We’d already pushed through a big, grassy swale that looked birdy enough, but only produced a lone rooster. After huddling over an onX map, our small orange army decided to head for the shelter belt on the far north edge of the field. With two hunters set as blockers, the dogs worked the trees while the rest of us walked the edges.
Midway through three roosters flushed wild, rocketing up and out of shotgun range to the other side of the property. A dog whined, begging to go after them, but we resisted the faraway temptation. It was late December and those cagey birds weren’t likely to hold for long.
Besides, we had other places to go — more than 44,000 acres of private yet huntable land on the prairies of western Nebraska. And we’d get plenty more shots on wild birds, both pheasants and prairie chickens. All this acreage had recently been enrolled in the Nebraska Community Access Partnership, which is part of a new public-access initiative led by Pheasants Forever, with support from onX, Nebraska Environmental Trust, and the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission.
The NCAP builds on the state’s successful Open Fields and Water program, which pays willing landowners to allow public walk-in hunting access. At $25 per acre for high-quality CRP, and $10 per acre for rangelands and grasslands, PF’s new program offers these landowners an even bigger incentive to enroll their lands in OFW under a five-year contract. (These one-time incentives are on top of the annual OFW payments of 50 cents to $15 per acre that private landowners receive from the state.)
As part of that contract, and to maintain high-quality habitat, participating landowners can’t graze or hay the acreage during those five years. The only exception to the rule is limited management of grasslands.
Off to a Roaring Start
Since it was established in 2024, the NCAP has focused mainly on properties in a six-county region around Ogallala. The area is already a tourist hub in the summer months, and PF’s Nebraska state coordinator Kelsi Wehrman says the local community has welcomed the prospect of bringing in more hunters during the fall and winter months.
The NCAP is also part of a much larger initiative that PF calls the Public Access to Habitat Program. It started in South Dakota, where it’s helped open nearly 70,000 acres of private land to public hunters. PF is also adding acreage in North Dakota, Michigan, and Oklahoma.
At a time when federal funding for walk-in hunting programs is limited to non-existent, new programs like these are even more important for hunters and local landowners. They’re also a major benefit for the surrounding communities and small businesses that benefit from the economic boost hunters bring.
“It definitely brings a lot to an area where we have more landowners who are interested in enrolling [in walk-in access] than we have federal funding available,” says Wehrman. “And just in these first two years, the landowner response has been incredible.”
Wehrman explains that so far, they’ve enrolled roughly 57,000 acres in Keith, Arthur, Garden, Deuel, and Perkins counties. More than 20,000 of those acres have been added since January.
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“Initially, the effort has been around getting as many acres available to hunters as possible, and I feel like we’ve met that … Our original goal was 25,000 acres over three years, so it’s even more than we expected,” says Wehrman, noting that last year’s enrollment included some large tracts of grassland that’s home to prairie chickens and sharpies.. “This year, we focused more on smaller properties where you’d find pheasants, like pivot corners and traditional CRP.”
Different Habitats and Hunting Opportunities
These kinds of properties are abundant in this part of Nebraska, which is prime territory for upland hunters. During the handful of days I hunted NCAP ground in December, the late-season conditions made it a little tougher to bag limits. But I still found plenty of wild pheasants and prairie chickens, and every property we walked held birds.
This consistency is due in large part to the coordinating wildlife biologists who look closely at the habitat on any given parcel before bringing it into the program. And, importantly, it’s not just upland birds on their radar. A lot of the ground enrolled in the NCAP is open to waterfowl and big-game hunting as well.
“We recently had one gentleman contact us who had 2,000 acres, and it turns out he has elk on the property,” says Addie Piernicky, an NGPC wildlife biologist who partners with PF. “So I went out there, and I’m looking at the rangeland and thinking, ‘This is crap for grouse.’ It’s all shortgrass prairie, so there’s never going to be pheasants there, either. But you do have pronghorns and mule deer, and a few elk that have been sighted just in the last week.”
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Piernicky says that on Monday, while driving with family, she stopped at a different NCAP property in Arthur County that has some small ponds. So, her husband walked in and jump-shot a few ducks.
“Then, on the way back down, we stopped again and he took our four-year-old son with him. He was crouched there with his little noise-cancelling headphones while my husband shot some more ducks,” says Piernicky, who spends more time hunting birds than she does deer and other game. “Now, all my son talks about is ducks.”
Hunters looking to explore this part of Nebraska can check out NGCP’s Public Access Atlas, which is color-coded by habitat type. Better yet, they can use onX and toggle on the “NE Open Fields and Waters” layer to see the different habitats and hunting opportunities on each parcel.
With all this new ground to cover, Piernicky is optimistic about the rest of the 2025 upland season. Although pheasant populations in the region are still rebounding from a drought two years ago, she says a lot of the nesting cover has come back.
“I’ve been seeing good numbers of grouse — almost too good because some of these pastures look phenomenal, and instead of being in the ungrazed areas, the birds are in the grazed areas … They’re just in different spots than where I would historically find them,” she says. “And, at least in my area, people are seeing more quail than they’ve ever seen in their lifetimes.
“The pheasant numbers have also rebounded pretty well. We’ve had areas that have been hit with some hail. You can’t really do much about that,” Piernicky continues. “But overall, the forecast is up and I’m excited.”
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