Kansas walk-in hunting acreage for 2026-27 is greatest in Cheyenne County, at 45,055; Wallace County leads by enrolled share of county land, at 7.53%. The Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks (KDWP) shows 952,641 acres divided among 3,554 tracts across 98 of Kansas's 105 counties in the online atlas for 2026-27. For 22.3% of that acreage, the access window begins November 1 rather than September 1. Your hunt dates matter as much as the acreage when you pick a county.
KEY FINDINGS
- The walk-in map layer from KDWP for 2026-27 contains 952,641 acres spread over 3,554 tracts across 98 of Kansas's 105 counties. Among those 98 counties, the median enrolled land share is 1.29%.
- Wallace County leads in the portion of county land enrolled (7.53%), while Cheyenne County leads in total acreage (45,055).
- A total of 212,635 acres, or 22.3%, falls within tracts with windows beginning November 1. For the 20 counties with the highest enrolled land shares, that portion ranges from 5% for Marshall County to 73% for Trego County.
- The separate Spring WIHA map contains 299,738 additional acres across 1,182 tracts. However, 701 spring tracts have the same area ID as a tract from 2026-27, which prevents combining the layer totals.
IThe Total
Across 98 counties, KDWP's map shows 952,641 walk-in acres
For 2026-27, KDWP makes its Walk-In Hunting Access (WIHA) tracts available in a web hunting map. A public mapping service supplies the atlas with those tracts. Our source was the WIHA Access map for 2026-2027. Its latest edit was September 18, 2026; we accessed it September 29, 2026. The layer contains 3,554 tracts covering 952,641 acres in 98 of Kansas's 105 counties. There are no mapped tracts for Barber, Franklin, Marion, Miami, Rice, Sedgwick or Wyandotte. Our comparison uses KDWP's public map layer whose latest edit was September 10, 2025, named KDWP_WIHA_Update_9_10_25. We regard it as the layer for 2025-26; it contained 3,736 tracts totaling 995,761 acres.
County land share helps distinguish these counties. Among the 98 counties with walk-in acreage, the median enrolled share is 1.29%. Wallace County reaches 7.53%, nearly six times the median. Nineteen members of the 20 counties with the highest shares are in Kansas's western half. Marshall County is the lone exception. The section on methods below explains how those halves are drawn.
IIShare And Acres
Wallace leads by land share; Cheyenne leads by acreage
Wallace County's 44,053 acres are divided among 96 tracts and make up 7.53% of county land. For Cheyenne County, 45,055 acres spread across 82 tracts amount to 6.90%. Census land area puts Cheyenne in the larger county, so its greater acreage still leaves Wallace ahead by enrolled share. The next counties by share are Rawlins (5.51%), Hamilton (5.27%), Morton (5.09%) and Graham (5.08%). In the acreage ranking, Cheyenne and Wallace are followed by Rawlins (37,681), Hamilton (33,614), Thomas (32,328) and Graham (29,209).
Counties differ in how their tracts are laid out. This layer has an average of 268 acres per tract (952,641 acres divided among 3,554 tracts). Clark County has 20,090 acres spread across just 24 tracts, or about 837 acres per tract. Marshall County has 24,759 acres across 144 tracts, averaging about 172 acres each. In Clark, hunters have a few large tracts to check. In Marshall, they have many small ones.
Swipe table to see every column
| Rank | County | WIHA acres | Tracts | Share of county land | Share opening Nov. 1 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Wallace County | 44,053 | 96 | 7.53% | 20% |
| 2 | Cheyenne County | 45,055 | 82 | 6.90% | 12% |
| 3 | Rawlins County | 37,681 | 96 | 5.51% | 19% |
| 4 | Hamilton County | 33,614 | 117 | 5.27% | 6% |
| 5 | Morton County | 23,770 | 116 | 5.09% | 12% |
| 6 | Graham County | 29,209 | 111 | 5.08% | 71% |
| 7 | Hodgeman County | 26,347 | 89 | 4.79% | 21% |
| 8 | Thomas County | 32,328 | 98 | 4.70% | 20% |
| 9 | Marshall County | 24,759 | 144 | 4.30% | 5% |
| 10 | Rush County | 19,675 | 95 | 4.28% | 24% |
| 11 | Trego County | 23,735 | 93 | 4.17% | 73% |
| 12 | Lane County | 18,463 | 80 | 4.02% | 15% |
| 13 | Decatur County | 22,914 | 41 | 4.01% | 9% |
| 14 | Osborne County | 20,867 | 82 | 3.65% | 26% |
| 15 | Stanton County | 15,433 | 69 | 3.54% | 29% |
| 16 | Gove County | 23,267 | 58 | 3.39% | 37% |
| 17 | Sheridan County | 19,327 | 63 | 3.37% | 30% |
| 18 | Greeley County | 16,648 | 50 | 3.34% | 55% |
| 19 | Clark County | 20,090 | 24 | 3.22% | 20% |
| 20 | Ellis County | 18,222 | 69 | 3.16% | 37% |
IIIThe Calendar
Almost a quarter of enrolled acreage opens November 1
The legend attached to this layer identifies five contract windows for its tracts. September 1 begins three windows, while November 1 begins two. Those Nov. 1 windows account for 878 tracts totaling 212,635 acres, or 22.3% of all acreage. The largest individual window, Sept. 1 to Jan. 31, has 449,125 acres, or 47.1%. We reproduce the legend labels verbatim and make no judgment about the hunting seasons included in those periods.
Swipe table to see every column
| Access window | Tracts | Acres | Share of acres |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sept. 1 - Jan. 31 | 1544 | 449,125 | 47.1% |
| Sept. 1 - Mar. 31 | 60 | 20,149 | 2.1% |
| Sept. 1 - May 31 | 1072 | 270,733 | 28.4% |
| Nov. 1 - Jan. 31 | 858 | 202,366 | 21.2% |
| Nov. 1 - May 31 | 20 | 10,269 | 1.1% |
County patterns vary widely. For Trego County, 73% of enrolled acreage has a window beginning November 1; the figure is 71% for Graham County and 55% for Greeley County. With November shares of 6% for Hamilton, 5% for Marshall and 9% for Decatur, almost all their acreage has windows beginning September 1. Graham's county land share, 5.08%, places it sixth, but windows beginning in September cover just 29% of its enrolled WIHA acreage.
IVA Tract Flag
Archery and shotshell only markings cover 54,356 acres
An archery and shotshell only marker appears in the layer. For each marked tract, KDWP appends "(Archery/Shotshell Only)" to its window label in the map legend. This marker appears on 207 tracts totaling 54,356 acres, accounting for 5.7% of all acreage. Confirm allowed weapons with the current rules from KDWP. Before selecting a tract for a hunt that relies on a specific method, read its note and legend wording.
VTwo Layers
The spring layer covers some of the same land as the fall layer
Another KDWP publication is the map of Spring WIHA tracts. Its latest edit was April 15, 2026, and it lists 1,182 tracts totaling 299,738 acres across 78 counties. We leave its season year unassigned. This layer is separate, outside the acreage total for 2026-27. Among the 1,182 spring tracts, 701 match the KDWP area ID of a tract from 2026-27. Summing both layers would very likely double-count some land, so we keep their totals separate.
Spring acreage is highest in Marshall County: 23,724 acres spread over 138 tracts, compared with 24,759 acres in the layer for 2026-27. The eastern half contains five of the ten leading spring counties: Marshall, Washington, Elk, Jewell and Ottawa. For 2026-27 county land share, Marshall County alone from that half makes the leading 20.
Swipe table to see every column
| Rank | County | Spring WIHA acres | Tracts |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Marshall County | 23,724 | 138 |
| 2 | Washington County | 14,374 | 74 |
| 3 | Rawlins County | 12,009 | 34 |
| 4 | Elk County | 11,802 | 35 |
| 5 | Decatur County | 10,760 | 17 |
| 6 | Jewell County | 10,416 | 52 |
| 7 | Smith County | 9,284 | 41 |
| 8 | Cheyenne County | 9,164 | 10 |
| 9 | Osborne County | 9,107 | 32 |
| 10 | Ottawa County | 8,993 | 31 |
VIThe Limits
Limits of what the layers tell us
Hunting access acreage provides no information about the deer or bird populations there. This paper therefore ranks access alone. To calculate the portion of county land enrolled, we divide walk-in acreage by land area reported by the Census. The atlas changes through the season as KDWP revises it. Before heading out, consult the current atlas and the legend for every tract.
Our review covered the 2026-2027 WIHA Access layer plus the Spring WIHA layer. We did not inspect IWIHA, another separately titled layer in the atlas; any tract listed exclusively there is therefore excluded. Automated attempts to reach KDWP's website received an access-denied response. We consequently did not review the rules pages, and this paper makes no claims about season dates, rules for tracts or required permits. The total of 952,641 acres comes from summing the tracts within a single layer. Walk-in acreage reported elsewhere, including figures for the entire program, may reflect a different set of tracts or different definitions.
We divide Kansas into western and eastern halves using a single test: a county's centroid must fall west of the halfway point across the state's east-to-west extent to count as western. That dividing longitude is 98.32 degrees west. A centroid east of that line places a county in the eastern half.
VIIBefore You Drive
Let your hunt dates guide the county choice
Set your hunt dates first and consult the table for the county's Nov. 1 acreage share. For a September hunt, you should consider Hamilton, Marshall and Decatur, where windows starting September 1 cover most enrolled land. Remember that September access is more limited in Trego and Graham. All of this layer's windows include November 1 through January 31. Hunters going during that period can instead sort by acreage and tract totals, with Cheyenne, Wallace and Rawlins at the top for acres.
Next, bring up the atlas from KDWP to confirm every tract on your list. Location and the contract's access period come from the layer. When hunt day arrives, read the tract's note along with its legend label.
In the county with the greatest enrolled share, walk-in access still covers only 7.53% of all county acreage. To find ground outside those tracts, read our permission playbook. For Kansas deer data, consult our paper titled hunting a survey state.
NOTES AND SOURCES
- Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks supplied the source: Online Hunting Atlas (WIHA), 2026-2027.
- The public mapping service for KDWP's 2026-2027 WIHA Access layer is one source. The other is KDWP_WIHA_Update_9_10_25, KDWP's publicly available map layer, most recently edited September 10, 2025 and treated here as the layer for 2025-26.
- Reference: the Spring WIHA layer from KDWP's public mapping service.
- Land-area source: TIGER/Line county boundary data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
- KDWP revises the atlas throughout the season. Before setting out, review the current atlas and the legend for every tract.
- Hunting access acreage gives no information about the deer or bird populations present. The county land share calculation uses land area from the Census.
Fully Drawn Research is an independent data analysis desk, not affiliated with any state wildlife agency, transportation agency, mapping provider or outfitter. Fully Drawn Research is an independent data and analysis desk. This paper reports FDR's analysis of public agency data. Harvest figures describe animals reported or estimated as harvested, not population size, and reflect hunter effort and regulations as well as animal numbers.
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