Oklahoma

Oklahoma hunts two quail species under one combined bag limit but very different ranges. Northern bobwhite is found nearly statewide, though the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation and Oklahoma State University Extension describe a real density gradient within that range: the native mixed-grass prairie of central and western Oklahoma, which has largely avoided conversion to Bermuda grass and tall fescue pasture, carries meaningfully more birds than northeastern Oklahoma, where that same pasture conversion has degraded nesting and brood cover. Scaled quail, by contrast, holds to a genuinely distinct footprint: the arid, high-plains habitat of the Panhandle counties of Cimarron, Texas, and Beaver, with smaller, more occasional populations along the state's far western edge south of the Panhandle. Both species share a season running mid-November through mid-February.

Ring-necked pheasant is confined to intensively farmed northwestern Oklahoma and the Panhandle, at the southern edge of the bird's North American range. The legal hunting area, roosters only from early December through the end of January, covers Alfalfa, Beaver, Cimarron, Garfield, Grant, Harper, Kay, Major, Noble, Osage, Texas, Woods, and Woodward counties in full, plus the parts of Blaine, Dewey, Ellis, Kingfisher, and Logan counties north of State Highway 51, a footprint that closely tracks the traditional core of Alfalfa, Beaver, Cimarron, Grant, and Texas counties the state has surveyed by spring crow counts since 1973. Habitat there is cultivated farmland mixed with weedy fencerows, ditches, field corners, and land enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program.