| The combination of a deer and turkey hunting profile of hunting interests is frequent enough amongst those that apply for membership to create this one web page illustration of how both hunting disciplines may be enjoyed by the single Mid-America Hunting Association member/hunter. The first element to agree on is that within a self guided hunting organization there is one price that can only be paid for by the hunter himself and that is boots on the ground time. If we agree it is only through actual experience on any particular hunting lease does full success potential develop then we should also agree that effort may take more than one or two days of observations per spot. To get the process started we do give recommendations of where to hunt and under the best conditions of a good hunting lease listing of starting points, pre-season scouting and hunting both the spring turkey season as well as fall deer season on the same collection of leases will probably take three years of effort to maximize any future single hunt. The rest of this article tells how these three hunting and scouting years are typically spent.
The first issue of when to apply for membership is the best time of the calendar year to start is a mute point. Our membership year is a 365 day year from time of membership allocation until that anniversary the next calendar year. This means that all who become members gain access to the entire year of hunting seasons. Jumping into any cycle of seasons is further mute as the first year is a break-in year regardless due to that hunter simply must get started at some point and picking that point between spring turkey and fall deer seasons leaves a lot of options. The one option that may appear to be ideal would be to gain membership in January, pre-season turkey and deer scout during February and March, spring turkey hunt and deer scout again during spring turkey season in April or May, return for a fall deer hunt. Repeat the following January. While this may appear to be a logical approach we will now devalue it into reality. We have observed through the years that regardless of how good our first year Kansas scouting and hunting recommendations are to any one hunter they will not be hunting their first year lease choices by their third year of membership. What happens is that we will give all a good jump start that first year recommending right where to park the truck step out and scout or hunt. Typically after that first year and once the self guided hunter becomes familiar (breaks-in) to our system of much land availability with limited competition that hunter will expand out from those initial recommendations to find new spots. Half of the places he scouts or hunts will disappoint him, the other half will be better than what he previously seen and after a season or two of exploring different localities that hunter will find between 2,000 and 4,000 acres of leases where he wants to hunt. Typically these leases will be different than the first year's hunting spots as with more time on the ground that hunter finds more spots to his particular liking. Also common at this point is realization that even on the low side of 2,000 acres of hunting spots no one hunter can cover that much ground on a single trip. That hunter will then begin to concentrate on his most favored leases and start to discover those golden nugget spots that most land has and that most of us are blind to until spending a couple of days on that one farm in stand or blind. It is at this point of concentration on a handful of leases that success increases. The archery deer hunter more than any other illustrates the above description of a member's/hunter's break-in to Mid-America Hunting Association. Many archery deer hunters will spend more time scouting than any other hunting discipline group. Spring turkey hunting is always an excuse for more deer scouting. The archery deer hunter is far more likely than others to travel out for a spring turkey hunt, harvest one tom of any caliber, and spends the rest of the time deer scouting.
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