MINNEAPOLIS — With slightly more than 400 residents, Chokio is a farm-country village some travelers might overlook while gallivanting in west-central Minnesota.

Credit bygone Dakota tribes with not making the same mistake. In their language, Chokio means middle, or halfway, and the tiny burg is that: midway between the towns of Morris and Graceville.

Crystal Hoffman and her German wirehaired pointer, Ruger, along with Crystal’s husband, Jason, reside in a mosaic of grasslands, marshes, corn and soybeans that surround Chokio.

A recent convert to upland hunting, Crystal had long ago marked this past Saturday — opening of the 2026 Minnesota pheasant hunting season — on her calendar.

The chance to follow Ruger onto state and federal wildlife lands near Chokio, hoping to put a florid rooster to wing, was tops on her to-do list that day.

“I’ve always been an outdoorsy person, and after I sold my horses a few years back, I was looking for something new,” she said. “I enjoy dogs, and liked the thought of bird hunting, so I drove to North Dakota a couple of years ago and attended an outdoor weekend for women put on by HerWilderness.”

Last year, she followed that experience with attendance at HerUpland, a northern Minnesota camp that trains women to become bird hunters, bird-dog trainers and conservationists.

“And this fall, I’m driving to South Dakota for a five-day pheasant hunt put on by the same group,” Crystal said.

Saturday, when hunting began at 9 a.m., the temperature was already in the mid-60s in western Minnesota. Casting Ruger into a birdy-looking state wildlife management area, Crystal was as confident as any of Minnesota’s 75,000 pheasant hunters that Ruger would find and point a long-tailed rooster.

In her mind’s eye, the florid bird would rise into a cobalt sky and cackle once or twice before she touched the trigger of her over-and-under.

The sooner this might occur Saturday morning, the better.

With a forecast high of 85 degrees throughout much of the state’s pheasant range, Crystal would allow Ruger to quest ahead of her for perhaps an hour or so before she brought him home to cool his heels.

“Ruger and I were sitting on the tailgate of my pickup at 8:45 when we saw five roosters along the road,” Crystal said. ”Then, right before legal hunting time at 9 a.m., they flew into private property that was posted against hunting.”

According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, more women like Crystal are becoming hunters. But the pastime — some call it a lifestyle — is still dominated by men. By one estimate about 14% of Minnesota deer hunters are women, but fewer than 10% of the state’s small game licenses are sold to females.

Now a hunting evangelist of sorts, Crystal quickly learned to appreciate the physical and mental-health benefits of wearing out boot leather while hiking tall grasslands and other pheasant coverts in autumn.

She is aware, however, that many Baby Boomer hunters, and some scattergunners among follow-on generations, are graying out, and giving up pheasant, ruffed grouse and duck hunting.

The losses put license sales at risk, and with them the funds that pay for state and federal wildlife management.

The void could be filled at least in part if more women and minorities hunted. But exposing them to hunting and the conservation ethos that often accompanies it isn’t easy.

Crystal’s doing her part — and then some.

“After I went to that first camp in North Dakota, I came back to Minnesota and joined the Swift County Pheasants Forever chapter,” she said. “It’s a good chapter, but I live in Stevens County, where we have pheasants, and historically we’ve had a good Pheasants Forever chapter. But it closed up after COVID. I thought, ‘We should get it going again.’ ”

Bob Dalager is a friend of mine who lives in Morris, the Stevens County seat. A retired lawyer, Bob is among a dozen or so volunteers under Crystal’s leadership — she volunteered to be chapter president — who are organizing an Oct. 24 habitat fundraising banquet in Morris celebrating the rebirth of the Stevens County Pheasants Forever (PF) chapter.

As I did, Bob attended the University of Minnesota Morris as an undergraduate. In 1983, when some friends and I started PF, I called him to ask whether he would help start a Stevens County chapter.

“For many years we were a great chapter and we did a lot of good habitat work,” Bob said. “But we couldn’t have banquets during COVID. After that, volunteers just drifted away, and so did our chapter.”

In the early to mid-1970s, when Bob and I were at UMM, pheasants were abundant in the area. For a couple of decades thereafter, and more, they remained so. During that time, on every pheasant opener, my friends and I returned to Morris to hunt.

Hundreds, and perhaps a thousand or more other hunters, did the same.

In the years since, particularly after the loss of countless Conservation Reserve Program acres, western Minnesota’s pheasant numbers declined.

Now they have recovered. But Crystal believes Stevens County pheasants and the habitat they need to thrive can benefit still more with a reinvigorated PF chapter.

To help make the first Stevens County PF chapter a success in 1984, I brought the late Vikings coach Bud Grant to speak. Bud had hunted ducks and pheasants many times in Stevens County, beginning when he was a student at the U, so he was familiar with the area.

Unfortunately, Bud isn’t around anymore.

So I’ll be the speaker at the Oct. 24 banquet.

I don’t have any football stories to tell. But I’ll spin a tale or two about Bud.

Saturday morning, at 9:45, as the temperature crested 74 degrees outside of Chokio, Crystal saw Ruger panting, and she called it quits until perhaps later in the day.

Shortly thereafter, they motored in Crystal’s pickup toward their country place midway between Morris and Graceville.

Hunting on this opener had been short, but cooler autumn days are ahead.

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