Nebraska quail/phez hunting

[Birdman250]

Anyone hunted quail and pheasants in Nebraska?? Suggestion: public or private lands??

[quanah labs]

I haven't hunt Nebraska this year but have been considering SW NE to be my one and only hunting destination this year. From what I have read and been told by several locals though is NE has been hit HARD by the drought and bird numbers are WAY down.

[jkoehler]

Why hunt NE when you can drive right through N or S Dakota? I wouldn't waste my time even if it was private land, farmers around the state, even SW part of the state haven't been seeing birds.

[birddog1968]

Theres a decent concentration of public in Nebraska down just south of I 80 in the central part of the state, that ought to have phez and quail.

Otherwise 97 Percent of nebraska is private land.

If you paying isn't a big deal and or you want nice lodging you could check out Open Country Adventures....I know them to be really good people with a super nice operation.

[RYNO]

A lot of the private land enrolled in the Open Fields Open Waters program http://outdoornebraska.ne.gov/hunting/p ... /atlas.pdf
has been mowed this year due to the extreme drought. Much of it is no more than grazed pasture anyway...

I saw a couple pheasants in the sandhills last week but those were the first ones I've seen since last fall. The pheasant hunting for the east 1/3 of the state is lousy at best. I've heard a couple reports of 'ok' bird numbers around the state, but I think these are small isolated pockets of birds. I think I've heard slightly better reports about quail.

We have LOTS of turkeys though.

[jeff shumaker]

I live in southeast nebraska. Beatrice this year the quial numbers will be real good. The pheasants are up but not great. There are lots of public land it just gets hunted hard. Private is way to go. Are you from nebraska.