Kansas Opener

[Bruce Day]

The Kansas pheasant and quail season opens Nov 8. Although I will miss the opener because of Scout shotgun instruction obligations and travel to SoDak for hunting, I was out on a farm I hunt yesterday.

This is what cover in southwest Kansas looks like. We had enough rain to grow some heavy cover, however because the ground was so open from the several year drought, the first weeds up are thorny and nasty stickers. A lot of the milo is still in. There are birds there, but the opener may be a bit tough, and the weather is still in the 60's and warm.

Amazing what nature does. If the ground is bare, the first weeds up are usually stickery and grazing animals won't eat them. In subsequent years and after the ground is covered, grasses take over and squeeze out the sticker bushes. These grasses are the bluestem and gamma grasses out here, which animals will graze.

The area pictured was the heart of the dust bowl during the 30's, and has lots of easily blown fine sand. It is important to keep them covered or they can blow again, as they did last year in some sw Kansas areas. I read that some scientists claim that the two or three year drought was the worst in 1000 years. The region got 8 to11 annual inches of rain, normal is 20 or so. A thousand years ago, a prolonged drought of this nature in the southwest caused the collapse of native pueblo populations. This one caused significant sell offs in cattle because forage and grain could not be raised locally, and hay had to be trucked in from Montana and the northern plains. Beef populations are starting to come back, but the reductions caused the high prices you see for beef in grocery stores and restaurants. Lower prices are still a year or more out.

But if conditions are right, the birds can hold tight and a person can do what is shown even with a .410, that gun being owned by a traveling hay farmer and turkey rancher.