(MCT) — YELLOW MEDICINE COUNTY, Minn. — For as long as anyone can remember, the landscape in this part of Minnesota has never resembled the state it was in Saturday, when the pheasant season opened.

Where usually in mid-October rows of corn and sometimes soybeans stretch to the South Dakota border, there were only black tilled soil and crop fields harvested clean. Farmers had planted early and harvested earlier still. So we were optimistic, our bunch, thinking that whatever roosters this part of the state harbored would be confined to state wildlife management areas and similar conservation lands.