Ohio · UplandRing-necked pheasant

Ohio pheasant hunting splits cleanly into a small, geographically real wild population and a much larger statewide stocked put-and-take program (ODNR's own 2020-21 Hunter Questionnaire found stocked-pheasant harvest, ~127,533 birds, outweighed wild-pheasant harvest, ~3,953 birds, by roughly 32 to 1). ODNR's own 2025 Ring-necked Pheasant Population Status Report runs distance-sampling roadside surveys only in central and northwestern Ohio and finds pheasants were most abundant on survey routes in south-central and northwestern Ohio, the only two sub-regions ODNR's own survey covers at all, since earlier survey efforts (prior to 2022) in other parts of the state suggest pheasant populations outside the current survey blocks fall below what ODNR's methodology can detect. This is corroborated independently by outdoor-press sourcing naming Williams, Fulton, and Defiance counties (extreme northwestern Ohio) plus a central corridor from Marion to Ross County as the wild range. Separately, ODNR's fall stocking program releases birds at 41 named public wildlife areas spanning northwestern, northeastern, and southeastern Ohio, a statewide hunting-opportunity program independent of where the wild population actually lives.