Caitlin Clark was still in middle school when Abby Stone moved to Iowa from Downers Grove, Ill., to attend Iowa State University.

Stone, 27, wasn't then and isn't now a particularly avid basketball fan. And she hastens to add that Iowa State is a rival of the University of Iowa Hawkeyes, whose women's team, led by the sharpshooting Clark, is in Minneapolis this weekend for the Big Ten women's basketball tournament.

But like Clark, the all-time NCAA Division I leading hoops scorer — women's or men's — Stone knows something about proving herself in fields that traditionally have been the province of men and boys.

For that reason, she says, she supports Clark, Hawkeye or not, and all other "kick-butt women in whatever they do."

Serendipitously, Clark and Stone are riding waves of resurgence in Iowa. The latter's upswing isn't evident inside the state's gymnasiums, where basketball mania is fever-pitched. Instead, it's found outdoors, where Iowa's iconic gamebird, the ring-necked pheasant, is making a comeback.

Among all states, Iowa has followed only South Dakota in the number of these florid birds harvested by wing shooters in recent years.

The approximately 370,000 Iowa roosters felled in the 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 seasons (compared to Minnesota's estimated 200,000 bird harvests) is a far cry from the 1.9 million pheasants killed by Iowa hunters in 1973-1974. But the Hawkeye State rooster rebound is notable nevertheless because as recently as 2011, Iowa hunters managed only 46,000 pheasants in their collective bag.

"Habitat loss has been the main reason for the Iowa pheasant decline, that and the slow erosion of the Conservation Reserve Program," said Todd Bogenschutz, Iowa Department of Natural Resources upland wildlife research biologist. "Consecutive severe winters in 2007 through 2011 also were a significant factor."

Stone's father was a hunter, but he died when she was only 8 years old, and her older brother didn't want the responsibility of taking her afield as she grew up.

Undeterred, during her senior year at Iowa State, she signed up for an introductory hunting program sponsored by the National Wild Turkey Federation (NWTF).

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