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 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 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.

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.

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.

Wildlife officials say they're reaching their population goals for deer, but the agency plans to revisit those targets as hunters report they're not seeing the number of deer they've seen in the past. The DNR says hunters bagged 192,300 deer last year. That's down from the peak, 290,000, in 2003.