Why does KDWP lease some of the ground they do

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duckn66

Well-known member
After a couple of days scouting/hunting in the NE ks area I came across more fields of just plain corn, beans (disked) or winter wheat ground that could not actually hold a bird let alone a deer.

One was literally a pasture grazed down to the dirt. I took photos of of so that maybe some day I'll have a chance to show it to someone within the kdwp. I could not believe my eyes this land was leased.

Who regulates this leasing. Needs to be some sort of checks and balance on it because there was a bunch of land in this certain area like that. It's almost like the land owner was friends with the kdwp person and they were splitting profits.

I think also they lease most anything and everything so that they can pad their land acres open to hunting. Where do I sign up for for that gravy train?

Overall a waste of time, wear and tear, and gas.
 
I've often wondered the same thing. Why lease a dang pasture? Saw a couple like that in Nemaha county over the weekend. It's a big program, and I'm sure it's hard to keep tabs on all the properties. But it's not much of a stretch to think, just maybe, somebody's getting their palm greased along the way based on some of these worthless properties.
 
I guess there is no perfect answer to that question. Some are leased for deer, some geese, some upland....... In some instances, farmers want a parcel posted and don't take payment just to have it in the program. Some parcels go in as CRP only to be torn out before the contract expires and we're stuck with what's there. Yet others are in a crop rotation where some years we have huntable cover and others it's in green wheat. It's a trade off. What I find inexcusable is driving to one with milo or other good bird cover on it but have cattle all over it in season. That shouldn't happen.

There are some that look like crap from the road, but if you walk back in there you will find a hidden wetland or some other valuable attraction. It's like Forrest said, "life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get"!
 
Saw lots of that myself , I too agree though that if you get out and tromp on some of the less desireable looking ones , there is sometimes that magic little creek bed or fence row.
The grazed pastures do not make sense for sure!
 
With the drought the last few years it seems to have been worse than ever. There is nothing as dissapointing as driving out of your way to hunt some plot on the map, only to find out it has been emergency bailed. Uuuuhhgggg!!!!!!!!!!
 
These guy's are not getting much in the way of revenue on this property. Many times that 160 of awesome ground is also owned by the guy with 2000 acres of ankle high pasture. In order to get the good, many times the bad comes with it. Many years ago I belonged to an outfit that leased ground and had the same complaints, This is the answer I was given and it made sense to me.
 
I don't have a problem with them doing with their land what they need to do. Just don't put it out there to hunt if you plan on grazing it, or cutting it. Or if they have already done so. And in states where the publics money is spent to lease the land it needs to be spent wisely. That's all I'm saying
 
I do understand that the walk in leases are an extremely small part of the land owners income. If they have to cut hay or crops for their real business which is farming , thats what they have to do.
 
Ok how about this then. If the kdwp knows the land is gonna be worthless to hunt then don't include it in the atlas. Save us weekend warriors some gas money and a drive down a nearly impassable road.

If they lease 400 acres and 300 of it is grazed down Milo then list the 100 as actually huntable land. I would think a few questions to the landowner prior to agreement would be fairly easy.

I suppose we all have to have something to complain about to make life interesting. I am grateful for the walk in program tho. It has been a blessing for the states wildlife areas.
 
Duckn, I think you have to look at the overall picture a bit closer. There is "some" value to almost every tract that I see leased. Not all of them are leased for upland game. Even grazed down milo has value to goose and duck hunters, though the quality of that value may vary. Further, an overgrazed pasture, though maybe unhuntable for a man and his dog, may well allow a deer hunter to harvest a deer that spends "most" of it's time on adjacent private land where otherwise no opportunity would exist. Also, I don't think anyone expects a farmer/rancher to change his farming or grazing practices to facilitate the low-rent requirements of WIHA. However, if a farmer is entering a parcel into the WIHA program, there ought to be habitat available when the hunting seasons are open and, at the very least, livestock should not be on those acres during the primary target seasons. If they are grazed later, that's great. The big challenge here is WIHA is facilitated by a limited staff (~20 bio's statewide) on several thousand tracts across a state that is 400 miles wide and over 200 miles deep. Requiring them to stipulate which tracts are fair, poor, great, etc is unrealistic.

Scouting is the technique we hunters have to assess habitat for the species we pursue. WIHA doesn't eliminate the need to scout, it just eliminates the need to get permission. However, I would have little land to aim my truck at without the WIHA acres. Yes, I too am frequently disappointed after driving miles to a patch only to find I have to continue to another. There is great value in that to folks not hunting close to home! One must also remember that all of these acres are brought to the KDWPT by willing landowners, not sought by KDWPT on a parcel by parcel basis. Without willing landowners contacting the KDWPT "wanting" to join this program, the program wouldn't exist. For the prices paid, the requirements on the landowner have to be minimal. One of the biggest problems with the entire WIHA/CRP association is the lack of compliance in the CRP program with mid-contract maintenance. The burns/mowings/grazings are not being done and the resulting "higher successional" habitats that result are less productive than if they had been completed as required by NRCS/FSA regs. We all got a bit spoiled when CRP and WIHA were new because the habitat development stage of CRP was the most productive stage that we could have experienced as bird hunters. Unfortunately, that can't be reproduced easily or cheaply.
 
Damn it troy let me complain some! LOL!!! You make sense though. It is a large program and overall it is successful. It has taken tremendous pressure off our state owned wildlife areas for sure.

I'm headed out with a lab to chase a pheasant. This is the one time I don't wanna run into quail thoigh. Awful cold out.
 
Sing a few stanza's of "Gloom, despair, and agony on me" and go kill some long spurs! It's easy to forget that bird hunters aren't the only ones out there. Not commenting to lecture, just know that many folks have the same questions and some are based in a lack of understanding of where this program comes from and what it's goals are. My retired boss used to say: " we're managing out the worm and bobber fishermen". I think that the same thing is happening to our hunters. Folks are starting their 7 year old kids out hunting white-tailed bucks with rifles instead of bunnies, doves, and squirrels that many of us "older" generations did. I think many of those folks are really missing out on a lot of excitement moving up through the various species and the growth of knowledge that comes along with it. I often say: every hunter ought to start out as a trapper. I truly think that if you learn to catch a critter by making him step into a 2 inch circle, you really have learned your quarry! Far too many hunters haven't learned their quarry and their success is limited by that! I see it week in and week out, people hunting habitat that I can see driving by at 55 mph wouldn't hold the species that they seek in any numbers. When you get to the point that your feet TAKE you to where the birds are because of the experience of the miles behind them, you're going to see more success. It's all about experience and time. Today, we often have too little of both!
 
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Agree. I started out shootin sparrows at the chicken pen with a daisy red rider. Moved up from there. Did some trapping in my younger years too.

Walked and walked today a saw 3 hens. Not many tracks in the snow at all. Confirmed my suspicions of the area. But hens are encouraging.
 
I'm sure we've all seen the bare dirt WIHA plots and felt the same. I know I have, and was equally annoyed.

Cows in WIHA only hack me off if they are spread out through the whole parcel. I have no problem giving them a wide berth if they are fenced off in one part of the WIHA.

The one that really pissed me off was a WIHA I stumbled across a few years ago that was full of buffalo. I am not a buffalo expert, but aren't they pretty dangerous? My first thought was that I would surely want to keep my dogs the hell away from there, and then my second thought was that I don't really think I would want to walk through there either. I can't really imagine anybody would want to shoot a gun in a herd of buffalo. It seems like only bad things would come from that...:confused:
 
Maybe Kansas could do something similar to what South Dakota has done with the CREP program. They have CRP grass tracts set up to improve water quality and enhance wildlife. The program is for 10-15 contracts that pay at a higher rate than normal CRP. South Dakota requires that these tracts be put into the public hunting program.
 
duckn66 said:
After a couple of days scouting/hunting in the NE ks area I came across more fields of just plain corn, beans (disked) or winter wheat ground that could not actually hold a bird let alone a deer.

One was literally a pasture grazed down to the dirt. I took photos of of so that maybe some day I'll have a chance to show it to someone within the kdwp. I could not believe my eyes this land was leased.

Who regulates this leasing. Needs to be some sort of checks and balance on it because there was a bunch of land in this certain area like that. It's almost like the land owner was friends with the kdwp person and they were splitting profits.

I think also they lease most anything and everything so that they can pad their land acres open to hunting. Where do I sign up for for that gravy train?

Overall a waste of time, wear and tear, and gas.
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I am totally with you on this. At least half of my hunting days this year have been spent driving from one cow pasture to another. I understand everyone's "look on the bright side" comments as well, but remember we the people of KS pay to hunt this land. And I don't care how much the payments are, if the land is worthless for hunting, and the land owner is getting more than $0 to lease it for hunting, we are getting screwed.

There should be at the very least a couple of rule changes to the WIHA program.
1. The land we are paying for has to hold some species of huntable game in a normal year, during the normal hunting season. I don't know what the requirements should be exactly, maybe some kind of visual or audio confirmation like we do for road and crow counts.
2. The WIHA map needs to be update to provide a breakdown of spices verified to be possible on the that piece of property. They use to do this, but I don't think they provide that info anymore.
 
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I'm not steering this into political territory, however the basis of your problems lie there. The current administration moreso than any others has sent us even more so down the path of commercialization all the while cutting funding to the guys/gals who are on the front lines.

I get just as fed up as you guys do over some of the crappy WIHA's enrolled - that being said when the man and other lawmakers in charge keep cutting your funding and personnel it makes it very difficult to #1 do your job or even have the resources available to do so. So in a round about way I dont think we can place too much blame on a lack of oversight by way of the KDWP employees -- theres simply not enough of them around to do their jobs, all the while having to tow the HGIC's (head governor in charge) political line. They are faced with a very precarious line to walk. Maybe the only solution is to get some sort of sportsman's amendment passed clearly stating the mission and goals of the KDWP -- until then I dont know what else to do.


We can only hope maybe one day the top dog of the state will appoint someone to head the KDWP who will start removing the politics and getting it out of the way of the biology. Until that happens, expect more of the same. I think we are preaching the the choir and if you speak to many KDWP employees it would be the same. Flood the inboxes and voicemails of the elected officials and you may get some change. Until then we will have to make do. :cheers: ;)


Disclaimer -- in no way shape or form is this a political post. Simply asking those upset to place the blame where it should be placed and to ask those truly in charge to make changes. :cheers:
 
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If you down load the esri or whatever it is to your phone is gives a break down of acres and species.
 
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