February 2004

27 Feb

Snow goose hunters we have reports of geese on the ground in Linn, Livingston, Bates, Atchison, Holt and Cass B, Missouri. For those planning a hunt you know as well as us you have to go out there and find them as just because they are on one property one day does not mean they will always be on that same property, however once in an area they do layover for a while.

There has been some local goose movement on the Kansas side but current landowner reports have far greater numbers in Missouri.

18 Feb

Long brow tines on this latest deer from a long time member who also spends a bit of time waterfowl hunting.

16 Feb

More duck and goose hunting success pictures from three dedicated waterfowl hunters. The ducks were from the warm early season that caused the majority of the migration to stay farther north than our Arkansas brothers would have liked.
The geese are from a late season hunt. Look closely at the dog. It is not a lab, or even a retriever. It is a pointing bird dog. The remaining set of pictures from this hunt we will get to this week and will show a short haired variety bird dog breaking ice retrieving a goose. A great set of pictures that do a lot to show the potential of a well trained dog.

Thanks guys for some great picture!

Your hunting Association continues to work toward keeping costs under control and increase services to its members. The map CD issued last season was just one more step toward those goals. This next advancement is a refinement of the by county services listing where the new organization allows for printing of just one county at a time, on one paper page, versus the previous system where the only option was to print the entire state worth of services. Use the link to the top right in the graphic titled "MAHA Yellow Pages" to review the new asset.

One word of caution is that we know some of the services listed have had their telephone area codes changed and the current list is out of date in some counties. Shaun, our secretary, is currently conducting the drudgery task of calling each listed service by service, by county to confirm that all listed information is accurate, not just the telephone numbers but also the meat lockers, hunters for the hungry program, wrecker services, etc. As she corrects each by-county page listing a "freshness" time stamp will appear at the top of the page indicating its last updating.

Still to come will be the continuation of the mapping project to include online access to the maps to allow every member to have the most up to date land maps as contracting continues year round. The next planned step is to work on the electronic map quality that Bill Martin turned us onto about two years ago. In a small organization like we are it generally takes time to make advances and with each advancement we spend less money and have more time to work land contracts.

13 Feb

Charles D., sent in a very well composed dog and bird picture to add to his web page covering several years. The kind of picture suitable for desk top framing. Thank you Charles and we look forward to you hunting next season.

Spring Turkey Season. The following is a list of the dates for the Iowa, Kansas and Missouri Spring Turkey Seasons:

Kansas - April 14 to May 31

Tags can be purchased over the counter.

For additional information call Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks at 620-342-0658

Iowa-

Season 1 April 12 to April 15

Season 2 (residents only) April 16 to April 20

Season 3 April 21 to April 27

Season 4 April 28 to May 16

Tags are by draw.

For additional information call Iowa DNR at 515-281-5918

Missouri- April 19 to May 9

Tags can be purchased over the counter.

For additional information call Missouri Department of Conservation at 573-751-4115

Please take the time to review each states regulations because they vary from state to state.

As always, reservations will begin 30 days prior to each season. A maximum of 3 turkey reservations will be permitted on the books by each member at any given time, with a limit of 2 max. per state, (peak period rule). Once a hunting day is used another reservation for the same or different property may be made.

The best tip we can give everyone for a successful turkey season is to always remember "safety" comes first.

Scouting. Reservations are just as important for scouting as they are for hunting. Several of our leases prohibit scouting year around so please check in with the office every time you plan to scout Association leases. For example, Washington Kansas, Unit D and Wright County Unit B do not allow scouting during the off-season until the week prior to the spring turkey season. If a member violates this agreement it can cost us a lease.

Camping. The same holds for camping. Camping is not allowed on all of our leases so please check in with the office if you would like to camp wile turkey hunting or fishing.

ATV's are not permitted to fish, scout or turkey hunt.

Maps, we are planning to make maps accessible through the internet and hope to have this project complete by turkey season. We will notify everyone by mail when we are ready.

11 Feb

More pictures continue to come in and we certainly appreciate all of them and those that send them in. This one is from an early hunt this past season when the weather was the best it gets for wading and a bit too warm and clear for the best duck hunting.

The picture at right comes form a long term member that knows this is the time of year we begin our land contracting process and he sent this picture along with a listing of properties to ensure we retain and some he recommends us to delete. In his case he succeeded at retaining one property that was on our current delete list.

We had a lot of feedback reference the guest pass policy and would like to thank those that took the time to give us their input.

After evaluating the feedback we feel like it would be best to sustain a guest pass policy with some pricing and administrative changes. There will be a slight increase in the price and the process will be in writing, rather than a quick cc # over the phone.

Last season a handful of members were caught with unregistered guests. In one case we chose not to renew the member’s dues, so please be aware we do take the guest policy very seriously. In the other cases the offending members paid fines.

Also, on several occasions inactive members and cancelled members slipped through the cracks and were taken as guests. To prevent this from occurring in the future, we will require each member to fill out a form and fax it to the office prior to taking a guest. This will give us the ability to deny a guest request if we need to.

9 Feb

Several waterfowl hunters sent in some pictures, one with a note, from this past season.

Jon, This picture (left) was taken on opening. We showed up a tad bit later than we expected. We had our decoys set right at shooting time. I was only able to load 2 shells in my gun before we had a flock of mallards landing in our decoys. Between the three of us, we took 8 mallards. We limited out by 7:30 with mallards, gadwalls, teal and a pair of woodies. This is definitely one of my most memorable hunts. Thanks to Mid America Hunting for giving us a chance to have such a memory like this one. Regards, Ronnie. p.s: I’m also sending pics of Alex and his dad (Bo) from this same hunt.

6 Feb

For 4 years running Kenneth Rosson has traveled from Arizona to Kansas and Missouri to spring turkey, waterfowl and upland hunt. This picture is just one of many posted to his web page along with detailed accounting of each hunt. He and his hunting partner put in the bag 30 roosters on this last trip. A good read for those that look forward to next season. Thanks Kenneth for some very well composed pictures.

A 10+ year member with another deer to add to his collection.

4 Feb

A picture of the last hunt of the season developed from the last roll of film after cleaning the hunting gear out of the truck. Part of the hunting ritual while a bit depressing, the memories captured on film give hope for the season to come. The same young hunter as seen twice before this season from his previous trips.

The Heartland of America Indian Center is seeking donations of pheasant and turkey tail feathers for their children's program. Up to $500 charitable donation tax receipt will be returned based on the number of feathers donated. Volunteer Brian Williams is running this portion of the program and requests the feathers be mailed to him at: 1511 South 50th Street, Kansas City Kansas 66106. His day time telephone number is 913-596-1676.

2 Feb

Charles D., an upland and waterfowl hunter of several years sent in a second letter and some pictures giving accounts of the hunting for the past 3 years or so. A good read telling reality rather than the idealized stories read in magazines and seen on videos.