We happened to meet the right people and got invited to Whitetail Hunt on a huge ranch in Kansas that doesn't get hunted hardly any (it's a big farm). I was thinking this was going to be great then, we ran into some snags. I've never hunted Kansas so, I wasn't aware of the limited availability of tags to Non-residents. The landowner said no problem, he can get plenty of land owner tags for just a few bucks each so, I thought we had it made again. Not so, we called Kansas Wildlife Dept. and asked the particulars of these tags and the agent said that the Landowner could not let us use his "Landowner Tags" unless we were a blood relative. That is just total Horse Pucky. W/ the limited tags in that area, it will probably be a few years before we get drawn.

I don't see why the Landowner can't let anyone he wants use his tags, he owns 1000s of acres, it should be his decision who gets them not the WFD's.

Found a place in Iowa that the same dang thing happened. Sent in for a tag but, w/ only a little over 500 tags issued to residents and non-res. in that area, looks like it will be a few years there as well.

Looks like I'm going to have to stick w/ Texas and Wyoming, they've been working for years. You just can't herdly beat the ease of aquiring whitetail tags in TX.

Oh well, at least we'll earn some preference points.

How are the landowner tags handled in your areas?

Reloader

Kansas has a very fair system, in my opinion. Landowners and their family get to hunt every year. Landowners can also obtain Vouchers which may be sold, by obtaining them through the Kansas draw. 50% of the Kansas nonresident tags go to landowners through the draw, and then the landowners may sell the voucher.

We own a ranch in Utah. We have over 12% of the unit's elk which live on us, yet we can not get a bull tag. All of Utah's bull elk and deer tags are given via lottery. Utah also has no Landowner program in which we can obtain a deer tag. There are many years in which we cannot get deer tags to hunt our own land. Not whining, just stating the facts.

MC, that's pretty tough. I can't imagine not being able to shoot game on my own land, what a shame.

The agent we spoke w/ didn't exactly tell us that. He said we had to put in for a draw on our own. He didn't say anything about vouchers being drawn. I'm also not saying that their resident system is not fair. The fact in this situation is that the owners and family of the ranch don't hunt. I believe that the owner should be able to give his landowner tags to whom ever he desires. Just another way for WFD to stick their hands in other folks business.

Reloader

Tell your Kansas landowner to apply for nonres tags next year. He can sell them to you for whatever he wants but they'll cost at least $300 or whatever the new fee is. MC had it right about the 50% nonres tags can go to landowners.

Reloader: It has been a while since I lived in Oklahoma, but I remember distictly that at that time (early 1990s) that non-residents simply were not allowed to hunt deer in Kansas. So all the states surrounding Kansas (Colorado, NM, OK, Missouri amd Nebraska) passed laws that said Kansas residents could NOT hunt deer in their states as well..which in the past few years led to very minor changes in reciprocity (something like 10 KS non-resident archery tags were offered...). I do not know what the laws are today. Hunting deer in kansas has always been tough...but they do have huge whitetails..

Yes, Kansas non-res tags are tough to get if you want to hunt big bucks. The rules for non-residents have not changed this year. They must draw for themselves, or the landowner can draw for a non-res permit and sell IT (meaning one). The rules have changed this year for residents along with the fee increases. This year you must have an antlered tag before you can get an anterless tag or bonus tag. When I called and asked it this wasn't backwards they put it to me simply...money. The Either sex tags are more expensive and they had a lot more people take advantage of the $11 game tags than they anticipated last year so they didn't make as much money as they "needed". Answer, make them buy the $35 tag first in the hopes that the hunters will still shoot does with them.

The final way for a non-res to get a tag is if the landowner truely has a damage problem with the deer, as mine does. The landowner can then apply for predation tags and designate anyone they wish as the control agent as long as they have a simple hunting license, but only one person may be designated. We have used it a couple times to thin the deer. When they start goring the cattle out of the troughs, it is a problem.

MC, What about the CWMU's where the land owners
get the majority of the Tags (90%)?

Where is your ranch ? and what size ? ( makes a difference on CWMU's)

Landowners with these permits can use them or sell them.

Kansas developed a bad reputation with neighboring states with the old nonresident deer hunting policy, but as a guy who lived there from the late 60's until 1 year ago(my father is still a resident, retired cattle rancher & entitled to the LOT tags), I can say that if nothing else the Fish & Game department has done e tremendous job of managing the deer resources in the state (yes there have been some bobbles along the way).
I can remember in the late 60's when just seeing a deer was big news. I remember when as a land owner you could expect to draw 1 deer tag about every 3 years, then it was about every 2 years, then you could expect be drawn every year but would not always get a 'buck tag", now in the western part of the state you still put in for the draw hoping to get a tag that will allow for a muley, but can buy non antlered white tail tags across the counter(my info is a year out of date since I wasn't there last year).
During the time that nonresidents were squalling about not being able to hunt Kansas, we (residents)were also still drawing for tags. It probally could have been done much better, but at least the state didn't whore away all the deer for a quick buck, like we watched Colorado do with elk, you have to really know your areas & gather prefernce points to hunt branch antlered elk in Colorado, but damned near anyone can go buy a tag across the counter & blast away at the spikes & raghorns in lots of areas!!

This is just opinion but here goes:

Landowners in Kansas do not have any history of "outfitting" or organizing these hunts... there are lots of landowners around my father who don't even understand what they can do with their "out of state land owner tags" & a major big time outfitter somehow got ahold of a list of eligible landowners & made unsolicitted requests to buy up & control those tags. There was a lot of animosity from land owners about this.

'Leasing" large tracts of farm ground by big outfitters to sell custom pheasant hunts is just starting to happen.

Utilizing the wlldlife resources in a comercial manner is truly in it's infancy in Kansas, I would say that there will be a number of growing pains & confusion while it matures.

Mike

M77- Our ranch isn't big enough to qualify for the 10,000 contiguous to be a CWMU. I talked with a couple Wildlife Board members and they said that they wouldn't issue a variance. We only have 130-170 head of elk on our place for 8-12 months of the year. That is more animals than half of the existing CWMUs. Oh well.

The landowner tag option is not viable for us. Our ranch sits within the Nebo unit and to get the landowner tags we would have to create a Landowners Association with 50.1% of the private land within the Nebo unit. There are the cities of Payson, Spanish Fork, Nephi, etc that we would have to involve to qualify. Obviously not a feasible option.

So we just sit there and watch the numerous bulls that come to court the ladies each fall. We try to draw tags, (luckily, I drew a tag last year) but the elk are fun to watch anyway.