The Prairie State pheasant picture is certainly different than when I first entered the field in 1962, but the world has changed as well. I remember leaving Mt. Carroll High School and boarding a school bus to hunt pheasants out on Bobbie Wiltshire's farm back in the 1960s.

The bus driver didn't even raise an eyebrow at a kid toting a shotgun in a cheap cloth case. Behavior like that in today's world would probably generate a SWAT response, even in rural Carroll County.

But the good news is we still have the right to bear arms and the opportunity to hunt pheasants in Illinois.

If just a few things change, ringneck hunting five years from now may rival the numbers harvested five years ago, and that may even be a conservative estimate.

“The future of pheasants in Illinois is tied to what happens on the state's farms and with USDA conservation programs," McCloud said. “Substantial increases in pheasant numbers could be achieved if conservation programs that restore nesting areas are more widely adopted by farmers.

“Sportsmen need to encourage landowners to reduce unnecessary mowing and restore grassland wherever possible on their farms. Practices like filter strips, field borders and taking erosion-prone areas out of crop production could add thousands of acres of nest cover and thousands of pheasants to the state's population."

McCloud is absolutely right, but a sportsman from Chicago who comes to a farm in Whiteside County and offers this wisdom before asking permission to hunt would be well advised to keep information on IDNR Web sites available. Folks who live in rural areas still have a considerably different outlook on life than city dwellers in the increasingly urbanized state of Illinois.