Pheasantville

Pixley, Calif. — The Pixley Gas sign is as dark as the sky when men sipping coffee muster for a predawn reveille in front of the Scout Shack. The reason for the bugle call in this San Joaquin Valley outpost arrives by truck -- orange crates jammed with 648 pheasants, oblivious to their starring role in the 35th annual Pixley Lions Club Pheasant Hunt, held a week ago.

Sleepy hunters circle the crates and then pile into their pickups and minivans to trail the big birds into the farmland. Tony Herrera, his dad Manuel, his uncle Tony and his uncle's black Lab, Hunter, putt in a snake of cars that pauses at alfalfa, cotton and grape fields. Cage doors slide open, and the pheasants -- black dots against a slate blue sky -- beat their wings like hummingbirds and squeak their way to the cover of brush. Grown men revert to awestruck boys.

"Oh, look, they're just beautiful birds! See them fly? Just lookie!" cries the elder Tony Herrera, a Santa Barbara lumber salesman. The men choose an alfalfa patch to stalk later and hustle back to Pixley for 90 antsy minutes until California's pheasant season -- through Dec. 26 -- opens.

The Herreras are among 479 pilgrims who have converged on Pixley, a speck 50 miles north of Bakersfield, for first crack at pheasants. It's the biggest thing going in this town all year, and like other dot-on-the-map communities around the state that have annual fests -- garlic in Gilroy, artichokes in Castroville -- the event has become an economic bridge between small-town California and its big-city visitors.

Pixley isn't really crazy about pheasants; it's hunters and their wallets that make the city jump. The women's club hawks chocolate chip and oatmeal raisin cookies; the Lions Club sells orange mesh ball caps and baggy T-shirts; and every school and social group in town is cooking up some nonfat-free delight. Pixley volunteer firefighters raffle rifles, including the straight-out-of-"A Christmas Story" Red Ryder BB gun.

Few townies partake in the hunt. The guys slinging shotguns are Southern Californians. "Some of them save all year to come to Pixley for vacation," says Joey Quillin, a farm manager hanging at the Scout Shack. "I don't get it. We're just a ... hole in the wall. I guess here hunting is second nature. There, it's this hobby."

A woman chimes in: "My dog is always burying pheasants in the backyard."

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