Kansas Pheasants

Opener is next Saturday and I'll be going out for my second year.

I've posted before about how impressed I was with how the state handles it's hunting land and how the locals welcome hunters. I'll let you know if my first impressions were accurate.

I'll be shooting a double with 2 sets of barrels - 20 ga and 28 ga - that I had success with. The only difference this year is that I traded into a box of older 1 oz loads of 28 (size 6). Current loads are generally 3/4 oz. My friend shoots a 16 and I don't feel undergunned. We shoot over dogs so my shots aren't overly long (if I keep my head up). I'll probably shoot the 28 on the first day before the birds get spooked. Hunting pressure isn't extreme, but they learn fast.

I hope to post a few pictures when I return.

Sounds like a great trip. Good luck.

Good luck, can't wait to see pics. It does sound like fun.

Hope that 28 gauge continues to serve you well. Shoot straight!!

Uneventful flight (after last minute rerouting) into Kansas City. My friend and I headed for the skeet range for a loosen-up couple of rounds. I proved again that any pheasant which might fly into my pattern was exceptionally unlucky.

We attended the Pheasants Forever banquet in Norton KS where my friend won a Henry .22 rifle in a door prize drawing! Steaks and sides were donated and 25 rifles were raffled off so it was a great fundraiser. Not a packed house, but easily 250 people attending.

More hunters than last year and we saw (and shot) fewer pheasants. Weather was beautiful (about the same as here - cold in the morning, warming to shirtsleeves in the afternoon).

The dog work (Springer spaniels) was great fun although one dog only seemed to lock in on hens this year. Highlight was a point/kill/retrieve in a field that a group of hunters had just passed through.



Here is an early afternoon result (yes, I had my red vest on while I was walking around):



Of these, I got one clean and shared the shot on a second. The 28 worked fine but I traded off barrels and got 2 with the 20 ga the next day. I was 1 for 1 on quail.

Side note: every day we saw BIG whitetails all over the place and a couple of mule deer. One 8-point whitetail was so busy thinking about something else that he almost bumped into my friend and dog after running across an open field for 100 yards!! Ran within 20 feet with hunter standing still in the open and dog at heel. Bad news is that Kansas out-of-state whitetail tags are ~$450

Next event may be a late season (March 2017) hunt on a preserve in South Dakota (look for “Wild Wings” on YouTube). I went last year and had a great time. Attendance depends on a kitchen pass (permission from my wife).

Link to Wild Wings in Miller SD (older video, but good idea of the action)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jsYD_VJhL4

Glad you had a good trip. SD pheasant numbers around Doland were down (wild birds) with average of 13 birds/5 days. If you get back to Miller, hope you have a great time

Kitchen pass obtained and I will be heading for South Dakota in March!

Weather is always a big factor, but I will pack sufficient gear for an Arctic polar bear hunt. Shouldering a shotgun with all that stuff on may be a problem (but in a good way - there are no negatives for me out in the fields.)

I'm leaving next week for South Dakota and have been sweating the weather (and a 4 day battle with cold/flu/whatever that was so bad I was afraid to call anyone because I thought they could catch it over the phone.)

30s this week but supposed to be in the 60s for hunting days!! Going to be lots of snow left in the shelter belts (lines of pine trees,between fields) where the birds will be. We had a little snow in the shady side last year, but this is likely to be "special". I'll let you know.

Key takeaways from this trip:
Had fun! Time away from the women-folk, taking out the trash, doing laundry, etc, is ALWAYS appreciated.

Long range weather forecast was highly inaccurate. It was COLD! Driving from Kansas City to South Dakota, we watched the outside temperature drop from 40 to 20. Morning of the first day of hunting, it was 6 degrees, with a wind chill of -6. The second day it warmed to 15. For some reason, even the little disposable hand heaters were ineffective and my trigger finger got numb to the point of near frostbite! [It did work when required.] Return trip had 30 mph blowing snow across the highway.

Noticeably fewer rooster this year. They were probably in a barn somewhere keeping warm. The 28 I use accounted for 3 me-only birds and 2 more shared shots where the weight of the deceased bird exceeded live weight by half a pound of lead. I had a couple of misses (shot at the wrong end of the bird or trying to stretch the open-choke 28 too far). I still get crap about my "baby gun" but it is a pleasure to carry and effective when it has to be.

I took a few pictures, but it was hard to see anything with all the snow.

My friend took me to a game farm on Monday (flew back to VA on Tuesday) where we shot (at) pheasants and chukar partridge. The first pheasant of the day is still out there looking for a hen or two. A couple of the chukars returned to their roots and are probably still running free.

I've got a reasonable but not great video sequence of my friend's setters on point, the flush (where the younger dog almost caught the pheasant), kill and retrieve. I'll try to figure a way to post it later.

TSA was a little confused and had to run my frozen birds through their scanner twice. I would have thought that Kansas would have been more familiar than Washington DC or NYC. Shot really shows up well in the scan and I wish I had a copy to help when I cook the birds (One of the partridge I cooked had 3 pellets but I thought they didn't affect the flavor!)

Next opportunity to travel may not be until the November Kansas opener.