Rural Kansas towns have been filling with hunters in preparation for today’s start of pheasant season.

“It’s about like Easter and Mother’s Day wrapped into one,” Scott Carlton, who runs the Frontier Restaurant in Oberlin in northwest Kansas, said Friday.

More than 100,000 hunters were expected to be afield in what is the biggest hunting weekend of the year.

Pheasant is one of the most popular game birds and Kansas’ annual pheasant hunt consistently ranks in the top three in the nation. The season lasts through January.

In Norton, the town’s 94 beds at three motels and one bed and breakfast were booked solid for the next two weekends.

“There’s a lot of activity. A lot of hunters,” said Karla Reed, executive director of the Norton-Area Chamber of Commerce. The town’s nickname is the Pheasant Capital of Kansas.

Reed said the hunters have a big impact on the local economy, spending money on meals, motel rooms and supplies.

A U.S. Fisheries and Wildlife study last year estimated that upland bird season generated $155 million in retail sales in Kansas.

A rooster pheasant runs across a winter wheat field in western Kansas. Pheasant-hunting season opens today.

And experts are predicting a good season for hunters in Kansas because of good ground cover and increasing numbers of birds.

The best areas are expected to be north-central and south-central regions, and the northwest and southwest regions also will offer good hunting. Northeast Kansas is expected to be fair.

At Wild Wings Hunting in Scott City, owner Scott Wren was preparing for a busy weekend.

“It’s a little warm, but there are a lot of birds around,” Wren said. He said he expected hunters from around the country. Reed, with the Norton chamber, said she had run into hunters from Mississippi and the Chicago area in addition to many from Kansas.

One hunter said he was pumped for the weekend.

Larry Phillips, of Liberal, said Friday that he planned to head out early this morning with about 10 other hunters to eastern Seward County and western Meade County.

• Kansas Parks and Wildlife: Pheasant Season Opens

“We’re really excited about it because the bird count is as high or higher than it was last year when we had our near-record rainfall,” Phillips said.

Kansas offers more than one million acres of walk-in hunting, where the state leases land from landowners and opens it to hunting. Maps showing these areas, in addition to other information on pheasant season, are on the wildlife and parks Web site, www.kdwp.state.ks.us.

Today also is the start of quail season in the eastern two-thirds of the state. The western zone will open Nov. 19.