I recently joined here and appreciated all of the trip reports posted, so I felt obliged to share mine. I've hunted pheasants for a few years in Iowa, but this was my first time hunting Kansas.
My pards and I drove to North Central Kansas last Friday for 2.5 days with a Walk In Hunting Atlas on the dash and no dogs. Tipton, Downs, and Russell. Put some miles on the truck and saw some great landscape in the Smoky Hills. Birds seemed scarce during the warm windy Fri and Sat. but Sunday was better.
We brought home no birds due to sloppy shooting... but ended up finding a honey hole at the end of the hunt on Sunday ...watching them fly across the road from tall grass to cut Milo. We were watching from the truck at the time, as the temperature was 11 and blowing at 25-40 mph...there were 20-25 pheasant total, more than half being roosters...flying from a WIHA area right onto posted property of course. However, a small group of them flew back around to our WIHA property. We strategized, ate some baby snickers,...put on TWO stocking caps, and the stalk began...bottom line is, I missed a perfect opportunity for a double, fumbling with getting the gun to my shoulder properly...and several others flushed out of range at the sound of my misses...
Had a great time, it was more of a scouting trip than a hunt, but now we know where to zero in on for next year..and maybe a couple of weeks earlier.
Saw a huge 4x muley buck with some does, and a lot of big whitetails. No quail or prairie chickens, tons of rabbits and 4 or 5 different species of hawks and falcons.
Take care and have a good holiday.
My pards and I drove to North Central Kansas last Friday for 2.5 days with a Walk In Hunting Atlas on the dash and no dogs. Tipton, Downs, and Russell. Put some miles on the truck and saw some great landscape in the Smoky Hills. Birds seemed scarce during the warm windy Fri and Sat. but Sunday was better.
We brought home no birds due to sloppy shooting... but ended up finding a honey hole at the end of the hunt on Sunday ...watching them fly across the road from tall grass to cut Milo. We were watching from the truck at the time, as the temperature was 11 and blowing at 25-40 mph...there were 20-25 pheasant total, more than half being roosters...flying from a WIHA area right onto posted property of course. However, a small group of them flew back around to our WIHA property. We strategized, ate some baby snickers,...put on TWO stocking caps, and the stalk began...bottom line is, I missed a perfect opportunity for a double, fumbling with getting the gun to my shoulder properly...and several others flushed out of range at the sound of my misses...
Had a great time, it was more of a scouting trip than a hunt, but now we know where to zero in on for next year..and maybe a couple of weeks earlier.
Saw a huge 4x muley buck with some does, and a lot of big whitetails. No quail or prairie chickens, tons of rabbits and 4 or 5 different species of hawks and falcons.
Take care and have a good holiday.