Louisiana

Louisiana's real upland season is northern bobwhite quail, open statewide from late November through the end of February. Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries' (LDWF) Bobwhite Recovery Plan tracks the bird across five regions using a decades-long whistle-count survey: the Loblolly, shortleaf, and hardwood uplands of northwest Louisiana, historically the state's strongest bobwhite ground; the longleaf pine belt of west-central Louisiana around Vernon Parish, home to the Vernon Quail Emphasis Area on Kisatchie National Forest; the Florida Parishes of southeast Louisiana, home to Sandy Hollow Wildlife Management Area, the state's only WMA managed specifically for bobwhite; the Acadiana rice belt of south-central Louisiana, the old Louisiana prairie; and the Macon Ridge and Mississippi/Atchafalaya agricultural belt of northeast Louisiana. Ring-necked pheasant has its own line in the regulations, open on the same dates as quail, but Louisiana has no self-sustaining wild pheasant population and no stocking program for the species; it is a legacy statutory listing rather than a bird a hunter can realistically go find.