• SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) -- Consider it Black Friday for hunters.
• Sure, the day before South Dakota's pheasant opener doesn't result in lines around the corner or incite customers to trample over each other to grab low-priced orange vests, but it's still something of a shopping event for avid hunters.
• "It's what I call our tan-and-blaze Christmas," said Mike Fox, general manager of Cabela's in Mitchell. "Without doubt, it's the best day of the year for us."
• South Dakota's pheasant season, which opens Saturday and runs through Jan. 6, is expected to draw thousands of hunters. Most are likely to have a good year, with an estimated 18 percent more birds than last year.
• "Any time we have a mild winter, we almost always follow that up with an increase in population, just because we have better winter survivability by those hens," said Travis Runia, senior upland game biologist with the South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks Department.
• Pheasant hunting has always been a South Dakota pastime, but tourism officials over the past decade have turned the season into a nationwide draw.
• In 2002, the number of nonresident pheasant hunters exceeded residents for the first time. Last year, the state licensed more than 95,000 nonresident pheasant hunters and about 69,000 resident small game hunters.
• Hunters who flock to Huron, about 130 miles northwest of Sioux Falls, are excited about the 38 percent jump in the area's pheasant count, said Megan Benker, convention and sales director for the Huron Area Chamber of Commerce and Visitors Bureau.
• "Our hotels are already all full, and we're looking for a great season this year," Benker said.
• Hunters killed more than 1.5 million pheasants last year, when brood counts showed a pheasants-per-mile index of 3.57. Surveys conducted this summer show a pheasants-per-mile index of 4.21, according to the wildlife department.
• The pheasant population had taken a hit over the past few years, especially along eastern South Dakota's I-29 corridor and its population centers, Runia said.
• Brookings, which has seen heavy winter snow and big spring rains, saw its brood

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