Kansas Waterfowl Hunting
Kansas Means Pond Duck Hunts
For those that want to go it on their own there are more ponds on our lease land to hunt than season days. This is a picture from one such farm pond hunt where three hunters had early limits. Nothing unusual about the pond, it is one of several these buddies hunt through the season.
A view from a pond. The word "pond" means a lot different thing to us out here than in many other locations in the USA. They are for the most part larger and more numerous than what many expect to find.
Nothing noteworthy about this picture other than its pleasant appeal. While on a bird hunt this junior hunter harvested what would be his 65th and last bird of the season off a pond on what is known as a good quail farm. Just a bonus and some easy dog work retrieving off the ice. Such as is much of this state's waterfowl being incidental to an upland hunt.
While Kansas has some isolated and exceptional duck hunting for the most part the state simply drains far too quickly from north to south into the Kansas River in the horizontal center of the state that flows east to Missouri. The southern half of the state is broken into several small and insignificant watersheds that lack duck holding power of any sizable standing water surface. What Kansas lacks and why its duck hunting is far less than Missouri are the vast areas of large standing manmade and natural surface water of the lower Missouri River basin, in Missouri.
This difference is a matter of topography as Missouri is within the Mississippi River valley, a much lower elevation, and Kansas is part of the Great Plains, the dry Great Plains. What good Kansas duck hunting there is exists largely in the eastern quarter of the state along the western fringes of the Osage River Watershed that extends into Missouri which is the largest sub basin of the lower Missouri River basin and the Missouri northwest watershed which is the smallest of Missouri's three sub basins, or the largest concentration of wetlands in the Mississippi Flyway. In short the best Kansas duck hunting owes itself to the lower Missouri State elevation.
Within this area of good Kansas duck hunting it is the farm pond and the ponds between the refuge and the river that holds the best duck hunting. The cause for this is the hunter pressure on the refuge and conservation areas receive from a large number of hunters and their small size of the duck hunting areas.
The local micro flyways largely follow the major rivers and use the surrounding fields around the refuge to feed. With the limited public wetlands duck hunting that exists in Kansas and that the hunting on the wildlife areas is not regulated in terms of hunter numbers the ducks are quickly pushed off and seek the isolated farm ponds. After a bit of scouting it does not take long to find a pond under such use and the ducks will typically remain at any one pond for several days many times through the season.
Kansas self guided goose hunts have two prime regions both on the east side of Kansas. Northwest of Kansas City we have a region of ponds and crop fields spread between a refuge and the Missouri River. Southwest from Kansas City within the western region of the Osage Watershed coming out of Missouri we have crop fields near some well known public waterfowl areas along the Neosho, Kansas area. In both areas there are many crop fields for the Kansas self guided goose hunter to scout and set up.
A Goose Hunt Snapshot Of One Morning
This picture cropped wide shows the surrounding open Kansas fields and geese still flying above after the hunters called it quits for the day.
While not a full limit for this hunting team it was a good hunt. Some days the geese just don't like the calls or the decoys.