Alaska · UplandRing-necked pheasant

There is no huntable pheasant population in Alaska. A century of introductions failed, and no state transplant program has operated since 1950, so there is no wild range to hunt and no put-and-take program standing in for one. ADF&G's own transplant history (Burris/McKnight/Paul, "Game Transplants in Alaska") records at least a dozen separate release efforts between 1930 and 1942, spread across nearly the whole settled portion of the state, including Juneau, Sitka, Baranof Island, Ketchikan, Cordova, Fairbanks, the Matanuska Valley, Petersburg, Kenai Lake, Wrangell and Haines, and every one carries the same recorded outcome: no birds remaining. The 1938 Matanuska Valley release came closest, increasing through several favorable years and still producing sightings in the mid-1950s before one or two severe winters ended it. ADF&G's conclusion in that history was that the Matanuska Valley transplants clearly demonstrated pheasants' inability to survive in Alaska. Birds are still reported occasionally around the Kenai Peninsula (Homer, Soldotna, Cooper Landing) and the Anchorage and Matanuska-Susitna area, but these are escapees and private releases rather than an established population.