I would like some info on upland bird hunting from someone in the know.

There may or may not be bird hunters here from Kansas. But until one comes along, there are others of us who've hunted in that state including me.

Pheasants are the name of the game in Kansas and they are up and down from year to year. To hunt there you have to get a handle on what's going on the year you want to plan a hunt and what the numbers are like where you're interested in going.

For general helpful background this will get you started - http://www.kdwp.state.ks.us/ne...Ring-Necked-Pheasant. After reading it, click on the Upland Bird Regional Forecast - http://kdwp.state.ks.us/news/H...rd-Regional-Forecast. That's real important and you'll see the map broken down into different areas.

You'll also need to check with local sources before planning a hunt, which means ask the person who's giving you permission to hunt about local pheasant numbers.

I haven't hunted pheasants there in several years. But I used to go every year and had reasonably good success in the Salina north central area. The fellow who owned the properties we hunted on would say either, we've got plenty of birds and come on ahead, or to skip it this year, the birds aren't there in numbers. Anyhow, at some point I gravitated away from Kansas and more toward Iowa and S.D. As you know, S.D. seems to be where most want to go for pheasants (it's kind of like ducks and Arkansas, you can kill 'um in lots of states, but Arkansas is famous for it).

They also had good quail hunting in Kansas and we'd encounter them in the same areas with the pheasants. Their numbers too vary from year to year.

The other area of Kansas I hunted pheasants in was out West, near the town of Sublette. They had goodly numbers on certain properties, but I haven't been back recently.

The one part I'm not sure about are public hunting opportunities in Kansas. I don't know if you can get in on it easily like that or not. The way I was doing it was to get an invite first and of course everything there depended on knowing the right people. The better results were when we had lots of walkers and blockers, usually 15 or more guys and several dogs.

Hope that helps.