For Chris Hitzeman, raising lots of wild pheasants on his farm is as important as growing high yielding grain crops. The Lake Andes, S.D., farmer earns about as much money per acre from his UGuide South Dakota Pheasant Hunting business as his from other enterprises.

"In the 1940s and 1950s, we had the perfect balance between cropland and pheasant habitat and we had a tremendous number of birds," he says. "That's what I’m striving for — a large pheasant population on working lands."