PRATT, Kan -- A wedge of eight hunters neared the end of a drive across a rolling field of waist-high grass in south Kansas pheasant country. Two dogs stood motionless on point over a clump of brush at the fence.

At the inverted point of the wedge, 10 feet from the brush, the flush -- if it happened -- would be my shot. As the rest of our party closed the wedge, I took a step forward and stopped, stepped and stopped, stepped ???

A spectacular blur of noise, speed and colors exploded through the brush as the rooster crossed the wire fence and soared over the adjacent field. I fired too soon, but a second blast through the full-choke side of my dad's vintage double-barrel 12-gauge knocked the pheasant out of the sky. He hit the ground attempting to run; another member of our party supplied the final shot.

Few game animals are as challenging and exciting to hunt as ring-neck pheasants. Native to Indonesia, the birds were originally imported to America in the 1700s and stocked extensively near the turn of the 20th century. In many states, including Pennsylvania, they reproduced and thrived for decades, and Kansas is still revered as one of the top pheasant hunting destinations in the United States.

But by the 1980s, something had happened to Pennsylvania's pheasants. As hunters, farmers and biologists continue to debate the cause of their decline, the Pennsylvania Game Commission admits it's all but given up on supporting a reproducing population of pheasants in the state. The planting of as many as 425,217 birds in 1983 had dwindled to 100,000 in 2005. The commission's limited put-and-take program costs hunters $2.7 million per year, and even the commission's partner in the stocking plan is furious with the state's lack of support.

Tagging along on the Kansas hunting adventure with a group of Pittsburghers, visiting Pittsburgh expatriates 90 miles west of Wichita, I sampled the robust nature of the wild birds outside a town so flush with ring-necks the local community college hosts intramural pheasant-hunting teams. The Pratt birds knew the neighborhood and were stronger, faster, smarter and more willing to flush than Pennsylvania's coop-raised or imported pheasants.

Kansan winters can be harsh, predation of pheasants is intense, hunting pressure is high in some areas, and farmers there use many of the same pesticides common in the Keystone State.

So why do the Kansan pheasants reproduce when their Pennsylvanian cousins won't?

"The interesting thing about these birds -- a certain amount of agriculture is necessary for them," said Mike Miller, a member of our hunting party and information and education representative for the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks. "Too much will hurt them, and not enough will hurt them."

In 1982, he said, despite a brutal winter, about 1.5 million wild pheasants were harvested in Kansas. By 2005, the number had dropped to about 764,000. Those years roughly corollate with the rise and fall of Pennsylvania's pheasant population.

"What we're seeing in Kansas is similar to what's happening in Pennsylvania -- a slow change in habitat," he said. "Pheasants need edges, fence rows, unplanted spaces. We're slowly losing those areas, some to sprawl but mostly to more efficient farming practices. What's helping our pheasants hang on is CRP."

The Conservation Reserve Program is a federal erosion control effort administered through the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Farm Service Agency. To help keep sandy Kansas soil from blowing away, farmers are paid to plant dense, hardy grasses in fallow fields and edge lands, and promise to not cut it for the duration of their contracts.

"CRP grass happens to also be great habitat for wildlife, including pheasants," said Miller. "It doesn't provide good brood cover because it's too thick for the little chicks to move through, but a lot of farmers are in this program and it's really helped our pheasants."

Back home in Pennsylvania, ring-necks face overlapping barriers. Residential sprawl is a bigger problem here, with 300 to 350 acres of wildlife habitat disappearing each day, said the Game Commission. The predation ratio remains about the same as in Kansas, farmers here use many of the same space-saving practices, and a similar federally funded plan -- the Conservation Reserve Enhanced Program -- offers an average of $100 per acre to farmers willing to plant specific tall, dense grasses in marginally productive farmland.

But there's a problem.

"The farms here are much smaller [than in Kansas]," said Mike Pruss, a private lands biologist for the commission. "Farmers don't have as much unused land, and it takes a large area to sustain a reproducing population of pheasants."

"Based on our studies," said commission spokesman Jerry Feaser, "a pheasant population can't be based on an individual farm. You need 20,000 acres or more to maintain the population, and that kind of space is just hard to come by in Pennsylvania."

Pruss said 189,000 acres of incontiguous land is now enrolled in the federally financed CREP. In 2006-2007, the Game Commission spent $2.7 million of hunting license revenue on several pheasant rejuvenation programs. The flagship plan is a habitat-growing, animal-swapping partnership including Pheasants Forever, the National Turkey Federation, Ducks Unlimited and California University of Pennsylvania.

"We're capturing wild turkeys and giving them to South Dakota," said Feaser. "In exchange, they're giving us wild pheasants to release in Washington, Somerset, Montour and Columbia counties. They're better and healthier pheasants."

But for the most part, said Feaser, the state's pheasant plan is to supply birds for hunters to shoot, not to attempt to reestablish a reproducing population.

"North of I-80, and in some portions of the south [of the state], we gave up on the pheasant program," he said. "What we do is this: we raise pheasants because people like to hunt them. Period. We recognize that hopes for restoring a natural breeding population of pheasants here is minimal at best."

But that's not the case, says one of the commission's partners in the program.

"We have biologists working with us who say yes, it can be done," said Pheasants Forever president Rich Kovacic. "We can have pheasant restoration. It makes the most economic sense."

The biggest "stumbling block" holding back pheasant restoration, said Kovacic, is Game Commission Bureau of Wildlife Management director Cal DuBrock.

"He wouldn't let us get a permit to get the birds," he said. "We finally got the permit but it took us 10 years. He is still trying to stop us."

Kovacic described the commission's input in the program as "half-hearted."

"I used to defend the Game Commission 100 percent," he said. "Not anymore. Some of the lower echelon people are trying to help us, but the people above aren't willing to commit."

DuBrock said he has merely provided guidance to help the program to succeed.

"I don't issue permits," he said, "I'm consulted on permits and I did concur with issuing the permit for site, but only after they had developed a study plan with us."

Kovacic's program is required to submit yearly reports, but DuBrock said the most recent report submitted in 2005 showed a low pheasant survival rate.

"They and landowners have done a wonderful job ??? but their rush to action is a ready-shoot-aim approach," he said. "We want a ready-aim-shoot approach that is more likely to succeed. I don't think we'll ever have pheasants like we had in the '60s and '70s. But I think we can have reproducing populations again in some areas if we do this right."

DuBrock said a new pheasant-planting program for Somerset County was proposed last week, and the commission's overall pheasant management plan should be available for public overview in April.

John Hayes can be reached at jhayes@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1991.