If you think prairie chickens are scarce in Kansas, you should go to Missouri.

"There are only 400 or 500 in the state," said Max Alleger, private land conservationist with the Missouri Department of Conservation. The Kansas population is thought to be 25,000 to 40,000 in the spring each year.

That's why Alleger and a team of wildlife specialists from Missouri spent several days in central Kansas in March and April trapping Greater Prairie Chickens. The birds are being released at Wah'Kon-Tha, a 3,000-acre preserve owned by the Nature Conservancy of Missouri and Missouri Department of Conservation.

"Our overall goal is to re-establish a stable population of 300 birds there," Alleger said. His staff has permission from the state of Kansas to take 100 birds a year -- 50 cocks and 50 hens.

This is the second year the state of Missouri has trapped prairie chickens in central Kansas under the program.

"We have tentative permission to trap them for up to five years," he said. "If we get good results, we'd shut off sooner than that."

As they will if they get bad results, he added.

Trapping the birds is a multistage process. The first involves reconnaissance to locate prairie chicken booming grounds, areas where males gather at dawn during the summer to compete for mating privileges. The booming sound they make can travel more than a mile.

Alleger said the team drove through prairie that stretched from the Smoky Hill Air National Guard Range up to Tescott, stopping periodically to listen for the birds. Then they looked up the landowner and sought permission to go onto the land to trap the prairie chickens.

He said ranchers were exceptionally gracious.

"They have welcomed us with open arms," he said.

Traps were then set up and monitored.

"We were setting there the entire time the traps are open," Alleger said. That is done to help ensure that birds don't injure themselves after they discover they are trapped.

Males were readied for transport. Females were outfitted with radio transmitters.

By late July the hens should be raising broods of chicks. The goal is to take the hens and chicks back to Missouri.

"If we bring the hens back with their chicks they are much less likely to fly away from the release site," Alleger said.

The plan is to go out at night, armed with radio receivers, floodlights and a really big net.

"Once they get roosted for the night they are much less likely to get away," he said.

Alleger said the prairie chicken population appeared healthy.

"We were finding as many or more birds as we had last year," he said.

n Reporter Duane Schrag can be reached at 822-1422 or by e-mail at dschrag@salina.com.

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