As publishedSep 12-20, 2026 (general); Aug 15, 2026-Feb 28, 2027 (falconry)
Introduced Sierra Nevada population.Bag is 2 per day AND 2 per SEASON total (possession limit is 2/season, not the usual triple-daily-bag formula) -- once a hunter takes 2 birds for the year, their season is over. Falconry season runs Aug 15, 2026-Feb 28, 2027 under the same per-season cap.
No dedicated annual population-survey, lek/route-count, or pre-season outlook program was found for white-tailed ptarmigan in California after a real search attempt on 2026-08-19 (two separate queries), matching the Tier A registry's own prior inconclusive check. What exists instead is incidental: historical academic range/habitat-use research from the original 1971-72 Colorado-source translocation, a CDFW-funded range-expansion research grant, and byproduct camera-trap detections from an unrelated 2021-2022 Alpine Mesocarnivore Study. The species does carry an active, unusually tight regulated season (2 per day AND 2 per season total) that implies CDFW holds some internal basis for that quota, but nothing publicly published surfaced in either this pass or the registry's prior one — closed here as no_program on balance, but with lower confidence than a fully confirmed absence; worth a future re-check rather than treating as settled.