| Kansas fall turkey hunting is for both the Eastern and Rio Grande Turkey. Kansas is distinctive of our three states will liberal over the counter or online fall tags for resident and non-residents equally, a long season for both archery and shotgun as well as allowing the use of dogs during the hunt. Perhaps those that enjoy fall turkey season the most are archery deer hunters that find flocks incidental to a deer hunt, the upland bird hunter that finds his dogs easily point single turkeys and the few that actually seek out fall birds exclusively and most that do, do so without dogs. This final category has been by two groups. The first are dedicated spring and fall hunters who have settled on turkey hunts as their year round pursuit. The second is the firearms deer hunter that takes a pre-season deer scout and fall turkey hunt combo trip. This typically covers the time stands are hung and those hunters just seek to expand on their field time recreation. Kansas does complicate their turkey management making a distinction between spring and fall seasons with different management units. The intent appears to be to limit hen harvest in those regions of thinner population density. The key point to the Kansas spring turkey hunter is not to always plan on his fall hunt in the same unit as his spring hunt. Then just to mix it up some more, the turkey management units have not remained consistent from year to year and are separate from the deer management units. Another complication involves Kansas' turkey permits and tags. Essentially what that means is that the first license purchased for fall turkey season is the permit and for those units that allow more than one turkey to be harvested the second through fourth license is called a tag. Finally, although we are not a hunter training organization or attempt to substitute the hunter actually reading the game laws himself we do caution that one mistake that has recurred is the turkey hunter not insuring he has the current basic Kansas license. The basic Kansas license is by the calendar year while the turkey permits and tags are by the season. For the Kansas fall turkey hunter to be licensed appropriately means he has the calendar year basic license, a fall turkey permit for the fall turkey unit he is hunting within and if permissible within that management unit a tag or more for every turkey he has harvested. The true value to this discussion is that we serve as the friendly point of contact for our members to insure they can navigate through all state licensing to get to hunt what they want. We do not excuse any member from reading first hand all state and federal wildlife regulations and compliance to all is mandatory for continued membership. Our service is to insure all know the full range of hunt options available through Mid-America Hunting Association membership. It remains the self guided hunters choice of what and where to hunt. The other aspect touched on earlier is that we are not a hunter or hunting training organization. We are a hunt execution organization for those with the wherewithal to conduct their own hunts. We make those hunts possible through private lease land access, recommendations where to hunt and a local lodging listing. If this last part seems to be redundant it is for good reason drawn from experience. We do not address questions from non-members or members as to how to conduct their hunts. In terms of fall turkey hunting a common question is how dogs are used on a turkey hunt as that is fairly an unknown turkey hunting technique to many. And, we do not have those answers. This approach is not intended to be insensitive, it is an accurate reflection of reality. There are only two of us that work the land contracts and with members and it is all the time we have each week and road miles available to manage 220,000 acres of land. To this end when we emphasize we are a self guided hunter organization with the extent of our service is the private land access, recommendations where to hunt and a local lodging listing. Anything more is the responsibility of the hunter. Other considerations about Kansas fall turkey hunting include all Kansas turkeys are wild meaning none are transplants and all are subsequent generations of resident flocks. This last point is recognition that most of our turkey hunters are non-residents and they often have question foreign to our local experience. These types of question we do address under the category we seek to reduce as much as possible the amount of mystery associated with the first year Kansas hunter.
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