most birds, or wait a week and have less competition for those birds that haven't been shot?


P.S.: first hand experience, please.
 
I don’t know about Kansas but I have experienced the opening weekend on several states north of there. That was due to work limitations. Ow mostly retired I can go whenever and would rather have a voluntary root canal than hunting the opening weekend. Yes there are more stupid birds, I believe half the birds shot in South Dakota are shot the opening week. Just me maybe, but I’d rather work my dogs with lots fewer people and put up with less birds.
 
Used to hunt NC Kansas, we drove down on opening Sunday and hunted for four days. Almost never bumped into another bird hunter. If we did they were interested in quail and not pheasants(messed up their quail dogs). There was not much for WIHA up near the Nebraska border.
Keep expectations real and try it. Good luck. Really good people there.
 
It depends on where you’re going. If you get away from the highways, then you do have a chance of finding less pressure but most of the good grass patches will have people parked in them by 5 in the morning opening weekend. Other times you’ll go miles and not see anybody. You just have to do your scouting and spend time logging miles. Opening weekend as well as the first two weeks are normally pretty busy and then it slows down after that
 
Anything decent will have a truck there from wee hours of the morning on trying to hold it down. And after mid morning the few tracks left in wiha that have cover anymore will have been walked already at least once. Having said that, Kansas has so much worthless public ground that the traffic on the better pieces doesn't seem to improve as the season goes on. The hunters may drop off but when there's only a handful of spots with cover and grain the hunters are going to find them and they will be hunted several times per week if not daily. Good luck
 
I live out here and I don't waste my time hunting opening weekend. It is a total shit show with idiots everywhere. Many of the WIHA spots have been grazed or cut which puts everyone fighting for the few good WIHA parcels that are huntable.
 
If I go out on public during opening weekend I sleep in and go someplace close to home. There are small pieces of state public that don’t receive much pressure. They are usually nontox and don’t have much walk-in in the area to fill out a day.
 
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
If you can wait for some weather. At the very least, moister. At the best snow and cold. If you have to schedule ahead, I would not recommend the first week of season.
 
Thanks for the input folks.

Its either the opener/first week of the season, or second weekend/week for us at the moment, just based on other factors on the schedule. Is week 2 going to be any different than the opener? If there's no significant drop off in pressure week 1 to week 2, I'd rather bite the bullet and fight the crowds on the opener.

I'm used to contested public land and having to win the race to the spot here in GA hunting, well, anything worth hunting public for. That part doesn't scare me off. Its moreso the not knowing what a piece of land looks like without seeing it in person first, and being beat to a good second spot if plan A is a bust.
 
First of all, no matter what week you go, you are going to be disappointed with WIHA! My brother calls it walk around ground. Not that it all sucks. If you put in the time on the computer, you might find some places with some birds. If you go solely by the WIHA maps, you're going to do a lot of driving and not much shooting. I've drove 30 minutes to a place, only to find it a picked corn field without a smidgen of cover. Second, go quail hunting and hope for a rooster. Sorry to paint a grim picture but that's the truth. Not that it's horrible everywhere as I'll probably take a trip there this year but will be on private ground. I've learned to treat Kansas as a vacation. I'm looking for private ground. If I can't find it, I use the WIHA for a place to stretch the dogs and burn off some frustration. Keep your expectations low and go have a good vacation. I would still play the weather. If not, there will be less pressure the second week. And don't forget to carry water. Kansas can be very dry. Good luck and let us know how it goes.
 
ctfisher said:
Can anyone attest to what the pressure is like on opening weekend in KS?
Will every WIHA worth walking have a truck parked at it?
Will state WMA lands be covered up?

Or is there enough to go around?

Essentially the question is: would you go for the opener when there are the most birds, or wait a week and have less competition for those birds that haven't been shot?


P.S.: first hand experience, please.
Click to expand...
hard to say but i imagine word is getting around that there are very few birds in Kansas anymore
 
I was fortunate and had the chance to hunt private ground the last couple days in central Kansas. The birds were honestly better than I have seen in years. Yesterday we ran out of private so we decided to finish the day hunting WIHA. We walked 5 fields and never saw a bird. It's such a joke , it's not the parcels fault or the area, it's relentless pressure because of the lack of spots. We had some kids with us for their first hunt and luckily had success on private before they learned what public hunting is about. It'd be about impossible to get a kid fired up about bird hunting if all they had was the public hiking. DO BETTER KDWP
 
"DO BETTER KDWP"

They won't. KDWP is all about deer hunting now. Plus, they are happy with unregulated guiding services and the huge amount of leasing money coming into the state.

How many upland hunters does it take to match the impact of one guide outfit paying $10K to lease a good deer parcel?
 
GetTothePoint said:
I was fortunate and had the chance to hunt private ground the last couple days in central Kansas. The birds were honestly better than I have seen in years. Yesterday we ran out of private so we decided to finish the day hunting WIHA. We walked 5 fields and never saw a bird. It's such a joke , it's not the parcels fault or the area, it's relentless pressure because of the lack of spots. We had some kids with us for their first hunt and luckily had success on private before they learned what public hunting is about. It'd be about impossible to get a kid fired up about bird hunting if all they had was the public hiking. DO BETTER KDWP
Click to expand...
The WIHA program needs to end. And the gov't needs to find a way to keep CRP acres in conservation and not grazing and haying. NR deer hunting has been the biggest of enemy of upland hunting and all other forms of hunting in Kansas. The worst decision for resident hunting came down in 1995 when Kansas allowed NR deer hunting.
 
WIHA should be greatly reduced or eliminated. Residents should get a couple weekends of access before non-Residents.

Guiding/access to wildlife in exchange for money should be tightly regulated and the state should make a lot of money on it to fund wildlife conservation.

iWIHA should be greatly expanded. Landowners should be paid based on habitat/carrying capacity/usage, not acreage. Residents and non-Residents should have to pay for an iWIHA pass.

KDWPs shady practices with WIHA enrollments should be investigated.

I also think states should impose any nonresident restrictions reciprocally. So if you live in a state with non-resident draws for deer, you should have to draw to hunt deer when you go to a different state.

And P-R funds and other fed money should be apportioned to states based upon the tax base that they generate, not based on the states acreage.
 
Last edited:
s.davis said:
The worst decision for resident hunting in Kansas came when Kansans decided not to pay for their wildlife department.
Click to expand...
They did that so that they could control legislation on NR deer hunting. They don't want biologists making decisions. It all boils down to NR hunting. Right now they know that the KDWP wants to ban baiting, so Legislation will block it.
 
There is a lot of money made from deer hunting by our politicians as well as “deals”.

Big money in deer hunting and they won’t ever pass any laws to strictly regulate guiding because they don’t want to run off deer guides or hurt their own guiding on their own land.
 
westksbowhunter said:
The WIHA program needs to end. And the gov't needs to find a way to keep CRP acres in conservation and not grazing and haying. NR deer hunting has been the biggest of enemy of upland hunting and all other forms of hunting in Kansas. The worst decision for resident hunting came down in 1995 when Kansas allowed NR deer hunting.
Click to expand...
Not sure I agree on the WIHA program, but definitely agree on the CRP. It would be more beneficial to habitat to keep the bulk of CRP in place. I could see allowing some haying but to hay an entire patch of CRP is just asinine if you want to manage habitat and bring in revenue from non-resident hunters (I realize many don’t want that, but the state might). Even if you don’t want NR hunters, there are better ways to manage the CRP than to allow that much haying.

How has/does wind farms affected habitat? I know solar farms are horrible for it.

If it helps, I saw some of the biggest deer of my life the first time I went to Kansas. but you’re safe. I’m only interested in birds.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top