Covert names: let's hear 'em

[Chris Pope]

The Amnesty Patch:
Just remembered this one. It's a 200 yard by 50 yard patch of standing corn that a friend plants right next to his home in South Dakota. It runs 90 degrees from a shelter belt behind his house up to a pair of long ago abandoned silos. Pheasants are attracted to it like a magnet. The patch is so named because the owner only rarely lets anyone hunt it. He feels therefore that he has granted the pheasant residents of the patch "amnesty". On my first trip to SD many years ago he lifted the amnesty order and sent me in. A rooster exploded from under my feet and tried and escape between the two silos. It crash landed inside the horse pasture. Before I could retrieve it the big critters had to come give it a sniff and one stepped on it before I could get it in my bird vest.
So that was my first SD rooster- right out of the "amnesty" patch.

n.b. No horses were harmed during this incident.