| Window | Dates | Days |
|---|---|---|
| Window 1 | 01 OCT 2026 – 28 FEB 2027 | 151d |
| Window 2 | 17 OCT 2026 – 28 FEB 2027 | 135d |
| Window 3 | 17 OCT – 31 DEC 2026 | 76d |
| Window 4 | 01 NOV – 31 DEC 2026 | 61d |
As publishedOct 1–Feb 28 (yellow zone, cocks & hens); Oct 17–Feb 28 (light-blue zone, cocks & hens); Oct 17–Dec 31 (green zone, cocks only); Nov 1–Dec 31 (orange/dark-blue Long Island zones, cocks only east of Shinnecock Canal & Inlet)
Zone/color-coded regulations: cocks only in the western NY 'green' zone and east of Shinnecock Canal & Inlet (dark blue); cocks & hens permitted in the yellow/light-blue/orange zones. Youth hunt dates vary by zone (Sept 26-27, Oct 10-11, or Oct 24-25); WMU 2A has no youth hunt (falconry only). DEC stocks ~50,000 pen-raised pheasants annually across 100+ public hunting sites from the Reynolds Game Farm near Ithaca.
New York's pheasant hunting is entirely structured around a color-coded season-zone map rather than a wild-population density map, since DEC's own species page states wild pheasants no longer exist in populations large enough to warrant active management. The program's explicit goal is hunter recruitment via stocking (about 50,000 pen-raised birds released annually at 100+ public sites across all 8 DEC regions from the Reynolds Game Farm), not a wild-population restoration. The zone system is a genuine, agency-drawn regulatory geography (confirmed directly against the regulation and the DEC pheasant-hunting page): a Northern/Yellow Zone and Southern/Light-Blue Zone run the full Oct-Feb season with cocks and hens permitted, while the Green Zone (western NY, cocks only) and the Orange/Dark-Blue Long Island zones (cocks only east of the Shinnecock Canal & Inlet) run a shorter Oct/Nov-Dec season.
No formal population survey program exists for this species in this state.
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