Nebraska

Nebraska's ring-necked pheasant, northern bobwhite quail, gray (Hungarian) partridge, and chukar are all regulated together under one season window, running from the end of October through the end of January, with a youth-only weekend for pheasant and quail in late October just ahead of it. Pheasant's core range is southwestern Nebraska, centered on Chase, Dundy, Hayes, and Hitchcock counties, with a second strong band along the Kansas border in south-central Nebraska and a third area northwest of the Sandhills in Box Butte and Sheridan counties. Bobwhite quail run the opposite direction, densest in the southeast and extending well beyond that core along the Platte and Republican River valleys, reaching as far northwest as the Niobrara River valley near Valentine. Gray partridge sits mostly in a small area of northeast and north-central Nebraska, historically strongest in Boyd, Holt, and Knox counties, with a separate, sparser population far to the west in the Panhandle's Sioux and Scotts Bluff counties. Chukar shares partridge's season and bag but has no self-sustaining wild population anywhere in the state; birds hunters encounter are recently released or escaped, historically clustered in the Panhandle.

Greater prairie-chicken and sharp-tailed grouse are regulated together as one prairie-grouse category, split into a west zone and a limited, permit-only east zone, with a season running from September through the end of January. Prairie-chicken is densest in the eastern Sandhills of north-central Nebraska, thinning outward to the east, south, and west, with a secondary population in southeastern Nebraska tied to Conservation Reserve Program acreage that expands and contracts with enrollment. Sharp-tailed grouse holds the rest of the state's northern and western reach, occupying every county north of the North Platte and Platte Rivers except the northeast corner, with Cherry County and the Kilgore area the likely highest-density ground.