Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game my rookie season of hunting whitetail

Just finished my rookie season hunting whitetail. The real reason I bought my Kansas tag was because my dog can�t go the distance for roosters anymore. He still lives to hunt and I don�t want to take that away from him. At his age he is good for maybe 2 or 3 fields in the morning and 2 in the afternoon if supplied with tramadol and/or rimadyl.

The rest of the day I walk the dry creek beds alone looking for deer. That leaves me with some extra time and in most fields I can hunt either pheasant or deer. It became a wing and hoof hunt. Mixing in some still hunting for Kansas whitetail gives the old dog a break. At age 13 he can�t hunt all day like he used to.

I�ve had a season to be thankful for. A bighorn ewe in September and a cow elk in October fill my freezer. My bull elk hunt was limited by snow and was still enjoyable but not successful. I know zero about whitetail hunting and didn�t expect to be successful just by exploring the dry creek beds but there are deer trails everywhere there and it was interesting.


A herd bugs out after taunting me from the safety of a private field.

SW Kansas really is a sportsmans paradise in many ways. The public access is great. While driving around looking for deer haunts I found ponds that look pretty sweet for waterfowl and it looks like some enjoyable fishing.







Witcher Ranch is a great hunting lodge in the area that is worth a visit. It�s address is Campo, CO but I think it may actually be closer to Elkhart. There are very few roads in this CO, KS, OK corner. Witcher Ranch makes up the SE CO portion and on the KS side (the Cimmarron) has a special designation as elk habitat by the KDPW. The primary business of Witcher Ranch seems to be guided elk hunts. It seems like a great location for people in that part of the country looking for a guided elk hunt. The lodge at Witcher Ranch is very nice, reasonable rates, excellent accommodations, great hospitality, and it�s about the only place to stay in that area with a kennel to accommodate hunting dogs.



The bright spot is that the puppy loves to hunt. She started off enthusiastic about finding anything but she quickly learned from the old dog that roosters were the objective. This year I bought a gun with less db report but I still can�t bring myself to shoot over the 18 month old. It won�t be long before it is all up to her.
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The 13 year old dog is a good mentor for her. She will be the senior dog soon enough and it is encouraging to see her enthusiasm for roosters and her physical stamina. On the very best fields I leave the pup in the truck so I can shoot with the old boy. When I return she shows her displeasure by putting her nose between her paws, ears back, and pouting � refusing to leave the truck.

Returning home from the hunt my 3rd dog, the oldest one, limps out to greet me. For the first time she has to be left at home. She tries to climb into the truck. She knows the hunt is over but she wants to make sure that I know that she knows that she didn�t get to go. In her day she loved waterfowl retrieving tests and would actually dive below a frozen ice shelf to pull back a diving cripple. She hunted CO, NM, KS, WY, MT, ND, SK with me. I tell her that she didn�t miss anything. She is not buying it.
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The old matriarch in her younger days.

On my last morning a small herd runs across the road ahead and onto a legal native grass field. My heart thumps in my chest. By the time I stop the truck and put the binos on them they are already disappearing over the horizon.

I didn�t get a whitetail but then I didn�t deserve one with no knowledge of the species and only hunting part time. I�m hooked however. Next year I�ll know the creek bottoms a little better.