Electronic registration system to help Kansas Wildlife and Parks biologists and hunters

State biologists are heralding the new Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism’s new iSportsman electronic registration system as a plus for sportsmen and public land managers.

For years the agency has required hunters to fill out cards as they come and go from some areas, especially those that specialize in waterfowl hunting, so biologists can monitor hunting pressure and harvest figures.

“In a nutshell, all this is is an electronic version of that paper system,” said Mike Nyhoff, Wildlife and Parks public lands supervisor. “This should be a lot faster for our managers and hunters.”

With the old system, hunters sometimes had to stand in line to get registration cards, or drive to other registration systems if one was out of cards. Now, they can register with a telephone or computer long before they arrive in the area.

In the past, public area managers invested a lot of time in distributing and collecting cards. Data was only available after the cards were sorted and logged, which often took many hours and days. Now, it’s nearly instantaneous by checking registrations online.

For more information, check Sunday’s Outdoors page of The Wichita Eagle or at kansas.com/outdoors.

MORE UPDATES

It’s interesting that most of the people who opened teal season on public areas last weekend did well. All I’ve talked to who opened the season on private lands normally killed only a few birds. That happens quite often when the public areas have good water and weeds, it seems.

I’ve talked with very few who hunted at Cheyenne Bottoms through Tuesday who didn’t shoot limits of six per hunter. Wednesday, though, hunting seemed to be a lot tougher. The slow down may have been because of the warm temperatures, little wind and a tremendous supply of food. Several hunters have commented that the tiny teal they’ve cleaned have had the kind of fat layers normally associated with mid-winter mallards or Canada geese. That sure helps make them especially tasty, though.

People are still commenting on the improvements in the quail and pheasant populations. A friend in south-central Kansas said he saw at least 50 pheasants fly into about 20 acres of CRP grass a few nights ago. The same person, though, has worked pretty hard to keep his habitat so the farm looks like it’s back in the 1970s - lush grass, milo stubble left in the fields, brush in all of the fencelines, etc.

No shortage of young turkeys this year, either.

For the few who are interested, it looks like we have a bumper crop of paw paws, too. I picked about two gallons from a thicket in Butler County, and hope to get more this weekend. A friend in Elk County sent me photos of some he picked that were almost as big as soda cans, seriously.

UPCOMING COVERAGE

Sunday’s Outdoors page main article will be on 20 years of the Becoming an Outdoors Woman program. Some things have changed but a lot of things have stayed the same. I’ll also have the article on the new iSportsman system.

Down the road, we’ll have the final article of the six-part series on Kansas state parks. It’s scheduled for the front page on Saturday, Sept. 20, on Cross Timbers State Park. I’m hoping to have a fishing article from Toronto Reservoir from the same trip, too.

A story on Sandhills State Park, north of Hutchinson, is also in the planning. It’s had a lot of improvements lately, and should be one of the top equestrian destinations in Kansas.

Hopefully within a few weeks we’ll also be announcing the completion of a project I, and many others at The Eagle, have been working hard on for more than two months. It’s pretty cool.

I’m also keeping my eyes on some pretty major poaching cases that could be going to federal court in the next few weeks, though such cases often drag on and on.

MICHAEL’S WORLD

Let’s see, where to start. Saturday’s opening of teal season at Cheyenne Bottoms with Rick Tomlinson was as action-packed as indicated in the article on Sunday’s Outdoors page. We waited until 20 minutes into legal shooting hours before we fired our first shots, and ended up wishing we’d have waited longer.

When the sun got completely up, and the decoys were totally visible, the teal decoyed wonderfully. It was the first time I’d ever hunted over a Vortex system, which uses a 12-volt battery to turn a tall, v-shaped stand that spins two spinning-wing decoys about five feet above the surface of the water. We actually had teal turn 200 yards out, and eventually try to fly in circles with the whirling decoys. It was impressive to watch.

Sunday a few friends showed up to help me get our food plots in at our farm near Lawrence. We have several patches of radishes and turnips, and two with wheat and triticale. Some rain over the next few days up there would really be nice.

What I saw was pretty impressive. Some of our big bluestem was pushing 9 feet tall, and the Indian grass wasn’t much shorter. Also, every kind of mast tree we have on the farm seems over-loaded with acorns this year – that’s six species of oak, two of hickory and walnut trees.

As a buddy near Garnett said, this may be the best summer we’ve ever seen, all things considered – increases in quail populations, mast crops, farm crops, pastures, deer rebounding in quality and quantity after the drought and wildlife habitat.

I’m hoping to squeeze in at least two days of squirrel hunting in the next few weeks. I really miss getting to do that as much as I used to, back before deer hunting became such a huge part of my life. I seem to be gradually returning to my hunting roots, though, of upland game and wild turkey hunting.

My next big adventure, I hope, is getting to take Jerrod to western Kansas for some spot and stalk mule and whitetail deer hunting with some friends who own or lease some of the prettiest ground in Kansas. Cover is thick out there this year, which will make it easier for the deer to hide, but will also provide more cover for sneaking hunters as they try to close within range of bucks, too.

I’ll get in plenty of bowhunting time before and after that trip. Out west, my main duties will be being a photographer, and doing what I can to help Jerrod and our host.

Last week Mike Hutmacher, a friend and photographer at The Eagle, gave me a bumper sticker he’d had made. It says, “Got .22 lr?” in joking reference to the on-going shortage of .22 rimfire ammunition because of hoarding.

It is kind of sad that it’s still that hard to get such basic ammunition in America.

Hank’s still hanging on, and the vet is trying various medicines to get some ailments under control. I did take the ol’ dog out teal hunting for a few hours this week. He stumbled around, got tired easily, fell a few times, got a few birds and seemed to have a great time.

I guess it’s true what they say about dogs eventually acting like their owners.

Bests,

Michael Pearce

mpearce@wichitaeagle.com

This story was originally published September 18, 2014 at 2:55 PM with the headline "Electronic registration system to help Kansas Wildlife and Parks biologists and hunters."