Massachusetts

Massachusetts ring-necked pheasant and northern bobwhite quail hunting are both put-and-take stocking programs, not wild populations, and share the same season shape: opening in mid-October, closing for the two-week shotgun deer season in late November, then resuming through the end of December. Pheasant hunting is legal across all fourteen Wildlife Management Zones, and Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife (MassWildlife) stocks roughly 40,000 birds a year at more than 40 Wildlife Management Areas spread across every part of the state, from Berkshire hill country in the west to Cape Cod sandplain in the southeast. Quail hunting, by contrast, is restricted by statute to Zones 11 through 14 in southeastern Massachusetts and Cape Cod, matching the only two places MassWildlife releases the roughly 4,000 quail it stocks each year: Myles Standish State Forest and the southern section of Francis Crane Wildlife Management Area.

Ruffed grouse is Massachusetts' one wild upland population, legal statewide but concentrated in the western part of the state. The Berkshires region, made up of the Taconic Mountains, Berkshire Highlands, and Berkshire Transition areas, holds the strongest population, with a secondary population in central Massachusetts' Worcester Plateau country, where former farmland continues reverting to young forest. The eastern part of the state, from the Boston Basin out to Cape Cod, has seen the clearest long-term decline as suburban development has consumed the young-forest habitat grouse need. The season runs from mid-October through late November, ending before shotgun deer season opens, so unlike pheasant and quail it has no midseason closure.