Perhaps taking a key from Wildlife and Parks’ less than-optimistic upland bird forecast, fewer hunters pursued these popular game species than in normal years.

In the northeast part of the state, law enforcement supervisor Rob Ladner described last weekend’s season opener as “pretty poor.”

“Success was low on quail, and we just don’t have many pheasants in this part of the state,” Ladner said. “In the western counties, a few pheasants were taken, but fewer hunters were out than last year, too.

“It was lower than I thought because some of the landowners I talked to earlier were saying they were seeing quail where they hadn’t last year. The hot weather could have had something to do with it, too.”

Jim Kellenberger, the southwest region’s law enforcement supervisor, had the same story.

“It was poor,” he said. “A couple of counties in the eastern part of the region were pretty good, but in the rest, I’d say they averaged about one bird per 10 hunters. We normally average a bird per hunter per day. By Sunday, hunter numbers had dropped dramatically.”

Like the other regional supervisors, Kellenberger noted there were fewer hunters than normal, as well. Lack of cover and hot weather were part of the equation here, too.

Southcentral Kansas provided a somewhat better report. Region law enforcement supervisor Val Jansen said that pheasant hunters did pretty well in Kingman, Harper, Reno and Sedgwick counties.

“In other counties, they just weren’t having much luck,” Jansen said. “Hunter numbers were down considerably from last year, but we’ve got a lot of waterfowl in the region, and that may have lured hunters away from the upland game.”

Quail hunters did better in the southern Flint Hills. Elsewhere, as with pheasants, quail success was spotty.

Southeast regional fisheries and wildlife supervisor Larry Tiemann issued a cautiously-optimistic assessment of the quail situation in this region.

“We had a few more good reports than in previous years although we’re still down from what we were 10 or 15 years ago,” Tiemann said. “Most of it was poor to fair, but in the western counties, in the southern Flint Hills, we saw some real improvement over previous years.”

This region does not have suitable habitat to support pheasants.

In northwest Kansas, bird hunting was reported by regional law enforcement supervisor Jerry Bump as poor.

“We didn’t harvest a lot of birds, and we didn’t have as many hunters as we usually do,” Bump said. “They were probably averaging one-quarter to one-half a bird per hunter. Most of them knew it wasn’t going to be very good, so they weren’t complaining, but most groups we checked just had a few birds or no birds at all.”

While the overall report for Kansas upland bird hunting is not rosy, there are still good numbers of birds in some portions of the state, particularly the central and southcentral regions for pheasants and the southern Flint Hills for quail.

As the weather cools, hunting prospects should improve, making it easier for dogs to work. Winter snow would also improve the prospects of bagging both pheasants and quail, as the birds bunch up in available habitat.