By JONATHAN ZWEYGARDT
Hays Post
With the upland bird population once again on the rise, officials with the Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism expect this year’s pheasant and quail season to be another good one for hunters.
Mike Nyhoff, Hays-based Public Lands Regional Supervisor, said conditions over the last two springs and winters have allowed the upland bird population to rebound.
“Upland game can reproduce dramatically,” Nyhoff said. “If we’ve got a pretty good base when they have their babies, you can go from very few to a good number in a short amount of time.”
Western Kansas, in particular the southwest and northwest regions, have seen the pheasant and quail population return in good numbers.
“The southwest probably has seen the biggest increase the last two years,” Nyhoff said.
This year, he added, the northwest regional of the state has seen an increase in upland game birds.
The increase in the number of birds undoubtedly will bring a large population of hunters to Kansas during the next three months and Nyhoff said his office has received a number of phone calls from hunters inquiring about what to expect.
Nyhoff expects opening weekend – Nov. 12 and 13 – to continue to be a big draw for hunters.
“Opening day is more of a traditional time to get together with family and friends,” he said.
Nyhoff said the biggest sign of how good the hunting in Kansas is whether hunters come back again.
“If they are seeing birds and getting birds, they stay a little long and make return trips during year,” he said.
The quail population has continued to “skyrocket” in western Kansas.
“Normally western Kansas was not quail country,” Nyhoff said. “Now we are seeing quail populations in western Kansas we’ve never seen before.”
Nyhoff said pheasant hunters should expect to see quail when they are hunting.
Kansas has more 1 million acres of walk-in hunting access, and Nyhoff said a lot of those acres in western Kansas feature CRP and other good habitat for upland birds. Those areas can be located online at www.ksoutdoors.com.
Hunters can purchase all the necessary licenses and permits on the ksoutdoors website. They can also be purchased at KDWPT offices and more than 600 vendors across the state.
Kansas resident hunters age 16-74 are required to have a hunting license to hunt pheasants and quail. All nonresident hunters must have a nonresident hunting license, unless they are hunting on land they own.
Nyhoff said they also want to remind hunters to be careful while in the outdoors. The No. 1 hunting accident in Kansas is when one hunter covers another, when a hunter gets outside of a zone of fire. The zone of fire is described as the area with hunters arms extended at 10 o’clock and 2 o’clock
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KS STATE FAIR
