Maine

Maine's official season table lists ruffed grouse and bobwhite quail as one combined administrative entry, but only grouse is a real, huntable population; the state has no wild quail and, unlike pheasant, no quail stocking program to fall back on. Ruffed grouse hunting runs statewide across all Wildlife Management Districts from late September through the end of the year. Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife's (MDIFW) grouse assessment describes the highest densities occurring in a transitional habitat zone between the state's northern forest interior and its more developed south and central belt, aspen forest mixed with abandoned farmland, rather than in any single named region; MDIFW's own population tables show the forested north and the agricultural, more developed south carrying comparably sized grouse populations.

Ring-necked pheasant is legally open statewide on the same late-September-through-year-end dates, but it is entirely a put-and-take program: MDIFW stocks birds at roughly twenty sites, all concentrated in York and Cumberland Counties in Maine's southern coastal corner, including named public releases at Kennebunk Plains and Scarborough Marsh Wildlife Management Areas. No wild breeding population exists anywhere in the state.