A hint of the long shadows of evening began to cast across the rolling wheat stubble and amber bunchgrass. A solid cloud of gray dust billowed from behind my old green Ford rolling down the backroads, homebound from work. The navel orange sun dipping low along the horizon left little to be desired in an October sky.

About a half mile from home, a large, brilliantly plumed wild rooster pheasant with a tail stretching to Mexico levitated from the grass buffer above the gravel and sailed effortlessly into the deep draw of the adjacent field. The pheasant season was freshly open, and my Llewellin...