Natural Habitat Upland Bird Hunting Habitat and DogsMid-America Hunting Association Upland bird hunting MAHA style is to enjoy the tranquility of a good day in the field watching bird dogs work and watching nature pass by. If this sounds trivial then do not consider upland bird hunting with us. If wanting to hunt your own style, with your own dogs and do so without competition then continue reading as you have found the place you are looking for. Tranquility is when the hunter's first priority is capturing on film his good pheasant or quail dog at work.
 When your dog's perfect point is more important than a bag limit the hunter understands the essence of the tranquility of a hunt. This Association has this capability because of the points listed below.
Having a lot of ground available to hunt contains many advantages not many of us before experienced. Most significant is the choice of where to hunt from having too many places to hunt rather than having to select from a limited number of areas. It is truly a welcomed problem of not being able to hunt all the possible fields every day rather than what has happened before of having to re-hunt some fields a second time during one day just to get in a day's hunt. This allows a selection of what the hunter believes to be the best fields from the many good ones and never get bored with going to the same area repeatedly. Everyone can literally hunt a different field each time stepping from the truck and not cross their tracks during the entire trip unless wanting to. Exploring new ground opens the challenge of targeting each new field's "hot spots". 
This dog's first gun hunt at 7 months old. Done by 9:30 AM. This type of success does not occur by accident, it is due to quality habitat. The beeper collar worn by this dog is a valuable tool when in the high prairie grass.
Habitat not just acreage. This abundance of land further allows for the selection from the range of available habitat. The ability to choose to hunt high prairie grasses, crop fields or brushy draws further allows for the study of pheasant and quail making each day a new learning experience. This also seems to make for a more rounded dog as each experience over changing habitat requires different dog work with the cumulative effect being a more effective dog overall. Dogs have been known to relocate up to three times on a running rooster until pinning the it to point, flush, shot and retrieve. Or, in other cases, sort out the over abundance of scent from a running flock of pheasants selecting one to point and ignore the rest. For quail it is learning to work tight after a covey flush to located singles. This is the natural hunt that most folks want to experience. 
An example of a brushy draw with crops on the near side and grass on the far. This is ideal pheasant and quail habitat. Many more pictures showing a great variety habitat are available on the association's web site.
 The habitat of our leases where the bird hunting is the best has the ideal mix of cover and food vegetation, large predator avoidance acreages, segregated from competing species habitat in regions containing environmental promotion factors. This is a lot to say and it essentially identifies why some areas have quail, some pheasants, some both. The Association's land managers seem to have this understanding as the land they do select has game where the others may not. I'll attempt to break this down into its components.
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