Somewhere in Nebraska, I was told a number of years ago, was a pocket of pheasants unlike any I had seen before.

"It's unbelievable," the voice on the other end of the telephone confided, sounding just a little awestruck. "It's like finding a pot of gold out there."

It was a little out of the way, though, and generally overlooked by the horde of Colorado hunters bound for McCook and other officially designated hot spots.

"No, it really is something special," the caller reassured, sensing a healthy dose of skepticism. "There's only one condition. You can't write about it or tell anyone else about it. Promise?"

Well, OK. One isn't offered a map to the Lost Dutchman mine every day. What was there to lose?

"Sure. I promise."

One minor detail remained: Where, exactly, was this little mother lode of ringnecks?

"Get a map," my benefactor directed. "Look for . . . "

Here, he muttered the name of some obscure wide spot in the road, where both town-limit signs might have been on the same post.

"That's all I'll say. When you see the road-kill pheasants, you'll know you're there."

What could be more precise? More credible? I checked and rechecked a Nebraska highway map. Found a dot next to a name that sounded like it could be the place. With the now-departed, then-eager rookie Ritz dog in tow, I went in search of the promised pheasant land.

The wide spot in the road turned out largely to be a grain elevator in cattle country, where overall-wearing locals, if they spoke at all, answered inquiries from strangers with surly grunts or terse sentence fragments.

So where were the pheasants? My choices were the four points of the compass. Was that a pulling sensation I was feeling on my leg?

I chanced to drive east, then south, through pastureland that appeared as devoid of pheasants as the far side of the moon.

Then I topped a small hill. Tall wheat stubble lay before me. Other farmed fields spread out beyond. And the cover. Roadside ditches were choked with weeds and mature waste wheat. Best of all, pivot-irrigated cornfields had calf-high wheat stubble in their corners.

Maybe that hidden-pocket-of-pheasants tipster knew something after all. But where were they?

"Not here," the man answering a doorbell asserted. "I don't own any farmland, and besides, I don't think there are any pheasants around here."

Yeah, right. I'd driven too far to be so easily deterred. The surroundings simply looked too promising.

I walked up to an old, run-down farmhouse, knocked on its front door and was greeted by a slight, white-bearded man wearing a wool hat with ear flaps that might have been discarded by Elmer Fudd or some upper-Midwest ice fisherman.

Pheasants?

"They're in those trees," he replied, motioning toward a wind break at the edge of a nearby field.

"You can hunt them there . . . and you can hunt them there and there," he offered, pointing to more prime acres than could be properly covered in a full day of hunting. "Just not in that line of trees behind my house; those are my pets."

The ringnecks were in the trees, all right. They were in the corn and in the wheat. I shot a limit and returned the next day for another.

I returned for a number of years thereafter, usually late in the season. Though the magic was never quite the same as on that day of discovery, through some ups and downs in the pheasant population, the spot never disappointed.

I've not been back for several years, but with the Colorado season winding down, a return might be in order. My thoughts turn again to a kindly Nebraska farmer and to a certain caller who made it possible.

Though the landscape might have changed, I think I can still find it. When I top a certain hill and see the road-kill pheasants, I'll know I'm there.

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