This state's classification carries no date range for the species.
Legal game bird under HAR §13-122-6, includes White-winged Pheasant color/subspecies variants (Common, Kansas, Jumbo, Manchurian, Blue). DOFAW's annual season announcement (published each October historically) had not been issued as of 2026-08-29; the 2025-26 cycle (most recent published) ran Nov 1, 2025 - Jan 25, 2026, cocks only, weekends + state holidays on most public units (some Hawai'i Island units and all private land also got Wed/Thu access). Hunting of female pheasants allowed only at Kekaha GMA (Kauai) and Kuaokala GMA (Oahu) put-and-take systems, counted against bag limit; public hunters asked to avoid hens in January. Rule-book default formula (not applied in practice) is 1st Sat Nov through MLK Day/3rd Sun Jan whichever later.
Ring-necked pheasant is the most broadly distributed of Hawaii's legal upland game birds — per the Bishop Museum's Pyle & Pyle "Birds of the Hawaiian Islands" reference monograph, an authoritative 1946-1947 range-mapping study found the species distributed throughout much of Kaua'i, O'ahu, Moloka'i, Lana'i, Maui, and Hawai'i, with gaps mainly on windward forested slopes and in urban areas, and that pattern had changed little decades later. Given that near-statewide spread, the sub-state signal worth flagging for a hunter is not a density gradient but two narrower, real distinctions the source material and DOFAW's own current regulations both support: (1) DOFAW's put-and-take hen-harvest program is restricted to exactly two named GMAs statewide, and (2) a genetically and ecologically distinct "Japanese Green Pheasant" subspecies population, preferring moister high-elevation forest over the drier habitat used by the common torquatus/mongolicus hybrid population found elsewhere, persists in a small set of named locations concentrated on Hawai'i Island.
No formal population survey program exists for this species in this state.
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