Kansas 2026 Pronghorn

[kansasdad]

I got a late start this morning as I was waiting out the reds/oranges on the radar screen. Driving towards the ranch I only fishtailed once on a slick spot. Good ol drivers ed kicked in and it straightened out fast. Driving past the entrance to the ranch house I saw up ahead a truck/water trailer off in the ditch. The patriarch was stuck it seemed, so I u-turned to go back to see if I could help.

He had already walked back to the house, jumped into a different rig, and was on to the next chore. He thanked me for my willingness to help, but said he would take care of the truck later.

Crawling along and glassing every once and awhile, I decided to not expend lots of time trying to find the antelope I had pursued yesterday and explore other WIHA in the surrounding areas.

OnX and KWDP signage don’t always agree. Sometimes the map system shows land enrolled in the program, and other times land with signage on the periphery doesn’t show on the app.

Moving slowly in my best ever road hunting mode, I came to a corner of a WIHA and stopped to glass. Tall weeds way down the fence line danced their gentle dance in the somewhat gusty wind, and then one of those weed heads grew horns and stepped more into the open.

Buck!

I was in business. Like yesterday I found that the road dropped down towards a dry bottomland so that I could park out of sight/sound. Before I drove off I counted the number of electric line poles from the road to the weed patch and the buck. 11 telephone poles to get to where he was nervously glancing my way.

This ground was terraced, so I suppose at one time it was in ag production (corn and sorghum were in several nearby fields). At the northwest corner of the WIHA (buck was close to SE corner) I parked and pulled the backpack on and crawled under the antelope friendly fencing with ease.

Keeping my path so that I could only see the far off telephone pole tops, I moved so that I could be as far south into the WIHA as the buck was when I saw him. Crawling up to the lip of a terrace I glassed over to where he was the last time I saw him, only to find only weed heads waving.

Glassing further surrounding areas yielded no pronghorn.

I decided to stay put, hoping that continued glassing might find the buck. I stayed out for while until the wind died down, got swirly and then flipped nearly 180°.

Done with this spot I went back to get my pack I had left when I made a small crawl to gain visual altitude. Looking down I saw rotten old straps, and a ratcheting tie down, so I picked it up and eventually hung it on a roadside WIHA sign.

Back in the Highlander, I made plans to get eyes on the far western WIHA as shown by OnX. Once again most were correct, but sometimes the signs on the property didn’t exactly match what OnX was showing.

As I was getting closer to Colorado, I found that I couldn’t get to a couple of the WIHA’s from Any direction. No roads adjacent to some of the OnX listed lands.

I eventually did make it to Colorado, and my exit out of the area in those post sundown moments was driving done the road marked as CR rd 39 (state line).

Weather radar forecasts shows long periods of rain downpours before sunrise and continuing most of the morning. Getting this rain (multiple inches),on top of last weeks multiple inches plus today’s rain probably mean even more careful driving will be required.

 

[kansasdad]

You are welcome HuntTalkers….


Ventusky app for temp, precip and localized wind direction.

 

[kansasdad]

Today is going to be a wet one, but I don’t care as I’m four for four on plugging blindly into USB plugs!

All-time personal best is six, so I hope to best that in the coming days.

 

[kansasdad]

I have found 8 on WIHA.

One decent buck plus a really nice Kansas buck. Not bad for other environs either as they appeared in my rain dropped windows.

It almost seemed like they had taken shelter under the eaves of a cell tower utility shed.

This pastureland is flatter than flat, but hasn’t been grazed so there is short cover.

I turned the suv so I could slip out unseen and assemble my crawling attire: rain pants over the pants, a purple merino sweater over a teeshirt with a camo shirt over that. The merino sweater is from Nordstroms….it pays to go shopping with @mrskansasdad. Quality knee pads and thicker gloves than the temps call for and off I go.

I’ve crawled in enough to be legally far enough away from the buildings to discharge a firearm.

I am now watching them trading bedding places from 250ish yards away.

 

[kansasdad]

It does seem odd to glass the group and sometimes count 5, 6 7, or all eight. Wind gusts moving grass around to hide or expose.

They are all facing in my general direction.

When/if I move it’s gonna be like a ninja snake

 

[kansasdad]

The low clouds streaming southward (isn’t the hurricane coming from the southwest?) would occasionally release a fine mist and then a moment later hurl only chilly wind. On a quiet day the sound of meadowlarks would be heard quite regularly. Today the only sounds I heard was gusty wet winds.

The smaller buck left the herd for parts unknown, but I got to watch the buck, four does and four fawns for the rest of the day. By emulating a ninja snake I got to approximately 240 yards (the range finder almost never could get a fix on a pronghorn due to the whipping grasses and my need to stay low.

I first saw this herd next to a cell tower. They would pick up and move 100+ yards deeper into the field, bed and feed, drift back, work on the weeds next to the tower, then make it to the road, mill around, make like they were going to leave the property into the milo, and then make another circuit.

With most every circuit I hoped that they would drift a little west, towards me. And when it seemed most everyone in the herd was head down, or horsing around with each other I’d push a little closer east towards them. I finally hit a little crest in the field that had been giving a bit of added screening of my BOFD (big ol fat dude) frame. Moving down the little slope was not likely to work as they were slightly above me looking down and I decided to play the long game.

Meaning I was going to watch them bed, and go again at them tomorrow.

 

[kansasdad]

As I got back to the car, I dumped the wet outer clothes and started the car. I had turned my headlights off so as to not shine a light at last light towards the herd.

I was recharging my phone when I looked up and saw headlights coming down the road. The antelope stood up as the truck passed by, and then I had to deal with a pissed off land owner.

“What are you doing here”.
“I was on the WIHA as I have an antelope tag”
“Why did you nearly park in my front yard? We’ve got a lot of things disappearing from around here”
What followed was a long rant of people tearing down fences chasing coyote dogs, camping (not allowed on WIHA), leaving trash everywhere, etc etc. With each offense I replied “I’m so sorry about that”.
He also shared that there is a real problem with drugs and trafficking drugs in this area.
I told him I had a business card so that he could know who I was and that I was on the up and up, but by then I think he realized I had a legit reason for being there.

I told him that my plan was to return Thursday and hunt here again. He gruffly wished me good luck.

And then he asked if I knew what the limit was on antelope. Before I could reply, he told me that the answer is 10…a day.

I told him that another rancher north of town had asked me to “shoot four and take one” which made this once pissed off farmer LOL.

 

[kansasdad]

After thinking about my encounter with the adjacent land owner, it seems that it’s better than a coin toss that he had a handgun in hand or close by as he pulled up. (I have a friend who gave some background on his general disposition).

 

[treydfoster]

With an estimated herd of less than 75, the Flint Hills pronghorn are not in the hunting zones.

Fawn mortality rates are normally over 75%, mostly attributed to coyotes.

I saw a very nice buck in the very eastern portion of the Flint Hills west of Emporia. I'm from Missouri and I measured him at 140 miles from my house. I imagine there was not a wild Pronghorn in the world further east than him at that point.

 

[kansasdad]

Today was eventful.
Flood watches everywhere.
I slept in and even got to watch the showcase showdown on the Price is Right.

The weather radar for the WIHA I had designs on showed constant moderate rainfall all morning and into the afternoon.

I finally got out of town at the stroke of noon. I saw something that few that frequent western Kansas have ever seen… water flowing in the Arkansas (and we say it “R-Kansas”)



This wheat field could double as a fish rearing scheme today

I finally set the cruise control at 32 mph to force myself to not drive too fast on the soupy roads. Arriving at the WIHA I was supremely pleased to find a buck 50 yards off the road, and an assortment of other antelope behind him, I was just trying to stay out of the ditch at the moment so I can’t say with an certainty how many others there were.

I drove to the other end of the WIHA looking for a safe place to pull over and not find myself stuck, and at
the same time allow clearance for cars/semis to get past.

I sat in the car for over two hours waiting for the pelting rain and gusty winds moderate. This did allow me to modify a project I started several years ago. I had “breathable” waders that were rendered unusable when the boot rubber cracked. I had cut off the bottom half of the boot thinking that these would make excellent bib overall style rain gear. I ended up having to trim off a little more of the remaining boot rubber, and cut a slit down the tongue area and it fit over my boots like a champ.

I was on the south east side of the wiha, the antelope today and yesterday had been on then on the north side and my plan was to advance up the slope of the land to find where these antelope were possibly still bedded, and out a
Ninja move on them. Finding a meandering game trail that was taking me along the direction that I wanted to go made exa cray what direction should I be walking.

The contour lines on this property are very widely spaced. There isn’t much of a crest of the hill, but more like the slope decreases to zero, remains that way for a long span, and then finally starts to decrease slowly to the other field edge.

I got to 1/2 a mile of my landmark snd I knew that very shortly the flat area I had seen the buck in this morning was going to be in plain view.
Glassing through rain splattered binos I saw no antelope.

I knew I needed to get closer to the core area I had seen them yesterday so I leaned over a bit, and slowly made my way forward. Thinking that perhaps I caught a tan horizontal body of an antelope just over the skyline of this field I found a yucca patch and sat down for a moment. My lower half of my body was doing well, as was my top half wearing an old coat that was once in my dad’s closet, and he’s been gone since 2007.