I participated numerous times in the Iowa Governor's Pheasant Hunt. Don't know how similar the KS event might be. In Iowa, one of the state's Pheasants Forever chapters hosts the annual hunt. Usually something on the order of 60 hunters, divided up into teams, around 5 hunters per team. Each team has a PF guide, whose main responsibility is to take them to the area they've been assigned to hunt. The hunters bring their own dogs, and the organizers make sure that there are at least a couple dogs with each team, and that pointing dogs are paired up as are flushing dogs.
When the Iowa event first started, we'd do a long morning hunt, then reconvene for lunch--usually in a local farmer's machine shed. Then a shorter afternoon hunt. More recently, the event concluded following lunch, bird cleaning, etc.
As long as hunts like that are well organized, they can be enjoyable. Usually the areas we were assigned to hunt had plenty of cover and good bird numbers. (Not so good bird numbers in more recent hunts, but that's a result of the annual Iowa pheasant harvest now being about 25% of what it used to be.)
One year, a very late corn harvest made things pretty difficult. I don't think I pulled a trigger on that hunt. On other hunts, several teams came in with their limits. (That was usually the result of some of the more experienced hunters "helping" the inexperienced ones with their 3 bird bag limit.) One year, our PF guide insisted on sticking to a 3 birds per hunter rule. Worked OK for me. I ran my older dog in the morning and shot 3 fairly quickly. In the afternoon, hunters who still had birds to shoot were placed in new teams. I elected to stick around and run my pup. She got plenty of pointing experience, but not a lot of retrieving. Anyhow, worked out well.
I'll be interested to hear how the KS hunt works out.
Add: I don't think we ever hunted on any public ground. All private. The hunt was early in the season, but never on opening weekend when I participated. But in many cases, the landowners hosting the hunt kept hunters off their land until after the Governor's Hunt was over. That was a pretty significant factor in our rate of success.
Last edited by L. Brown; 10/02/17 07:44 AM.
