Living 150 miles from the nearest antelope hunting here in Kansas kinda’ makes the good fortune of drawing a tag just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak.

I have friends who have gotten tags in the past and they merely went out a couple days in advance, bought a map and started knocking on doors. My niece graduated from Colby Community College a couple years ago and was able to get me a short list of landowners from around the Sharon Springs area, so after many phone calls I headed out there Monday to spend 3 days meeting landowners I had contacted and scouting the “lay-of-the-land.”

Call them antelopes “speed goats” or whatever you please, most ranchers and farmers out there have little use for them, and I got the distinct impression most wouldn’t care if they were all gone. I knew that but never knew why they felt that way until now. Everyone I spoke to gave me the same two reasons, both seemingly equally important to them. The first involves fencing, an absolutely necessity to ranchers.

It seems antelope, for all their jumping ability, will not jump over a fence, but instead go under or through them. 99.9% of fences out there in ranch country consist of one hot electric wire or three strands of barbed wire, so an antelope going under them often stretches the fence loose from the posts, and going through them creates the obvious problem. The second reason for their dislike of the critters centers on the very believable if not proven fact that antelopes spread bindweed, which they seem to relish as much as alfalfa. The physics are simple; antelope eats bindweed including seeds, antelope poops out seeds which now come fertilized and incased in their own little greenhouse.

My research on antelope spreading bindweed yielded mixed opinions, most sources agreeing that a majority of the seeds are killed by the animal’s digestive system. But by the same token, most sources agreed that a small percentage is probably still viable when dropped in antelope feces. Considering that each bindweed plant can produce a few hundred seeds, that’s still a big deal to a farmer or rancher trying to keep their crop fields or pastures clean. Multiply that by several antelope on each property eating bindweed every day of its life and the problem becomes quite believable to me.

Before even considering hunting antelope in western Kansas, two things are mandatory; a very dependable pickup and lots of gas money. On my recent scouting trip I took my whitetail deer hunting mindset along with me, figuring to find waterholes which are often few and far between, where I could set up a blind nearby and hunt them early morning and late evening as they come to drink. That is a very common and recommended way of hunting antelope.

The problem is that one area where I have permission had a recent two inch rainfall, making for many little waterholes. Land ownership out there is talked about in numbers of sections or in thousands of acres owned. That particular landowner has a couple thousand acres of pasture with a total of 15 little dams built across draws to catch and hold rain runoff, and currently they are all holding water, making for 15 little waterholes. Maybe it will stay dry from now until the October season dates. If not, the strategy may have to become finding the antelope with binoculars then finding a way to get near them for a shot.

The first landowner I looked up I had spoken with on the phone some weeks before my visit and he informed me they had land all around the little town Of Wallace, KS, 9 miles east of Sharon Springs. Much of their ground is enrolled in the walk-in hunting program called WIHA (walk-in hunting area) which opens it up to public walk-in hunting during certain dates which are printed on the WIHA signs posted around the property. As I asked him about his land boundaries, he advised me I needed to get a plat map from the courthouse.

Called a Rural Directory, the book divides an entire county by sections of land and by townships and lists landowner’s names of each property. The book was a $20 investment but proved invaluable in showing me landowner’s boundaries. The state of Kansas also prints an annual Hunting Atlas that shows all walk-in hunting land in the state; atlases are available free at Walmart and at most places that sell hunting licenses.

Like I said, I went out there dragging my whitetail deer hunting mindset along behind me and soon found out antelope hunting is a whole different ballgame. I’m not giving up on the possibility of putting up blinds at waterholes and catching them early and late as they come to drink, but I only have four days to figure them out, as rifle season for antelopes in KS is very short. I’ll let ya’ know how it all works out.

Meanwhile, continue to Explore Kansas Outdoors.

Steve Gilliland, Inman, can be contacted by email at [email protected].

By U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran

Another stalemate, another party-line vote – another failure to combat the Zika virus is unacceptable when Congress returns to Capitol Hill. Since its initial outbreak in April 2015, the Zika virus has spread to more than 60 countries and, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), more than 1,900 cases have now been diagnosed in the continental United States.

Our country is already vulnerable by virtue of geography. The virus has spread by mosquitoes whose climate includes much of the Americas and our home state of Kansas. We have begun to see person-to-person contraction of the virus among men, women and children who have never left the country. This means that, in our global society, Zika poses a serious threat no matter where you live. Zika is unique in that it disproportionately poses a risk to pregnant women, carrying with it the possibility for microcephaly – a condition that stunts fetal brain development and head growth during pregnancy. It is suspected Zika may also cause Guillain-Barré syndrome and Acute Disseminated Encephalomyelitis (ADEM), both of which are devastating, potentially fatal neurologic diseases.

Through my role – as both a member and lead Republican – on the Senate Health Appropriations Subcommittee, I developed a relationship with CDC Director Tom Frieden. In addition to visiting the CDC last fall to learn more about its response to disease outbreaks, I also worked with Director Frieden at the height of the Ebola crisis. When I first heard from him about Zika during a committee hearing this spring, the need for our nation to act was clear.

The good news is that medical experts are hard at work developing a vaccine to restrict Zika’s spread and a treatment to alleviate its effects. This includes the Biosecurity Research Institute (BRI) at Kansas State University in Manhattan. I visited the BRI this week to learn more about the progress being made to defend our country from this dangerous virus and eliminate it worldwide.

Our medical researchers are the best in the world, but they cannot stop the spread of this virus or find a cure without resources. Progress has been made possible by reprogramming CDC funds, but that funding is only sufficient through September. Congress must make certain our experts have what they need to protect the health of mothers and children.

I have already supported a fiscally responsible approach to fighting Zika, which reprioritizes unspent federal funds to be made available to the CDC. A large portion of these dollars were originally intended to set up health care exchanges in U.S. territories through the Affordable Care Act, and can immediately be put to use.

Our nation’s citizens are fed up with the excuse-making in Washington. They want results. They want to see challenges met head-on. Americans should know that their representatives are fulfilling their constitutional duty to protect the health of the American people. Despite our differences, consensus must be found for the good of the country and its citizens.

Americans are at risk and they are frustrated – they deserve to be. I’m frustrated, too. I will continue to advocate for a solution to ensure this opportunity to make a difference is not squandered. No woman’s reaction to learning she is pregnant should be fear due to the Zika virus. No newborn child’s well-being should be endangered because their nation’s leaders lack the will to get the job done. With stakes this high, the status quo just won’t cut it.