According to Pesek, who has trained hundreds of dogs, both pointers and retrievers, "You can get away with a lot more in early November, but by the end of the month, all the dumb birds are dead.

"In the late season, you have to give the dog some control because you can't be shouting commands or blowing the whistle nonstop, because those birds are spooky and they won't sit there and wait for you to flush them," continued Pesek. "They run and flush well out of range when you give them a reason to. Guys who over-control their dogs late in the season are just making sure there are some birds around for next season."

With the higher numbers of pheasants, there may not be as much resistance when asking for permission to hunt, which has been the case in past years when landowners thought by limiting hunting on the land it would create more birds. According to Holland, that is a notion that has no scientific merit, but it may have kept landowners from allowing hunting.

"That concern is real," Holland said, "and we surely wouldn't want to do anything to turn the population of birds downward, but when you hunt pheasants, you only kill the males. And as hunters know, you never get all the roosters. Hunting cannot add to the decline in pheasants. Pheasants are a polygamist bird, which means one rooster can breed with multiple hens, so you only need one rooster for every six, eight or 10 hens. It's like the bull in the pasture. One rooster can take care of a lot of hens. When you remove a segment of the rooster population by hunting, you really don't impact the ability of the birds to reproduce the following spring. It would be a concern if you were taking hens, which would be a different story. But since we only take the males, you are not impacting the population.

"That's a concern for landowners who haven't had birds on the property for a while or have seen the numbers drop significantly because of weather or loss of habitat," he said. "When you see them coming back, you don't want to lose them. You can't control the weather, but you can control the habitat. So when you do see those pheasant numbers rising, it's important to get out and harvest them. Enjoy it, because you never know what's going to happen with the weather, and they might not be there next year."

Check out the Pheasants Forever Web site at www.pheasantsforever. org. If you would like to discuss dog training with John Pesek, call him at Royalty British Kennels, (320) 384-7714.