Comprising
several thousand contiguous acres of the most scenic part of southeast
Kiowa, northeast Comanche, and northwest Barber counties in south
central Kansas, the Hashknife is one place that truly deserves the
label, "Hunter's Paradise."
This
working Angus ranch is located off scenic U.S. Highway 160 in the
Red Hills. The ranch's rugged landscape consists of rolling tallgrass
prairie that stretches for miles in all directions, broken by spectacular
and unique sandstone formations, buttes, and canyons, and numerous
heavily-wooded running streams. Fertile fields line the many river
and creek bottoms.
Because
our family first started ranching out here over 100 years ago, there
are very few public roads through the property. Today, the heart
of the ranch, an area approximately 10 miles north and south and
8 miles east and west, has no public roads at all. That means visitors
see few or no people, buildings, cars, utility poles, or other signs
of human civilization.
What do visitors see? Miles of carefully managed native grass-Big and Little
bluestem, Indiangrass, sand love, switchgrass, gramma, and buffalo. Many
acres of bottom ground planted with alfalfa, corn, soybeans, rye, and sudan feed.
Running water-the Medicine River, Mule Creek, and numerous feeder streams with
protective woodlands and undergrowth close by the planted fields. An amazing
abundance of small animal, plant, bird, and insect species.
These qualities
that make the Hashknife Ranch an excellent place to raise top quality
beef cattle also make it an ideal place for wildlife, especially
Whitetail deer, Rio Grande wild turkeys, and native quail and
pheasant. The
ranch boasts an incredible abundance of wildlife to interest the serious
sportsman: a huge population of some enormous
whitetail deer-some of the biggest you'll ever see. Wild
turkey flocks numbering in the hundreds of birds in the fall and
winter months. An amazing number of quail and pheasant-all wild!
For many years the ranch was hunted only by a very few friends and
family members, and we resisted turning our carefully nurtured deer
herd into a commercial venture. However, in 2001 we decided the time
for pay hunting on the ranch had come and began offering a few paid
hunts each year to those serious bowhunters willing to take advantage
of the unique opportunity to "Hunt the Hashknife."