DNR managers will tell you they don't have an honest clue regarding coyote impact on the pheasant population, beyond admitting upland game is a frequent and welcome dietary change from rodents for the coyotes. If you can gain permission to hunt on private land, a commitment to seriously hunt coyotes once winter arrives can help your relationship with the farmer. In Illinois, fully 95 percent of the land is in private hands. You must gain permission before hunting.

According to a subjective hunch by DNR pheasant Chief John Cole, most of the 55,000 pheasant hunters in Illinois fall into essentially three categories. There are hunters who farm or have a family connection with a farmer, hunters who pay farmers for the privilege of hunting either with cash, labor or both, and hunters who pay a per-bird cost and membership fee to a private club, where numbers of pen-reared birds are not factored into state harvest totals.

By this point in the calendar year, you should have a pretty good idea regarding the category of pheasant hunter you fit into. Now is not a good time to go knocking on farmers' doors seeking permission to hunt, because farmers have crops to harvest. Unless it is a rainy day when time is spent working on machinery so they can get back in the field, farmers generally don't have time for salesmen, hunters or even coffee.

If you have a place to hunt over the next couple of months, you can expect to find slightly better hunting opportunities than you did last year, with a substantial qualifier relating back to that farmer working on machinery on a rainy day.

Just how well you do afield this fall is based on a number of factors. According to DNR statistics compiled for the 2004-05 season, hunters went afield 299,696 days that year, with the 55,075 hunters killing a total of 200,059 birds. Statistics indicate this level of participation shows a 10 percent increase in hunter activity from the 2003 season, and a 2 percent increase in harvest rate from 2004.

Although it took the average Illinois hunter more than one trip to put a bird in the game bag, my six roosters came on just four trips because of Hanna's hunting savvy and the fact that Farmer Dave's combine didn't break down before the corn was harvested.

The state of the grain harvest as we work through November will have a considerable impact on next year's pheasant forecast. Besides being blessed with greater than average success last season, one-third of my wild Illinois ringnecks -- two birds -- were older than 1-year-old, which is substantially different than the statewide trend of 75 to 80 percent of the harvest being juvenile birds.

There are several ways you can get an idea of a bird's age. Pheasants with tail feathers longer than 22 inches and spurs that are sharp rather than dull nubs are probably veterans. The "beak test" is an even better indicator of pheasant age. Hold your freshly killed rooster by the bottom beak. If the beak breaks, the pheasant is almost certainly one from this year's brood.

Here is another tip to keep close to the vest as you get ready to don that required blaze orange cap and head out for another season: Massengill douche is by far the best odor antidote for a dog that has had a close encounter with a skunk. Conventional wisdom says tomato juice is a good neutralizing agent. I tried tomato juice on Rufus several times before discovering douche. After gallons of tomato juice, Rufus just smelled like a 70-pound skunky Bloody Mary.

Thus far, Hanna Banana has shown considerably more discretion regarding grappling with white-striped mammals. She doesn't understand why we don't shoot the roosters that live behind the house or why so much money goes to Pheasants Forever rather than kibbles.

The future of pheasant hunting in Illinois is truly in your hands. If you support Pheasants Forever and you get politically active and demand that elected officials place greater emphasis on stewardship of natural resources for the birds, prospects for upland game hunting in Illinois will be better than the "slightly better than last year, but worse than a decade ago" picture we're looking at between now and season's end in January.

The future is now!