James Pratt

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Pheasant hunting in western Kansas

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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.

Even though we could not hunt until sunrise, we had to be at our spot early each morning to lock it down so that we were the first hunters of the day.
My long-time friend Cary Garrison has been pheasant hunting in western Kansas for over 40 years. He directs us on where to hunt each morning.
Craig attaches red booties to his dog Jake while his son Josh holds Jake by the collar. The red boots protected Jake’s paws from all the stickers.
Adam’s 6th-grade friend and long-time hunting buddy Josh Smith joined us for this weekend pheasant hunt in western Kansas.

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.

Lunch on Saturday was at a small gas station/restaurant in Moscow, Kansas. The food was pretty darn good.
Jake was by far the hardest-working member of our hunting party. I thought he looked a bit fat for a bird dog at the start of our hunt. By the end of the first day, he had lost a significant amount of weight and was looking pretty thin. I can’t even imagine how many calories he burned during the day.
Jake did a great job of finding and flushing both pheasants and quail.
My son Adam downed his first pheasant late in the day on Saturday.

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.

Pheasants prefer running to flying, and they are fast runners. Our strategy often included driving them to a road or clearing, where blockers would prompt the birds to fly rather than run. To do this we would fan out across a field in a skirmish line and “push” the birds to a nearby road.
My son Adam and Craig’s hunting dog Jake head out across a cornfield to corral birds and push them towards waiting blockers on a nearby road.
Our most productive hunting was the corners of circle irrigation fields. Eventually, our strategy was to fan out around these corner plots and then push the birds to one corner where we had blockers waiting to force them into flight.
Our strategy to hunt the circle irrigation corners was to place blockers on the road and then circle out through the cornfield and push the birds back to the blockers. This would force the birds to fly when they ran out of cover.
On Sunday morning I finally hit my target. I downed one quail and shared a quail with my son Adam. He shot two quail himself.
On our return from Kansas, we passed through Forgan, Oklahoma – home of Hank the Cow Dog, one of my favorite children’s stories I read to my kids when they were little, and now my son reads to his kids.
I used to read Hank the Cow Dog stories to my own kids. I would make up the voice of Hank, Slim the farmworker, the cat that was always Hank’s nemesis, and Hank’s sidekick dog which I can’t remember his name.
Our new friend Joe had fun driving his Ford truck through the mud from an irrigation system.

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About James Pratt

I am an Oklahoma based writer, commercial photographer, editorial photographer and adventurer based in Oklahoma City. I love telling stories about people. A motorcycle is my preferred means of travel, and I have over 5,000 hours piloting small airplanes. My editorial photography has been published in hundreds of magazines and my commercial photography has been used by dozens of companies worldwide.

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4x5 film 4x5x365 agriculture Amazon Web Services bicycle Bill Dragoo BMW Brass Ball Bobbers combine Darwin Motorcycles dirt bike drag racing Edmond El Reno film Fortinet Guthrie Ilford Delta 100 Ilford Delta Pro 100 Ilford HP5 Jeep John Deere Kawasaki Kay Pratt Kodak TMAX-100 Lexington Micha Young motorcycle New Mexico Nikon Norman Conquest Oklahoma Oklahoma City Oklahoma Living Oklahoma Living Magazine Oklahoma Today Ride Oklahoma South Canadian River Thunder Valley Raceway Tombo Racing Tommy Bolton Toyo 45A Toyo VX-125 wheat harvest Wrangler
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