Nearly 1.2 million acres of private lands in Kansas and Nebraska are open to public hunting through each state's own walk-in hunting program. Kansan Mike Miller bagged this ringneck on land he accessed simply by buying a hunting license. Photo by Marc Murrell.

As the year winds down, pheasant hunters in Nebraska and Kansas are busy trying to find those pheasants that now have plenty of experience avoiding hunters. Fortunate are the pheasants that managed that feat -- and frozen in plastic wrap are the ones that didn't! Finding the remaining birds can be tough, but there's still plenty of opportunity for some delightful December shoots on these big, gaudy game birds.

Fortunately, a couple of programs administered by the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission and the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks now give hunters plenty of options as to places to probe for some great late-season ringneck action.

Having been patterned after successful efforts in other states, both programs are similar, involving leases by the government of private land for public access. They differ a bit: Nebraska leases only Conservation Reserve Program land -- cropland prone to heavy erosion that's been returned to native grasses under the 1985 Farm Bill program -- while Kansas, most of whose enrolled tracts are CRP properties, also leases standing wheat and milo stubble, as well as other areas that hold pheasants.

NEBRASKA
Nebraska's access program is called CRP-MAP (Management Access Program). It started in 1997 as a pilot program in 28 of Nebraska's 93 counties.

"There were about 20,000 acres initially," said Scott Taylor, former upland game bird program coordinator for the NGPC and current head of the state's wildlife research section. "We really didn't make an effort to enroll a huge number of acres that first year, as it was just a pilot project."

Landowner interest has grown since the program's inception. "We were up to about 180,000 acres this past year," Taylor said. "We've been fairly stable the last couple of years with about that same amount." That landowners seem overall to be happy with the program is a good thing, since they're the key to making the entire thing work.

"By this time I think everyone is pretty happy with the way things go," added Taylor. "There's always year-to-year problems here and there -- with signage and that kind of thing -- but given the fact that we've been stable at 180,000 acres for several years, that's a good indication things are going pretty well."

Landowners are paid from $1 to $5 per acre of land enrolled, depending on the management option selected. "Included in that cost is not only the access part, but we require some habitat manipulation and improvement on most tracts," Taylor explained.

As has been the case with similar programs across the country, response from hunters has been terrific. "It's one of our most popular hunting programs and you don't really ever hear anything that's negative about it," said Taylor. "It's opened a lot of acres to a lot of folks."

Another benefit of the program is that it spreads out the hunting pressure across the board on tracts available to public access. Taylor pointed out that it has decreased the amount of hunting pressure on state-owned public lands and spread people out.

Residents and non-residents alike benefit from Nebraska's CRP-MAP. "Both have taken advantage of the program," Taylor said. "Residents who have pretty decent private land to hunt still take advantage of the opportunities on those MAP tracts as well."