November pheasant hunting involves two scenarios. The initial scenario is the first couple of weeks of the month when hunters are still seeing plenty of "dumb" roosters. The second scenario becomes prevalent during the second two weeks when hunting pressure has thinned out the easy targets, and most of the pheasants are "smart" birds.

Sure, the season opens the middle of October, but in most cases then, the farmers are just picking crops, and the birds are fat and happy in the heavy cover of standing corn or beans. Hunters are working the grass and swamps, and these spots are getting hunted hard, but those shotgun-toting pheasant hunters are not conditioning birds, because there just aren't many pheasants in that secondary cover. However, once the crops are completely out around the first week of November, all those roosters and hens are pushed into the CRP and whatever cover is provided by public hunting areas. That's when hunters can really get in some good flushing.

Not everyone is unhappy about the tough hunting conditions hunters face those first couple weeks of the season.

"When the pheasants get out in those big fields of corn when the season opens, they're not easily available to the hunter," said Matt Holland, the director of conservation programs for Minnesota for Pheasants Forever. "I guess that's good for those of us who like to get out during the late season, because then there are plenty of birds for later on when the crops come out and the weather forces the birds into the heavier cover. It provides some opportunity for later on in the season."

Holland then began providing insight.

"I've always said that a public-land rooster late in the season is worth three private-land roosters because of their high level of education," Holland said. "Early in the season when there is a lot of other available cover, like crops and edge cover, the pheasants will come into the grass and roost at night, but they figure out quickly after the first few days of the season to get out of there early. Once the crops come out or some snow moves in, it will push the birds back into the grass. But you need to have something change, like the crops getting harvested or the weather pushing them into heavier cover. That will move birds back into areas after they have been pushed out by hunters."

The bottom line is that Minnesota hunters have been lucky the past few years.

"By all accounts, it should have been a good nesting season," said Holland of this past spring. "We didn't have much flooding of nests, and more importantly, we didn't have the extended cold and wet periods during their peak hatch, which can really knock a population down. We had good populations coming in, and we had good nesting, so hopefully, a lot of birds are awaiting the hunters.

"There are going to be areas this year where hunters will walk into the cover and flush 50 birds out of a slough, and that's great to see," continued Holland. "The habitat coupled with the weather conditions determines how many birds there will be, and for us hunters, there are never enough pheasants. It's certainly great to be able to go out in Minnesota and see good numbers of birds."