Maryland · UplandRing-necked pheasant

Maryland pheasant is a put-and-take stocking program, not a wild population -- DNR has not released birds intended to establish a wild population since the late 1960s/early 1970s, and search results consistently describe huntable wild pheasant as effectively absent statewide. Today's opportunity is DNR's stocked-hunt program for new/lapsed/junior hunters on designated public lands, plus scattered residual low-density wild birds reported in parts of Carroll, Baltimore, Frederick, and Washington Counties (central Maryland, not the Eastern Shore most associated with pheasant historically). Independent hunting-press sourcing names specific stocked sites spanning all three of Maryland's regions -- Eastern Shore, central, and western -- indicating the current stocking program, like Massachusetts's, is deliberately dispersed rather than concentrated in one area.