Western Kansas Deer Hunting & Habitat
Open Grassland Windbreak
The deer rub came out of the isolated small wildlife windbreak that whitetail deer in the area use heavily (this spot is within Kansas Mule Deer range).
Kansas deer habitat is more varied than most have scouting and hunting experience within. Kansas deer habitat ranges from large contiguous woods, to grass lands, to isolated windbreaks, to compartmental farm fields. And, of course the prime deer holding habitat, the wooded creek bottom connecting many small wood patches.
Knowing the value of each kind of deer habitat and a willingness to scout will yield more deer hunting spots for every habitat type than any one hunter will have time to deer hunt any one season. The challenge will be to settle on a place from the many available each deer hunting day across a range of lease land options.
When it comes to deer habitat this windbreak of trees are the only trees on this 1,600 acres ranch. They run for a 1 - 1/4 mile and consistently 100 yards wide. What is not pictured are the many shallow drains in the terrain the deer use for movement. For the rub line deer hunter hunting these trees is a golden nugget as they are the only trees within sight. Where else could the deer go to rub antlers?
While this windbreak may appear to be the only loafing deer habitat in the area a 1/2 mile north on the same lease divided by a road is where the shallow drains on this farm open into a wide, approximately 15 - 25 foot deep mostly dry creek bottom with plumb thickets covering each side bank. This is western Kansas deer habitat as well. The creek banks provide shelter from the wind and the plumb thickets for those that have never seen them are thick and provide more than sufficient concealment for bedded deer.
The quote "This is too good to be true" has some value. While we have non-competitive self guided deer hunting, we are not the right solution for all deer hunters. The part about no guides means each member must do his own scouting of the available deer habitat that most likely will be foreign to his past deer hunting experience.
This deer habitat will most likely also to require new hunting tactics and the hunter himself determines his own appropriate deer hunting style for each type of deer habitat, season and weather conditions. This shows how the statement "Too good to be true" may be appropriate as if we were a guide operation the guide would be expected to know the appropriate deer hunting style and setup for success on this difficult terrain. Without a guide to provide direction the deer hunter is left to his own resources. This creates three basic types of deer hunter. Those that have immediate and continuing success, those that get very infrequent success and those that simply fail to harvest a deer of choice every season.
It is the latter two categories that results in the non-resident deer hunter to have the highest turnover rate in the Association. And, it is further defined as the non-resident firearms rather than archery deer hunter that has the highest turnover.
This turnover is also not just due to the difficult terrain we sometimes hunt for the best trophy deer potential. It also due to the non-resident firearms deer hunter also being a trophy room collector that once he has a Kansas trophy whitetail deer he is off on an elk, sheep or bear hunt to add that animal to his collection. Nonetheless, the difficulty of some of our deer habitat certainly does cause a good deal of frustration even for the best deer hunters. What we do to mitigate that frustration is not just to provide the private land lease access and lodging listing we provide recommendations of where to deer hunt.
Our hunting recommendations are based on two central factors. The first is the regions of Kansas, Iowa and Missouri that have a history of trophy deer production. The next is the hunting method of choice (archery, modern gun or muzzleloader) and the hunter's own deer habitat experience.
For the archery deer hunter we have far more success in Missouri and Iowa than Kansas as those two states have more of what bow hunters consider to be bow huntable ground and their deer population numbers are much higher. The firearms hunter has more success in Kansas than archery hunters due to the longer range of observation and the deer habitat pictured above. This is all general and our recommendations also include other criteria as our boots on the ground experience with any of our lease land may lend to a handful of trophy sightings each year. The bottom line is we want our deer hunters to renew each year and we know they will most likely do so after a successful hunt.
Finally, if we agree Whitetail Deer hunting is the most challenging game in the United States we should also agree that Whitetail Deer hunting is at least 80% scouting and 20% hunting, especially on the Kansas habitat shown on this page. Not having to pay the cost for a guide means the time cost of deer scouting is the responsibility of the Association do it yourself deer hunter. So the quote "This is too good to be true" would be appropriate if it included a guide service, as it does not we are what we advertise and it is up to the deer hunter to make his own hunt on the best deer habitat the Association can lease.
More Western Kansas Deer Ground
This aerial is of the best looking deer habitat to be found in western Kansas. It has yet to produce a tag on of the biggest trophy whitetail to be harvested on our western Kansas private land.
A quarter section, 1/2 x 1/2 mile square, 160 acres with a good piece of it true to anyone's belief deer cover in a large agriculture region. This lease holds one deer hunter at a time. It also gets a good bit of attention from traveling deer hunters that scout by aerial photo.
Another interior field surrounded by wood line and earth contour isolating it from direct observation from road.
Interior to the wooded drainage all pictures can show is a bunch of trees.
