Black Kettle

[RBraddy]

Black Kettle, OK

does anyone know anything about it or have they been there?

[romeo212000]

You can still find some birds there but should talk to someone who knows where they are, and be prepared to walk a very long distance to find them. Also, ou will probably only get one chance at each covey because they fly so far. You may walk all day and get skunked. Black Kettle was over hunted due the national attention it got and is now far less than it used to be. I wouldn't go there if your coming to Oklahoma. There are other places to go in the state.

[ACooper]

As previously stated there are better places to go if you havent hunted here a bunch, there are still plenty of birds at black kettle but finding birds usually comes with experience more than luck.

PM me if you want.

[Duane M]

Much better chance at Packsaddle than Kettle, but even it is very much an experience issue nowdays. There are some birds on Kettle but the pressure is so heavy they move off the public lands quickly onto the private lands. I guided at a ranch that is next to Kettle the last two seasons and we had much better hunting on the ranch than anyone I know did on Kettle.

[RBraddy]

where is packsaddle in relationship to black kettle

[tommyboy72]

We have quite a few out of staters and down staters come out here to the Oklahoma Panhandle to hunt Optima Wildlife Refuge but it has been allowed to run down by the State Fish and Game Department. I know last year it wasnt even worth me driving the 40 miles over to hunt it and I hunted private land closer to home. If you come first week of quail season expect a crowd. I heard the same thing about Beaver Wildlife Refuge as well. I did actually hear the place to hunt for quail was Packsaddle and up around Arnette if you want to run into descent numbers of birds. I also heard from my affiliation with Quail Unlimited that they were doing some great things over around I believe it was Altus or Ada in the way of habitat restoration in order to restore bird numbers and were having great success with it. You might call the local QU chapter there if you are interested. As a matter of fact I see that you are from Missouri and that is where the QU Rep. for the entire Oklahoma,Kansas, New Mexico, Northern Texas area is out of you might even be able to get ahold of him there in Mizzou. I know that there are some descent numbers of birds around Troy, Missouri about 40 miles from St. Louis, where all my family is from if you do not want to drive all the way out to Oklahoma. I am thinking about coming back there in December to quail hunt myself. Around there you just have to know the right people to get onto some descent little coveys on some of those little farmsteads.

[Chief_dog]

Duane's got it right. A guy can still get into some pretty decent numbers on some of the big WMA's if he is willing to walk a ways, knows where to go, and has dogs that can cover a lot of ground. And Romeo is right also, you'd better be able to shoot on the covey rise, because the singles tend to be very hard to come by.

The bigger running the better, in my experience. A good friend of mine and I had several double digit covey days on a couple different WMA's. Only our very biggest running dogs found many birds. I had friends hunt those same areas with closer working dogs and really struggled to find birds, even though I told them where I had been hunting.

[Zerah Morris]

Shhhh... you guys are going to stir up interest in western Oklahoma quail again. Forget the areas around Altus and Ada, there are no birds there just stay home

In all seriousness we had a good year last year, and by the birds we are bumping already unless we do not get rain, or get flooded, will have a good year again despite the dismal wheat harvest (<25 bushels/acre). As others have said though, you have to know where, be willing to walk, and have dogs that can go all day at full tilt.

These quail are like ghost! you know there out there, but some days you just go home sore and empty handed. Then the very next day, in the exact same area, you can bag out in a few hours and move large 20 plus bird coveys, and you are thinking how in the heck did the dogs miss those guys yesterday!

[Duane M]

where is packsaddle in relationship to black kettle

Packsaddle is due North of Cheyenne about 30 miles or so.

. I also heard from my affiliation with Quail Unlimited that they were doing some great things over around I believe it was Altus or Ada in the way of habitat restoration in order to restore bird numbers and were having great success with it. .

I don't know about Altus but I was in on the beginning of the one by Ada, actually Asher, that is all private land and very controlled in regards to hunting pressure and predator elimination. Best I know QU has done limited work on public lands, but has donated equipment for ODWC to use, QU has done quite a bit on the Ardmore FT grounds as well, but thats better than the group that is trying to horn in on QUs members.

[tommyboy72]

What group is that?

[Duane M]

Quail Forever.

[tommyboy72]

That's who I thought you meant. QU never did a whole lot for us out here either. We did have some meetings but wanted to do some stuff on public land but the only thing the Wildlife Biologist and the Game Wardens wanted to let us do out at Optima was to clean trash up off of a shooting range they wanted to restore out there, nothing to do with habitat restoration or restoring the quail population, so we sort of gave up and then we could never find any private land owners who were willing to let us do anything either. I met with all the right people and attended all the meetings and even organized everything including the chapter itself but could never get enough community involvment or chapter member involvment to make a go of it. It's like that with pretty much everything out here in the panhandle. If it is not some big rich farmers or ranchers idea or you are well known in the community then no one is really interested in any ideas you may have no matter how noble they may seem and how cheap or free they are. I did learn a lot from QU though as far as quail habitat and quail physiology and psychology is concerned. I do thank them for that.