In November, we found 25 coveys in 6 days of hunting ranging from 2 to 7 coveys in each of the days. We didn’t see many pheasants, but we primarily hunt for quail and take pheasants when the opportunity arises. We found the number of birds in each covey to be much larger this year than last year. In addition, there were a few places that we found multiple coveys on a section of land. One of these included a batch of young birds that appeared to only be a few weeks old. Our overall opinion was the hunting was much improved over the same time last year and signs that next year could be even better if the weather cooperates.
As always, we enjoyed our trips and already looking forward to next year.
John and Karen
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We waited until after our first-ever January hunting trip to Kansas to send in an update of both our November and January results. This gave us a chance to do a comparison between early and late season hunting in addition to getting a second chance at getting some pictures (didn’t have a good working camera in November).
In January, we were greeted with 35-40 mph wind gusts that made the hunting slightly tougher. We managed to find just 4 coveys in about 3 ½ days of hunting with 3 of the coveys being found on the day after the wind died down to 5-10mph. During the windy days, we switched and hunted more CRP. This resulted in finding many more pheasants than we usually see. We estimate 30+ flushes of pheasants per day with about 90% being hens and most of them flushing way out of range. Again, we saw this as a sign that the bird population next year should improve if the weather cooperates.
I’m sending some pictures of our two female pointers. This was our lemon-headed (Dot) female’s first year hunting for wild quail and pheasants in Kansas. She learned quickly from our experienced liver-headed female (Meg) and found 3 of the 4 coveys on the January trip in addition to pointing several ringnecks. We’ve also included a short movie clip of a point, back, flush, and clean miss of a single quail from our January trip courtesy of a first-time quail hunter Robert that we took as a guest.
