My friend Cary Garrison has been inviting me to join him on his annual pheasant hunt to western Kansas for several years. This year, I finally accepted his invitation and brought along my son Adam and his grade-school friend and long-time hunting buddy Josh Smith. We left OKC right after work and made the 5-hour drive to Liberal in the dark Cary met us at the hotel and gave us the low-down on hunting the next morning.
Saturday – Opening Day 2021
Our group of eight met at the hotel lobby at 6 am and drove to our first hunting spot west of Liberal. It was a chilly 34 degrees so we had to bundle up. I knew we would be working up a sweat with all the walking so I dressed in layers that I could easily remove to cool off as the day grew warmer. We had to be at our spot early so we could begin hunting at sunrise.
We had a tough day hunting on Saturday with lots of walking through thick grass and brush. After walking a half-dozen fields and several miles, everyone was exhausted by noon. We only had one pheasant to show for all the hard work and had seen very few birds.
Sunday
We had much better luck on Sunday morning. Cary was able to find some private land that had not yet been hunted. It was close to water and food so there were plenty of birds nested down in the thick cover around the cornfields during the day. We walked around all four corners of an irrigation circle and saw several times more birds than we had the entire day on Saturday. Adam and I were lucky enough to down some quail and our group harvest several pheasants.
Tell a story about your dad and you