[Music] To be very clear, pheasants do not migrate.

Hunters, however, travel across miles and even states, filling hotels, rental homes and restaurants, and walking the fields and pastures of the High Plains in pursuit of this highly prized upland game bird.

[Music] This episode of Cottonwood Connections is the pheasant migration.

It isn't the pheasants migrating north or south or east or west or on some central flyway or something.

This is the people coming to hunt pheasants, the migration that happens annually in Kansas, where hunters from all over the state and out of state come to basically mostly northwestern Kansas to hunt pheasants because of the crop and you'll talk to out-of-state people and they'll say, "Is there a food plot?"

and you'll hear others say, "The whole state's a food plot."

In preparation, we're in Hoxie, Kansas and they're getting prepared for the Pheasants Forever annual banquet.

We're interviewing Derek Zaer, who is the local chapter president for Pheasants Forever.

So how long is the Pheasants Forever chapter been in existence in Hoxie?

It's about a 33, 34 year chapter, Smokey Valley Pheasants Forever, 349.

So you're having a banquet tonight and how many do you expect?

I know that has to be an estimate.

We usually cook for 350 to 400 people and that's, you know, depends on weather, but this year the weather's perfect, the birds are there.

We'll have 350 people here tonight.

Like I said, them Colorado, Missouri people, they like to come, they get away, they spend a lot of money and then, you know, those proceeds we take, we have to pay for our legislative, our lawyers fighting for what we want and just for the local side of things, we do college scholarships here.

And is that a one-year scholarship or four-year?

It's four-year scholarship.

When we talk about the Colorado people and Missouri people, that's a big income for the state of Kansas and wildlife and parks to get the out-of-state license.

We, our little town doubles in population this weekend.

I'm Jordan Martincich, Vice President of Development with Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever.

I am a Kansan and I've been with the organization for 17 years and we're here right now in Hoxie, Kansas.

It's the night before the great Pheasant opener.

Our local chapter is going to have their annual fundraising banquet and we're going to raise a lot of money for our wildlife habitat conservation mission.

And at Pheasants Forever, that's what we're committed to.

We're dedicated to the conservation of pheasants, quail, and other wildlife that require grasslands.

Kansas is a grassland state and we've been blessed with the opportunity to be able to grow a lot of pheasants here in the state, grow a lot of quail here in the state, and get out in the outdoors and chase them around opening weekend behind our bird dogs.

So my son and I were traveling out here today and we saw a lot of trucks with bird dogs and back and orange ball caps on dashes.

So people are traveling from across the state and we saw a couple of license plates from Illinois and Missouri and some other places.

So it definitely is a driver of tourism for Northwest Kansas.

And that's the idea of the pheasant migration.

You're migrating to the pheasants, not the pheasants.

You're migrating somewhere else.

Yeah, you got to go to them.

They don't fly around like the ducks do.

How is the pheasant overall, the pheasant and quail population?

The populations of pheasants and quail are challenged.

We've lost a lot of grassland habitat over the course of the last 40 years, a lot in the last 10 years.

In the last 10 years in North America, we've lost grasslands the size of Kansas when you add them all up.

So about 50 million acres of grasslands.

Pheasants and quail need grasslands.

Some states have experienced upwards of a 75% decline in pheasant populations.

And most of those are in the Great Plains?

A lot of those are Midwest.

Okay.

When you get to the Great Plains, we're still in a little bit better position in Kansas and Nebraska and North Dakota and South Dakota and eastern Montana.

More arid, it lends itself more to be dry land agriculture, except in the areas where there's center irrigation pivots.

And so a lot of those grasslands are still on the landscape in places.

So we've got the grasslands there and then it comes down to how the weather is.

Whether you've got the right weather conditions in the spring and summer at the right time to produce the birds.

But on scale, it's a challenge.

So people are even more in a position where they're having to come to Northwest Kansas to find pheasants where they may be used to be able to find them in Northeast Kansas.

Pheasants Forever got started and the main thing of this is to maintain the high pheasant population in an area.

And so what do you do throughout the rest of the year for Pheasants Forever?

Do you have game counts?

Do you have food plots for the pheasants?

I know there's no hatchery in the immediate area.

We push a lot of, oh, like I said, food plots.

We do have a corners project to where we take a circle and then we do the four corners and CRP.

And we pay that farmer to do that.

To grow some habitat.

Yeah, so a circle is a 120 acres.

Yeah, it's 120 acres and it's irrigation.

Yep.

It goes in a pivot around the deal.

And so the land tracks are basically square.

So you have these corners in them.

Yes.

That the circle doesn't hit.

So you put natural grasses in there, natural cover.

Yep.

And they're a similar corners program is a major focus of the organization behind the Kansas Governor's Hunt Ringneck Classic in Colby, Kansas.

So my name is Jim Millensifer and I'm a member of the board of directors for the Kansas Ringneck Classic.

We're a 501c3 that was formed in about 2012 shortly after the first Kansas Governor's Pheasant Hunt, which was 2011.

Sam Brownback was campaigning to become governor in 2010.

And one of his initiatives was to promote hunting tourism after he was elected governor in the fall of 2010.

He reached out to a variety of communities in Western Kansas and suggested that one or more of the communities might get involved with the Kansas Governor's Pheasant Hunt, an event that was designed to promote hunting tourism, perhaps generate some revenue and excitement for a local community, maybe even make a little bit of money for some of the local organizations within the community.

So a group of us in Oakley, Kansas got together.

And as a result of our conversations with Wildlife and Parks and the governors, we hosted the first two Governor's Hunts in 2011 and 2012.

During that time with other folks from Western Kansas, we formed a nonprofit and the first five Governor's Hunts actually rotated through different communities.

One and two were in Oakley.

Number three was in Norton.

Number four was in Scott City.

And in 2015, Goodland hosted the Kansas Governor's Ringneck Classic.

So there were five hunts that rotated.

The concept is tourism will do good if you have public access and if you have wild animals or wild birds for people to hunt.

So if we're going to try to promote hunting tourism, the best thing that we can do for the local communities is ensure that there's places for people to hunt and that there's wildlife for them to pursue.

So starting in 2015, our organization took 100% of our after event, after expense proceeds and all of those monies went back to supporting wildlife, habitat and conservation and getting more people involved in the shooting sports.

So since 2016, we've gotten close now, 2025, we've gotten close now to a total of a million dollars generated to support wildlife, habitat and conservation efforts.

Colby now has become the home of the classic.

This is the ninth year.

This today was our ninth hunt, 15th overall, ninth hunt for Colby.

And it's had a significant impact on the economy of Colby for the three or four days that where folks are here.

And it's also introduced people to Colby in general that end up coming back later in the year.

We can have the event housed in Colby, but we actually hunted today in seven different counties in western Kansas.

We had people that were as far away as Seldon.

We had folks that were down south towards Scott City.

We had people that were almost over into the Goodland area.

So it's real easy to get into a variety of different counties and introduce these folks to those areas.

So Colby is an ideal location and we've been successful in getting people to come back to the area other than just the hunt itself.

Over the course of the last seven or eight years, how we utilize our money to support wildlife and habitat conservation has evolved.

And in the last two years, we've gotten really, really, we've concentrated a lot on a new program for us.

And that's what we call the Corners program.

So in western Kansas, Thomas County is an example.

Thomas County has the most center pivots in the state of Kansas.

And on every pivot, you've got anywhere from say 22 to 26 acres of land that's typically farmed, but it's not irrigated.

So the irrigated pivot takes care of about 120 acres, if you will.

And on the four corners, you can't irrigate that.

So what we're doing now is trying to encourage farmers to take those corners out of production.

We're going to compensate farmers $100 an acre on a 10 year contract to take their corners out of production.

So if a farmer has say 25 acres in his four corners, we're going to give them $2,500 a year, $100 times $25.

We're going to give them $2,500 a year for 10 years to take that land out of production.

Now what they have to do is they got to plant it to a great seed mix, CRP, pollinator, etc.

So what we're trying to attempt to do is create good nesting and brood habitat.

Even in drought years, because of that center pivot, there's always moisture on that piece of land.

So if we can encourage the farmers to take the four corners out of production, put it into great brood habitat, there'll always be a place to raise pheasants that has good moisture.

Some of those farmers are actually double dipping.

They're going to take their four corners, take it out of production, get paid by us, but they're also going to open it up to public access through the walking program.

So they'll get paid from the state to actually also let the public come in and hunt those areas.

So they'll get paid to take it out of production.

They'll get paid to let people hunt there.

So it improves both the ability to grow pheasants in Northwest Kansas, but also more public access.

With the CRP, I know there are restrictions on that on what you can plant, but you can always add forbs and stuff that will bring in wildlife.

And so with Pheasants Forever, do you have a seed recipe?

Yes, we do.

We call it a seed mix, but I like seed recipe.

And so on our website, there's all kinds of different mixes in there specific to states.

So we'll use local eco types, even though the plants might be the same, which ensures that we've got the best chance of having that plant grow.

And our mixes will contain a mix of grass, a mix of forbs, legumes, other broadleaf flowering plants.

So we have biologists across Kansas, across really the entire Great Plains, and dispersed across the country.

We have the second largest team of wildlife biologists in the United States, only behind the U.S.

Fish and Wildlife Service.

My name is Heather Francis.

I'm a senior farm bill biologist in the state of Nebraska.

I've been working for Pheasants Forever for over 12 years as a farm bill biologist.

And that's one of the things I love about my job is I get to work with landowners and help them plan to make their habitat better on their property.

And that's what the farm bill biologist jobs are across the United States is to be able to be... We're the boots on the ground, to work with the landowners to get better habitat on their property.

And I have been here this weekend helping to take pictures at the governor's hunt for the Ringneck Classic here in Colby, Kansas.

And while I was out taking pictures of the hunters today, we were talking about what a farm bill's biologist job is and what our responsibilities are.

And so we got to talk about CRP.

CRP is the Conservation Reserve Program.

It's a United States program.

It's a voluntary program that landowners can enroll their less productive crop acres and convert those acres back into grassland.

So we can do cropland conversions and put it back into grass, which is what we're standing next to here.

And that's what else the farm bill biologists do is we work with landowners to find them the best species, warm season grasses, forbs and legumes that work best with our soil types to make better habitat.

So by having all of these grasses and diversity, it makes better habitat for our upland birds in Kansas as well as other states in the United States.

So what we like to see a lot of the times, this is really good, what we would call winter cover.

And we also have to have different kinds of cover types to have our birds to roost in, to have their broods in, and then to be able to have winter cover for them to survive in in the wintertime.

So a lot of the times in our winter cover, it's 65 to 75% grasses, native grasses, warm season grasses.

So there's a lot of Indian grass and switchgrass in this field.

We were in some fields this morning that had even more grasses, side oats, grama, little bluestem, little bluestem is a warm season grass, and it's actually Kansas' state grass.

It's Nebraska's as well.

So this is what we're looking at for winter cover.

We have to have good brood cover, we have to have good nesting cover, but to get them to survive in the winter cover through the wintertime.

We talk about forbs, or another term from them is wildflowers.

So we use native wildflowers in our mixes, and the main reason that we use wildflowers or forbs in our mixes is because those have our blooming plants, and blooming plants are what bring in the insects for the pheasants and the quail.

The first six weeks of the baby pheasants and the chicks, they need to have 90% of their diet is soft-bodied bugs.

So when we're planting forbs and wildflowers and we're promoting pollinator habitat, we're wanting to have all of those plants that have those blooms that come in.

And we want plants that are blooming from April to October.

We don't want everything just yellow.

We do want to have other different kinds and colors of flowers because that's important to all of the different insects that we get.

You know, milkweed is vital for monarch butterflies, so we would definitely want to have milkweed for the monarch butterfly reproduction, but we also want to have other different colors because there's other different colors that attract different insects.

So while we were out here next to this beautiful CRP field, we noticed right next door is a pretty good corner that's got some wheat stubble on it.

Wheat stubble, especially when they use a stripper header or not the conventional harvesting for wheat, makes excellent cover in the wintertime for pheasants and quail.

You will see, we have biologists in Nebraska that they continually hunt wheat stubble because it's easier to walk, but they'll still find birds in the wheat stubble.

So this is another opportunity for places that you can go hunt maybe a little easier walking if you're a little bit more seasoned or you just need some help getting around, you can go walk in a stubble field and maybe have an opportunity to get birds too.

It's important.

Everybody wants to have really good clean crop fields.

We have more and more crops going in and we have our habitat, our wildlife habitat, our grasslands.

Those are declining in acres.

So it's very important that we have the best diversity that we can have when we're doing cropland conversions because we just get more diversity.

The more diversity you have, the more opportunities you have for different insects and different animals and birds and mammals to come into those highly diverse grass seed and and for plantings.

Also, Kansas has the walk-in hunting areas, which are on the maps with Kansas hunting regulations and they don't have to ask permission because permission is already given by the landowner putting that on.

And so that's been a big boon to have other people come out where they don't know the area, they don't know the farmers or where to get permission and they can come in and do that.

And the farmers do get paid for that too.

So much an acre to enroll it in the walk-in hunt.

We're blessed to have a tremendous walk-in access program in Kansas.

It's really kind of the shining star of all state private lands public access programs.

And you mentioned just being able to go and look at a map and you're going to be able to go out and chase pheasants or deer whatever you're pursuing.

One of the largest barriers that people typically say related to getting into the sport of hunting is not having a place to go.

So having these acres where people can go and recreate not have to worry about on a Friday night, oh I don't have any permission, just look at the map and and go to northwest Kansas and find a place to hunt and see what you scare up.

And so what is the limit this year?

I know that sometimes varies but yeah it is.

It used to be two during youth season, 17 and younger and four for adults.

Now they moved it to four for youth and four for adults.

And that's roosters only.

Roosters only and get our youth out more.

That's the biggest thing is they want to get the next generation coming.

So my name is Bobby Cole.

I work for Pass It On Outdoor Mentors.

We're here at the 2025 RingNet Classic out in Colby.

I work for Pass It On Outdoor Mentors.

We are a non-profit program based out of Kansas but we are in six different states currently with plans to go further in more states.

Our whole mission is to get youth outdoors, hunting, fishing, whatever we can do.

Last year we hosted just under 800 events across our whole region and over right around 500 in Kansas.

So we'll start up in Oklahoma this year.

We started up in Missouri this year and we have goals to go national.

Our mission is to get youth outdoors.

Our job is a part of the R3 movement, just recruitment, retention, reactivation of outdoors men and women.

So it's super rewarding and we're part of this because they invite us out here to bring two kids each year.

And then they have two other kids that are going for an essay and we get to hunt with all the kids while we're here.

And so that's where we got to meet today and have a good time out in the field.

The kids did great.

They flushed up a total of I think seven pheasants and they walked away with six.

So they did some good shooting.

They had a great time.

In the 80s and 70s of stuff there's around 10 percent of the population that hunted and now we're down around four or five percent.

So it's a huge deal getting these kids out and getting them in the field and teaching them how to do these things.

Teach them how to use public lands, how to use private lands, how to do the hunt in general so we can keep doing that so that we continue to have not only the tradition of hunting in Angling but also be able to get that funding for conservation in the U.S.

And so that's a huge part of it.

I mean the mentoring thing is a huge aspect because a lot of these kids don't come from a hunting background and so we have to get about here and show them how to do it hands-on and get them out.

And you know, continuous.

They can't just go on one hunt and you expect them to keep going out of themselves, so we have to continually take them out over and over and over again.

We have those two kids we brought out here.

One's been on 18 hunts with us and another's been on 15 hunts.

There's no doubt in my mind those kids are going to be lifetime hunters and anglers and they're going to probably be just they're going to contribute to this for years to come now.

That said, our organization likes to work.

We're out here to get kids out hunting and fishing.

If you know any kids that want to go out hunting and fishing you can check out our website.

It's outdoormentors.org.

We have, we're on Facebook, we're on Instagram, we're on LinkedIn, we're on all those things so these kids can go look at that.

The only requirement and the only entry to barrier for kids to hunt with us is that they have to have Hunter's Ed.

After that they're good to come with us.

You know, I was born in 76.

I was hunting in 85 and that's all we know.

I mean my dad took me when I was running a 20 gauge and now my kids are doing, I'm doing the same thing with them.

My daughters have their hunter safety and my son does and we hope their tradition's the same in another 20 years from there.

I'm from Colorado and since I was 14 years old and became a pheasant hunter, I'm 65 now so the last 51 years I either have lived in Kansas or came from Colorado to eastern Colorado, western Kansas, the Panhandle in Nebraska to hunt pheasant.

It's a great American tradition.

It's a great western Kansas tradition.

It's a wonderful opportunity.

Personally and I think the majority of people that I work with or are volunteers or supporters, it's not about us.

Sure we like to go out and get the dogs out and chase birds but it's about ensuring the tradition continues and I have a 13 year old son and he loves to hunt so I'm blessed and my hope is that he has more of an opportunity than I did in my formidable years.

It'll be interesting to see if we're able to solve to that but that's our goal and our vision is to make lots of pheasants and lots of quail and places where people can access them.

If we grow pheasants it's going to improve the public hunting opportunity.

If we improve the public access more people are going to come.

More people come, it helps the sport, it helps the communities, it's a win-win.