Ohio

Ohio's ring-necked pheasant hunting splits into a small wild population and a much larger stocked program. The wild population holds to northwestern Ohio, Williams, Fulton, and Defiance counties, and a central corridor running roughly from Marion to Ross County; survey work is concentrated in those same two areas because pheasant elsewhere in the state falls below what current methods can detect. Layered on top of that, the state stocks pheasant every fall at 41 public wildlife areas grouped into northwestern, northeastern, and southeastern clusters, a hunting-opportunity program that runs statewide independent of where the wild birds actually live; released chukar share the same stocking program and season at a smaller set of areas. The pheasant and chukar season runs from early November through early January, with two youth small-game weekends, one in late October and one in early November, ahead of it.

Northern bobwhite quail hunting is restricted to sixteen counties in southern and southwestern Ohio, down from a historically statewide range. The largest known population on public land is at Crown City Wildlife Area, a reclaimed strip mine in Lawrence and Gallia counties in the southeast; two further unmanaged clusters persist in Preble and Butler counties in the southwest and across Adams, Brown, Clinton, and Highland counties in the south-central part of the state. The quail season runs from early to late November, preceded by the same two youth small-game weekends that open pheasant season. Ruffed grouse no longer has a general season: access is limited to a lottery permit on four public units, Appalachian Hills Wildlife Area, Shawnee State Forest, Vinton Furnace State Forest, and Zaleski State Forest with the adjacent Waterloo Wildlife Area, all within the same forested Appalachian hill country of eastern and southern Ohio that has held the state's grouse population historically.