The summer has started. With temperatures across the nation in the 80’s and higher, the cool breezes of fall are often forgotten amongst the summer vacations, baseball practices and time spent with the kids. Unfortunately, the busy activities of summer leaves many hunters unprepared for the fall season, whether it’s because they didn’t make the time they wanted to practice with their weapon, or if it’s because they missed the opportunity to plan their fall season. Since I can’t help you practice shooting, I will offer up some advice on some easy big game tags and where and how to get them filled.
Let’s start with the nation’s most popular game animal, the whitetail. I’m pretty sure that whitetails exist in every continental state now. Their adaptiveness and tendencies to stick to thick cover make them an excellent big game species to pursue, and tags for them are purchased on a no-limit basis in many states.
Kansas: Whitetail
Kansas is where I call home. The state is comprises of 3 major geographic regions; the eastern, the “Hills” as I call them, and the High Plains. Kansas is almost entirely privately owned. There is one National Grassland which is managed by the Forest Service in Morton County, the South West most county in the state. So, unfortunately, there is little public hunting ground in the state. On the plus side however, all three regions have reservoirs which offer public hunting. These reservoirs are nearly your only choice for finding land to hunt. Don’t be discouraged though, most of them hold plenty of game. You will find the highest concentrations of deer in the Eastern third of the state, which also has most of the public land as well. Coming in a close second is the Western most part of the state. There will be less deer per square mile, but where you do find them, there will be quite a few. Most of the reservoirs also have parks which offer public camping, making a very affordable hunt that takes very little time and planning to execute. Rifle season is very short, but archery season runs from September to December, which gives a lot of choices to the underprepared hunter. What’s the cost of a DIY hunt in Kansas? $395 for your license and tag. If you didn’t get in the draw, no problem, excess tags are sold over the counter, first come, first served, for many units. Read more….