Blaze backing Lucky
Blaze pointing.
Luke on a covey.
It finally quit raining so I headed to Kansas to hunt turkeys. The rain has kept the farmers from harvesting their crops or at least they are later than usual. I wanted to try some new areas. Today, I tried some walk-in areas and some state land around Lake Perry.
The farm land on Lake Perry is planted in corn, soy beans and milo. A lot of the land that isn’t in row crops is in tall grass that looks like big blue stem. I was in some that was over my head. But I’m getting ahead of my story.
I drove by some walk-in properties, on the way, that had unharvested soy beans. A couple of the farms looked promising, for quail, so I circled them in my Kansas Walk-in Atlas. I have never hunted Perry Lake so I drove around looking for a place to try. There was an area that had 2 small corn fields separated by some brush filled draws. I pulled off the road into the edge of one of the corn fields. I got out the e-collars and GPS collars and turned them on. When I left the house the temperature was in thew 40’s but it had warmed up so I took my coat off and threw it in the passenger seat. I put the collars on Dolly and Tur Bo. I started around the truck to hunt but decided to change to a blaze orange hat. I went to the passenger door and it was locked. I reached into my pocket for the keys and they weren’t there.
I went around to the drivers side and it was locked, also. I had put the keys in my jacket pocket then pulled it off and left it in the passenger seat. I know I need a hide-a-key but I didn’t have one. The only thing to do was go hunting so we started around the corn field. As we went around the field I called my wife, June. I said, “how would you like to have lunch with me”? “That sounds good, she said, where are you”? I said, “when you come out be sure and bring your keys to my truck”. She repeated her, where are you question. Valley Falls, Kansas was my reply. She was a couple of hours away so I continued around the field.
When I got back to the truck I put Dolly and Tur Bo back in their boxes and put the collars on Lucky and Blaze. I had to walk down the road for about a quarter of a mile to get to the other corn field. We circled that field without finding anything. I brought those 2 back and put them in the dog box. The only one that hadn’t been out was Luke so I put the collars on him and so he didn’t have to run by his self I got Tur Bo out again. We went up the road the other way to some big blue stem. The blue stem was higher than my head. After about 200 yards I decided that it was too thick for quail. Maybe it was just too thick for me but any way we circled back to the truck and I put them back into the dog boxes.
June got there with her keys to my truck and I bought her a nice hamburger for lunch. She may have been expecting more but there aren’t many places to choose from in this area. I drove around looking for some more places to run the dogs but most of the places still had unharvested soy beans. When the soy beans are drying, as they are now, dogs running through them knocks a lot of beans off. I circled some more places in my walk-in atlas and I will come back, later. This area looks good and the quail forecast for Kansas says this area should have quail. It’s supposed to be dry for an extended period of time and maybe the farmers will be able to harvest most of these crops.