Roughing It in Hart: Philanthropy aside, we came here to put pheasants up - and hopefully down. On opening day in Hart, Davis and I hook up with a set of largely Dallas-area hunters, a crowd of 15, from teenagers to geezers. Their unofficial leader is Les Baumgardner - a 54-year-old teddy bear who's big, happy, and serious about roosters. At dawn our group lines up in a snaggletoothed arrangement along a red-clay road. Winds are already roaring at 40 mph, sending tumbleweeds across the playas. Found only in a southern swath of the Great Plains, the playas are funky, sunken wetlands. Dry most years, they fill with rainwater often enough to host ducks, geese and, for those willing to work hard enough to find them, ringneck pheasants. With a signal from Baumgardner, we start across the field in a formation straight out of the British redcoats' playbook. But within 50 yards, opening-day adrenaline has some hunters pushing too far ahead. I watch a pair of pheasants sneak out the sides of the corn stubble. Three more birds flush out of range of a driver too far in advance of the line. Baumgardner bogs down in a hellish tangle of 10-foot-tall shelterbelt. "This ain't GQ hunting," he grunts.