Ron Schara: Celebrate good times, but also take steps to make them last

Savor the moment.

On opening weekend of pheasant season in Minnesota, this seems to be especially good advice.

In the autumn of 2007, state hunters are expected to find more ringnecks roaming the state than was thought possible only a few years ago. Ain't that grand.

So, savor the opportunity. Savor the anticipation of the hunt. Savor the grassy haunts. Savor the robust cackle of a cock bird. Savor it all.

Why? Good times don't last forever.

The lesson has been on my mind, of late, on subjects ranging from hunting days to family ties.

These days I am blessed with a 3-year-old grandson who, for now, seeks my company like a thirsty pup. "Will you play with me, Grandpa?" he asks, melting my heart.

I savor the moment. I know my time is limited. The day will come when new playmates will come into his life -- school buddies, neighborhood kids ... and later, girlfriends ... who will, and rightly so, require his attention.

Yes, I am a playmate on borrowed time.

Just like pheasant hunting.

My early memories of Minnesota pheasant hunting only three decades ago involve a sea of plowed cornfields and fence lines no wider than sidewalks, and pheasants down on the farm were rarer than dairy bulls.

Many hunters, including me, thought Minnesota's pheasant hunting couldn't get much worse and wasn't likely to improve much, either.

In South Dakota these days, the pheasant hunting mood is downright giddy. For many years now, ringnecks have been flying over the western prairie like autumn blackbirds.

Yes, there's unabashed joy in the nation's Pheasant Capital.

But I remember another time in South Dakota. It was 1966, and the pheasant population had crashed to lows never seen by South Dakotans.

As usual, the hunt was on for something to blame -- everything from too many predators to too many nonresidents shooting the birds.

When I was a kid growing up in Iowa, the state's pheasant heyday acted like a roller coaster. Bird counts crashed in northern Iowa and, meanwhile, surged upward in southern Iowa. Pheasant biologists from Iowa State made careers trying to answer the puzzle of the missing ringnecks.

That's what I mean: Savor the moment.

The ringneck pheasant in the Upper Midwest is both a perfect and very vulnerable gamebird. This is not news. It has always been that way. And the bird's rising or falling tide has always been determined by forces beyond pheasant hunters.

Very simply, what happens down on the farm determines what happens in tomorrow's pheasant fields. Federal farm policies, crop prices (and now gasoline prices), weather and the public pulse -- all will impact what lives or dies in pheasant country.

Yes, pheasant hunters can make their wishes known to the powers that write the farm bills.

And we should. Did you write or call our two Minnesota senators, Norm Coleman and Amy Klobuchar?

Yes, pheasant hunters can show landowners and farm communities that they also have economic power.

And we should. The motel owner who takes my money will know I'm a pheasant hunter.

Yes, pheasant hunters can cry aloud about what America will lose if pheasants and pheasant seasons fade into a memory. We've tried crying in beer before, and it didn't change much.

So savor the moment. If, by chance, Minnesota's pheasant hunting returns to the pits some day, you'll be glad you did.