Choices
Interest
| UnknownKansas Mule Deer hunting appears to be a great unknown across the United States. Not only does Kansas have a good Mule Deer population covering the western 1/3 of the state there are a good number of trophy quality Mule Deer racks that many pheasant hunters can attest to. The challenge with Association Mule Deer hunts is not the quality or number of racked Mule Deer, or the quality of the Mule Deer habitat it is the difficulty of drawing a Kansas Mule Deer tag over that of a whitetail tag. For those non-residents that draw the Kansas Mule Deer tag they have a good opportunity that should be consider their once in a lifetime chance.
TagsIn general terms all Association hunters are encouraged to apply for one or all three of the Mule Deer units where we lease land every season. This is easily accomplished through the Kansas tag application, one in the same for both whitetail and Mule Deer, allowing for a precedence order of up to 4 choices ranging by type of tag, harvest means and Whitetail and Mule Deer management unit. At this point this description of the Kansas tag application process is just part of its complexity. We assist our hunters that are new to Kansas tag application at making the choices that best suit their deer hunt desires. A common tag application strategy is to place as the first and second choice on each year's application two of the Mule Deer units with the third and forth choice to whitetail units. While making the Mule Deer units the first two choices it is more likely under this approach that draw success will be to the whitetail units. This discussion on Kansas Mule Deer hunting is skewed to the non-resident. It is assumed the resident deer hunter knows Kansas' deer hunting regulations. The idea is to keep applying for the Mule Deer tags and the one year the non-resident gets lucky and draws one of the very limited number of the tags he is to drop all else and put forth a great effort into harvesting a quality Mule Deer forgoing whitetail that year. To assist, we will encourage pre-season scouting through identifying specific properties that we have seen quality racked bucks occupy and give each hunter the advantage of our year round observations. Even with all this encouragement the record high number of Association hunters with Kansas Mule Deer tags has been low to zero per our three units. Those that have hunted shared thousands of acres of all private leases. This last point shows one of the advantages of our mixed hunter inertest approach to managed hunts. Even though we have over tens of thousands of acres in three very good Kansas Mule Deer units it is the Association pheasant hunters that actually makes those leases possible.
WhitetailOverall, in Kansas the Whitetail Deer is king and the Mule Deer gets second billing. The limited number of Kansas Mule Deer tags is only part of the story of why this is the way it is. The other influence is that the Whitetail Deer's greater following across the entire united States and represented in the over 44% the Association total membership that comes from outside of Kansas, Missouri and Iowa. These deer hunters want Whitetail Deer as that is what they are familiar with and what they measure their deer hunting skill against. Another influence is that the Whitetail over the Mule Deer is a far tougher animal to hunt and many times more leery of a hunter's encroachment. It is common for Kansas Mule Deer spooked by bird hunters to stop and watch the bird hunter and his dog especially when beeper collars are employed or if a bird is shot. Many bird hunters have observed the Mule Deer simply stop easily within rifle range and stand motionless watching the bird hunt. Whitetail Deer in the same conditions would have let out for the county line leaving only the memory of their tail to the hunter.
ScoutingFor those lucky enough to draw a Kansas Mule Deer tag we will encourage they pre-season scout every bit of land we recommend to them and hunt both the September and December season if they draw that tag. The final bit of advice is not to shoot too quick as the average Mule Deer rack compared to a good whitetail rack looks huge. We have 6x6 racked Mule Deer with some large 5x5's. Any self guided deer hunters that have the time to deer scout and hunt hard will create their own opportunity to hunt some very nice Mule Deer, we only provide the deer lease resource and local observations. |
