On opening morning of the Kansas quail season 2013, I was up and on the road early. The dogs had been in the box over night so I stopped by the Bryan Walker Conservation Area to give them a drink and a chance to relieve themselves. I got to wondering if I had unplugged the coffee pot at the motel so I drove the 14 miles back to the motel to check. Sure enough I had. But if I had not gone back I would have worried all day.
When I got to the first farm I wanted to hunt there were 4 trucks and enough dog boxes for 9 dogs. The next farm there were only 3 trucks. This was repeated at two more farms before I found one that didn’t have hunters already hunting it. There were herds of guys hunting.
Finally I stopped by a place in the Pratt Sand Hills that I knew nothing about and turned out Luke, Whitey and Tur Bo. This area is good for dogs that like to run. When you think of Kansas you think flat but not this area. It’s one hill after another with only sage and low growing weeds as cover. Trees are few and far between. Although there were puddles of water on the road in, it was dry where we hunted.
It started off cool but warmed rapidly. It was a nice morning as all opening mornings are. I had water with me although there are wind mills (or as they call them in Texas, setter fans) every so often. We made a large circle and at the end of two hours we were about two miles from the truck and had seen no pheasants or quail.
Tur Bo at five months old doesn’t have the endurance of the older dogs and would lie down every time I slowed down. Although we had found a couple of watering places, I had used up all the water I had brought with me. So we started back to the truck. We cut across rather than go back the same way we came out.
We were out 3 hours and Luke and Whitey covered a lot of ground and we didn’t see a quail or pheasant. Any way I didn’t.
We drove to a farm I had come by earlier and had seen hunters on. I filled my water bottles and turned Dolly, Blaze and Lucky loose. It was as dry here as it had been in the sand hills. We had only been out a short time when the Garmin GPS showed Dolly on point. When I found her she was in the middle of a huge plum thicket. She was extremely hard to find and the thicket was so thick I could hardly get through. I got close and tried to encourage Dolly to flush the birds. Blaze and Lucky were backing but no one would move. I kept pushing through the plum thicket. When I got a few yards ahead of Dolly and nothing flushed I released her and all three dogs moved in and started trailing, one would go on point then another. We went through the thicket and never saw a bird.
Later on the GPS showed Dolly on point again. And again she was in a huge plum thicket. I was tired of trying to bull my way through these things but the dogs probably felt the same. Blaze and Lucky were backing. As I got close Dolly wormed her way through a little further and went on point again. As I moved up I saw 2 quail flush about 40 yards ahead of us. We went to the area I thought they went down at and worked it for about fifteen minutes without finding anything.
We worked our way back to the truck. Again I had used all of the water I had brought.
On the way down I had found 3 coveys in about 3 hours or less so I decided to spend the night in the motel, get up early the next morning and head to the Emporia, Kansas area.
Opening day of the Kansas quail season 2013 ended with only 2 quail seen and not a shot fired. Tomorrow has to be a better day.
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