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The Author with "BOA" host Joe Coogan

Dr. Seuss would have been pleased with the prospects. "I have old dogs and young dogs. I have fast dogs and slow dogs. I have black dogs and yellow dogs and brown dogs. I have dogs that will flush. I even have one that will point. So what do you guys want to hunt over today?"

Barry Berg, head guide at Tumbleweed Lodge, in Harrold, South Dakota, was giving us the options for the morning's gunning. His dog trailer was brimming with Labs of every description, all anxious to be let out to pound the cover. The reason he was offering so many choices is because this was no ordinary hunt. Every moment would be captured by cameramen for the television show "Benelli on Assignment" ("BOA"), scheduled to begin airing in August. The object was to eliminate as many variables as possible in order to maximize shot opportunities-both for the cameras and the hunters. We knew there were plenty of birds and that the dogs would do their parts; it was the hunters who were the biggest unknowns.

My partner this trip was Joe Coogan, Brand Marketing Manager for Benelli USA. Joe is an experienced writer, editor and African PH as well as the host of "BOA." I'd known Joe for years yet had never had an opportunity to hunt with him, so when he asked me to join him in mid-November I never hesitated. The pot-sweetener was that we'd have an unlimited supply of guns to use, and as Benelli is the parent company of Franchi, I knew there'd be some great side-by-sides and over/unders in addition to Benelli's excellent autoloaders.

A third selling point was the venue. Tumbleweed Lodge has a reputation as one of the premier pheasant destinations in South Dakota. From its first-class accommodations to its extensive habitat-management program and high bird numbers, Tumbleweed rates with hunters looking for quality gunning. In fact, Shooting Sportsman hosted a Readers & Writers Adventure there in 2005, and everyone I spoke to gave the operation rave reviews.

We began the first morning hunting about five minutes from the lodge, Joe and I and cameraman Jesse Johnson having taken a short trip in one of the lodge's "bird buses." We'd stepped out into a veritable sea of cover-rolling prairies planted with wide swaths of corn, sorghum, millet and milo. In the grass and roads between the crops we could see plenty of pheasants, some milling about, others high-stepping between rows. Occasionally a cackling rooster would flush from the stalks and light off for a nearby sidehill. Joe and I looked at each other. This is going to be fun.

We made our request of Barry, and he turned loose three dogs-one black, one yellow and one chocolate. We then began pushing through a section of grass and on into a thick milo strip. Being that it was two months into the season and the area had seen some weather, the milo stalks had been blown over in a jumbled mess. This was good for skulking pheasants but tough for plodding hunters. The dogs, of course, were unaffected, shouldering their way through with reckless abandon.

The other thing about hunting later in the season is that the birds have had opportunities for an education, and these pheasants proved to be no pushovers. Tumbleweed does not supplement the pheasant population during the season, instead releasing bred hens in the spring followed by a batch of roosters in case the hens need to re-nest. These birds had had plenty of time to become predator-wise, and it showed in the way they were flushing at great distances.

We'd walked perhaps a half-mile before the first rooster gave us an opportunity. The big cockbird got up 30 yards out and quartered away from left to right. That morning I was shooting Franchi's new Highlander side-by-side, and the 20-bore came up smoothly and spot on. After rocking the bird with the first barrel, I continued swinging through and dropped him at 45 yards with the second. It was a great way to start the hunt-my first bird of the morning, my first shots fired with the new gun, my first rooster in years. . . and all caught on camera. The rooster turned out to be a beautiful two-year-old with a 20-plus-inch tail and impressive spurs, and we spent a while admiring him.

We took a corn strip back to the bus without getting another shot. Admittedly, it was frustrating watching birds squeeze out the end of the row and flush after we'd walked past them, but with only two Guns trying to cover such a large area, it was understandable.

A short drive brought us to a five-acre pond surrounded with marsh grass and cattails, and again we could see pheasants squirting out the sides as soon as we entered the cover. With a bit of strategizing, however, we were able to pin several birds between the pond and a nearby road, and as they began popping out of the grass, we began dropping them. The flurry netted us three nice cockbirds, and the dogs made impressive retrieves.

As we continued rounding the pond, I took the inside track and bulled my way through the rushes. Joe, Barry and Jesse were walking in a field above me. Suddenly came the sound of beating wings, cackling and the cry, "Rooster! Rooster!" and I spied a long-tailed cockbird pounding his way over the reeds. My first open shot was a long poke over the water, but I had been shooting the Highlander well and decided to chance it. Similar to my first bird, I rocked this one with the right barrel and anchored him with the left, and he settled into the water with his head up, looking very much like a duck. Barry's Labs Whiskey and Hobbs were happy for a water retrieve and completed it handily.

We finished the morning in several more strips of milo, where we found plenty more pheasants and even some Hungarian partridge. Near the end of one row I was so startled by a pair of Huns that I never got off a shot, but when the rest of the covey flushed seconds later, I regained my composure and bounced one in the wheat stubble.

The afternoon hunt was more of the same, with plenty of action on hard-flying birds. For this outing I traded guns for the Franchi Renaissance Classic-a 20-bore O/U that, thanks to an aluminum-alloy frame, weighs just 5.8 pounds. The gun's light carry made strolling the cover a pleasure. Joe stuck with the Benelli Legacy 12-gauge autoloader he'd toted that morning, and he continued to use it to great effect. I remember one shot where a rooster got up a fair distance out and presented Joe with a wide-open right-to-left crosser. Trouble was that Jesse had positioned himself in an elevated deer blind to film us coming at him. By the time the pheasant had cleared Jesse and offered a safe shot, he was leaving a vapor trail. Joe simply swung through and folded the rooster at 50 yards.

We finished the day in a strip of forage sorghum bordered by milo. The birds were especially thick in this patch and, lucky me, seemed to favor my side for escape. At one point I had dropped a nice rooster and was watching the dog retrieve it when a second rooster rose out of the same patch of cover, followed the same flight path, offered me the same shot and dropped in almost the same spot as the first.

Later at the lodge I had a chance to sit down with Michael Bollweg, co-owner and operating manager at Tumbleweed. Michael is the son of the other owners, Don and Judy Bollweg, who began their pheasant hunting operation 25 years ago with a small farmhouse and 13 bunks. Today the family lives in the sprawling 18,000-square-foot structure that is Tumbleweed Lodge, so when a hunter visits, he is literally being welcomed into their home.

According to Michael, Tumbleweed has more than 10,000 private acres on which to hunt in addition to 1,700 acres of preserve lands managed specifically for pheasants and Huns. (The preserve allows the lodge to offer a higher daily limit [five roosters per day-or up to 15 if you care to pay extra-versus the state's three], longer hunting hours [sunrise to sunset versus 10 am to sunset] and a longer hunting season [September 1 to March 31 versus mid-October to early January].)

With degrees in agronomy and ag business, Michael obviously knows farming. He is also very enthusiastic about wildlife habitat. As he explained, his family's property operates 50 percent off of hunting and 50 percent off of farming (selling corn, milo and sunflowers to a bird-seed company in town), so it's important to maintain a good mix.

Habitat-wise, there are four key elements: nesting cover, winter cover, food and water. For nesting cover the Bollwegs plant a combination of warm-season grasses as well as alfalfa and clover to produce bugs for young birds. Winter cover consists of a number of shelterbelts, which offer protection from the elements, and grasses around sloughs and creek bottoms. Food crops are millet, forage sorghum, corn, milo and sunflowers. And water is found in ponds, sloughs and a 2,200-foot well whose flow can be pumped to various parts of the property.

The key is to provide year-round habitat for the birds, not only to keep them around but also later in the year, when the neighboring farms have harvested their crops, to draw in birds from surrounding properties. As mentioned, too, Tumbleweed plants only mature hens and roosters in the spring, so it's important to maintain habitat that sustains production each year and aids natural reproduction by surviving birds in subsequent years.

The second morning of hunting was brutally cold, with temperatures in the low 20s and a 20-mph breeze. With no wind blocks in the open, the chill was penetrating, and five minutes out of the bus my fingers were numb in my leather shooting gloves.

We didn't find as many birds this day, but the shots were excellent, thanks to the tailwind. Most of the opportunities seemed to be on Joe's side, and he connected on a series of impressively long shots. I flubbed a couple of opportunities at distant roosters, and when a covey of Huns blew up in my face, I missed with the first barrel and was so cold that I didn't let off the trigger enough for the second shot. I made amends later when a rooster got up in the middle of a milo strip, crossed overhead, and I took him going away into the sun, deliberately pushing the barrels through his "chin."

That afternoon, after thawing out at the lodge, we drove to an outlying area to film supplemental material for the show. At last light we spied a mixed flock of sharp-tailed grouse and prairie chickens settling into a hillside, and though we made a gallant effort to sneak in on them, they ended up flushing wild and escaping.

The third and final morning we decided to try for prairie grouse in earnest, so at first light we posted in a cornfield that birds had been seen flying over. The theory was that we would pass-shoot grouse coming into the corn from night roosts out in the prairie grass. At least that was the theory. We did end up seeing a single chicken come in about 100 yards away and 10 minutes later a flock of 20. But none were within range, and a forced march through the corn turned up no sign of them.

This day I was carrying a Benelli Ultra Light 12-gauge, and when we were finished hunting, Joe suggested I try it out on a few sunflower heads. I burned up several boxes of ammo, firing three-shot flurries as fast as I could at seedheads that Barry tossed into the air. It was a fun way to end the hunt and a dramatic example of what these guns are capable of.

Driving from the lodge that afternoon on our way back to Pierre, we hadn't made it out of the driveway when the big SUV stopped. "Forget something?" I asked.

"No, just a bit of a roadblock," Don Bollweg said.

I looked out to see six big roosters moseying across the gravel. "Looks like we left a few for breeders," I said.

"Yeah, you'll have to come back again and help us thin them out," Don replied.

Nothing would give me more pleasure.