Oregon · UplandRing-necked pheasant

Oregon's wild, self-sustaining ring-necked pheasant population is confined to the intensively farmed Columbia Basin districts of eastern Oregon, while western Oregon, despite being the historic 1882 Willamette Valley site of the pheasant's first successful North American introduction, now has essentially no wild population. ODFW's 2025-26 Game Bird Hunting Forecast places eastern Oregon populations in the Heppner, Umatilla, Mid-Columbia, Harney and Union districts of the Columbia Basin, with the Malheur District showing continued improvement, while west of the Cascades pheasants are scarce and largely limited to whatever permanent cover survives along the edges of agricultural fields. To create hunting opportunity in the west where the wild population has collapsed, ODFW instead operates a put-and-take "fee pheasant" stocking program at four named western Oregon wildlife areas: Denman (near Medford), Fern Ridge (near Eugene), Sauvie Island (near Portland), and E.E. Wilson (near Monmouth/Corvallis). The program requires a separate fee-pheasant tag and is explicitly distinct from the wild eastern-Oregon population.