I don’t really know what the Australian term “walk about” means down there but up here, to me, it’s Texas Lake, Isabel Wetlands or the Bryon Walker Wildlife Area.
It doesn’t matter which direction you head after parking you’re going to be in prime hunting cover. From hills, wetlands, gulleys, prairie, flat, tall and short grass, timber, just about everything except snow covered mountains or desert sand await you. Start out walking in a half circle so at the end you’ll wind up at your car to restock with water, shells and possibly empty your game bag.
Saturday, I spent two hours walking the west side of Texas Lake and only walking the middle half with water stopping me from the south side and tall grass and “tired’’ keeping me and the dogs from hitting the north road or the far west side. We jumped some ducks and a rooster in an experience I’ve never had before — dreamed about but never experienced.
When you set decoys at Texas Lake, you always wish for a rooster to fly over the water, and many times it does happen only you’re watching the sky and the pheasant gets by before you can shoot. Or you’re walking out with a decoy sack on your back, guns unloaded and the rooster gets up close enough you stumble in your waders with decoys and gun tangled together. Another no-shot bird.
It’s always happened to me that way, except for this one time. I like to hunt Texas Lake by finding a water spot then walking its edges until I end up back where I started. You don’t flush a lot of ducks or pheasants but the ones you do are really, really close. I mean close like seeing their eyes blink.
Most of the time the cover near the water’s edge is tall and very thick. The trick is to find a deer path then slip like an Indian trying not to make any noise. I mean no noise from walking in water to grass brushing your clothes. If you do this enough times you’ll catch ducks feeding with their heads under water, completely unaware of your presence until they bob back to the surface. Then it’s a spray of water, like a bomb went off, as they head airward.
When you hunt this way most of your game will be ducks, so when something flushes that‘s what you’re thinking and looking for. As we stepped out to see the water we stepped out into a mowed short grass path that had a small bit of dry ground in its middle. I saw the drake mallard on the water and it jumped into the air, but it’s loud “quack” startled a rooster pheasant on the dry ground which flew over the water.
My gun was coming up to cover the drake, but my eyes were following the rooster and my mind blocked both out with the thought, ‘what about a double-double, a rooster and duck?”
Of course it didn’t happen. The duck was way higher quicker than the pheasant, which was flying low and continued to do so. It was pretty though, all those different colors blended together, but like other trips to these “Kansas Walk-Abouts”* I walked out with as many shells as I walked in with.
*Walk-abouts to me mean someplace where you can park your vehicle, start to hunt and walk and walk until you’re too tired to go on. Hours or the entire day spent hunting without any more driving than what it took to get there. All three areas are with in a 30-minute drive of Pratt and all three offer good pheasant, water-fowl, quail and rabbit populations
Pratt, Kan. —
