South Dakota

Ring-necked pheasant is South Dakota's signature bird, concentrated in the east-central part of the state across the James River and Big Sioux River watersheds, where a mix of idle grassland, row crops, and winter cover carries the state's biggest population. The season runs in three stages: a youth-only weekend in late September, a short resident-only weekend on public land in early October, and the regular rooster-only season from mid-October through the end of January.

Prairie chicken, sharp-tailed grouse, and ruffed grouse share one combined bag and a single season, running from mid-September through the end of January, but split cleanly by geography. Greater prairie-chicken holds to the large native-prairie tracts of central South Dakota, centered on Fort Pierre National Grassland. Sharp-tailed grouse is strongest west of the Missouri River, with a thinner population across roughly half of the counties east of it and a smaller, separate population in the Black Hills. Ruffed grouse occurs nowhere else in the state outside the Black Hills National Forest, most abundant in the northern Hills where aspen stands remain most extensive. Gray (Hungarian) partridge is close to statewide but leans toward the cropland and shelterbelt country of eastern South Dakota; chukar shares partridge's season and bag but has no established wild population anywhere in the state. Northern bobwhite quail sit at the extreme northern edge of their range, found almost entirely in the southeastern corner along the Missouri River border counties, running from mid-October through the end of January.