Pennsylvania · UplandSharp-tailed grouse

Sharp-tailed grouse has never been a native or established species in Pennsylvania, and there is no open season statewide (the species is nominally covered under PA's statutory 'grouse' game-bird category alongside ruffed grouse, but is structurally closed). Sharp-tailed grouse is naturally a bird of the northern prairies and western/boreal-transition regions, well outside its historic 21-state/8-province range, which never included Pennsylvania. Two documented introduction attempts both failed to establish a population: 25 pairs were released near Valley Forge in 1934, and in 1970 Pennsylvania's wildlife agency traded 200 wild ring-necked pheasants to South Dakota for 200 sharp-tailed grouse (released in reverting farmland habitat, in part to test whether the pheasants' tree-roosting trait could be bred into South Dakota's stock). Neither release produced a lasting population, and the species has never been recorded as established in PA.