Gov. Mark Dayton was in Marshall for the 2nd annual Governor's Pheasant Hunting Opener Saturday, but did not take any pheasants. Dayton's party hunted in a DNR Wildlife Management area.

The DNR says the pheasant population hasn't been this low in more than two decades. Pheasant hunters are expected to harvest about 250,000 roosters this fall -- compared to 500,000 just last year. The season opens up this weekend.

Gov. Mark Dayton will be in Marshall to mark the opening of pheasant hunting season. The trip builds on a tradition Dayton started last fall, when he visited Montevideo for the first Governor's Pheasant Opener.

The Department of Natural Resources says the decline is a result of a smaller deer population and a windy opening weekend of the firearms season. Minnesota deer hunters harvested 192,300 deer during the 2011 season. That's 15,000 fewer deer than in 2010. The 2012 deer hunting season begins in September.

Hunters in Minnesota are expected to see more deer than last year after the mild winter and early spring, but fewer hunters have antlerless deer tags this fall, the Duluth News Tribune reports. This is because the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources is trying to conserve the number of does this year. “We’re going to see more deer and kill less deer,” Mark Johnson, executive director of the Minnesota Deer Hunters Association based in Grand Rapids, told the newspaper.

The First Annual Governor’s Pheasant Opener in Montevideo went off without incident--at least for Gov. Mark Dayton. Other hunters in Dayton's party had better luck Saturday. GOP House Speaker Kurt Zellers and local resident Paul Johannes each bagged a bird, while Dayton went home empty-handed.