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| ReservationsLand access and subsequent upland bird hunting is through a telephone reservation system where "units" of land may be reserved at the hunter's discretion and in accordance with hunter management limitations listed below. A unit of land has a variable amount of acreage depended upon how much land may be posited on a single map sheet and in terms of habitat type or lease area. Each unit of land or leases has a set gun limit meaning the total number of pheasant and quail hunters that may reserve any one unit per day. An example would be a 5,000 acre unit may have a six gun limit meaning a total of six hunters may reserve that unit for one day of field time. Unit gun limits come into management at two period during the upland season. The first annual period is the Iowa state upland bird hunting season opening weekend before Missouri and Kansas seasons have begun. During this weekend the Association hunters converge on Iowa and they are limited to the unit gun limit. With the Missouri and Kansas season not yet open there will be more hunters attempting to access our Iowa upland bird hunting units than space available. After Missouri and later Kansas seasons open the hunters are spread across the entire inventory of acreage rather than just the limited amount of this one early opening state. The second period when unit gun limits affect membership reservations is the opening weekend of Kansas pheasant season. This is the one two day period of the year when the one weekend a year pheasant hunters hunt. Most dedicated bird dog hunters take a more relaxed approach and discount the opening weeks waiting until the more reliable cold weather of early December sets in for the better dog work. Or, they hunt Iowa as after the Iowa opener as there is little pressure on that land after the opening weekend.
Greater PurposeOur upland bird hunting land units server a greater purpose than gun limitations. The season long purpose is that units distribute bird hunters to avoid unnecessary hunter pressure in any one area. In the case of our quail predominate units we prevent any one hunter from overly pressuring any coveys to include that of hunting them to extinction. We manage this by two means. The first is illustrated by way of an example. Any given county in any of our states may have anywhere from 1 to 6 units. For any member that is the first to call in his reservation to hunt any particular upland unit on any given day he has his choice of all the county's units to select from for the days he wants to hunt. The next member wanting to hunt that same county as the first on the same days has the remaining units to select from and so on. Should all the upland units have one hunter or party and the gun limit not been reached (Iowa and Kansas opening weekend) then the gun limit per unit comes into effect. This means that the 5,000 acre unit with a six gun limit may have two or three parties of three to two bird hunters each. |
