Northern bobwhite quail

AZGFD runs no survey or forecast program for northern bobwhite quail — confirmed absence, consistent with its classification as unprotected wildlife with a year-round open season rather than a regulated game bird with set dates.

AGFC's Annual Quail Program Report (WMA-level population estimates by habitat focal area) is a real, recurring program — a 2026-08-19 fresh check of agfc.com/hunting/more-game/quail/ confirms the latest linked edition is still the 2024 report (alongside a 2023 Quail Focal Area Report and 2023/2022 Annual Quail Program Reports); no 2025 or 2026 edition is linked yet, and AGFC has never confirmed a fixed annual publish month for this report. AGFC's other quail products (summer covey-sighting citizen-science survey, in-season Quail Hunter's Log) are data-collection tools that feed this same report rather than standalone forecasts; a dedicated SD/NE/KS-style pre-season quail outlook document does not exist here (confirmed absence).

Governed by CPW's annual 'Eastern Plains Pheasant and Quail Forecast' (combined pheasant/bobwhite quail/scaled quail document), published early November each year (confirmed Nov 3 2022, Nov 16 2023, Nov 4 2024, Nov 3-6 2025) at a stable URL overwritten in place. Re-checked 2026-08-19: still showing the 2025-26 edition; the 2026-27 edition is expected ~early November 2026.

Confirmed absence: DEEP's own fact sheet states native Connecticut bobwhite have 'probably been extirpated'; modern quail hunting relies exclusively on pen-raised release birds, so no wild-population survey exists.

Confirmed absence: FWC's only quail program (the Upland Ecosystem Restoration Project / 'Bring Back Bobwhites'-style outreach) is habitat restoration and private-landowner cooperation, not an FWC-conducted census or a published hunter-facing pre-season outlook. Re-checked 2026-08-19; no fresher FWC content found.

Confirmed absence: GA DNR/WRD's Bobwhite Quail Initiative is a habitat-restoration/technical-assistance program for private landowners (citing an ~85% population decline since the 1960s) -- no WRD-conducted quantitative survey (call-count, whistle-count) and no published pre-season forecast exists. Re-checked 2026-08-19; no fresher WRD content found.

No standalone bobwhite survey exists; covered only narratively within IDFG's statewide/regional Upland Game Bird Forecast. Re-confirmed via fresh search 2026-08-19: the 2026 edition had not published (2025 edition published Sept 5, 2025); regional pages still show 2025 content. Expected within the next 2-3 weeks.

Northern bobwhite quail is one of three species (with pheasant, gray partridge) covered by IDNR's annual Upland Hunting Forecast, built on the spring/summer Upland Bird Route Survey plus the retrospective Hunter Harvest Survey. Re-confirmed via fresh search 2026-08-19: the most recent edition found is still 'The 2025-2026 Upland Hunting Forecast' (published Nov 3, 2025); no 2026-27 edition found. Expected ~early November 2026, close to the Nov 1 season opener.

Bobwhite quail is one of the three species (with pheasant, gray partridge) tracked by Iowa DNR's August Roadside Survey. Only the pre-survey weather-model prediction (July 2026, pheasant-only in its public framing) has published so far -- already captured in ia/ring-necked-pheasant.json per an earlier pass, not repeated here. Re-confirmed via fresh search 2026-08-19: the actual survey results (225 routes, fieldwork Aug 1-15) had not yet posted at iowadnr.gov/pheasantsurvey; multiple 2026 local-news pieces (KCII, KMAland, Bedford Times-Press) confirm fieldwork was still underway as of early-to-mid August. Expected early-to-mid September 2026 (one 2026 source cited "around September 15").

Gated by KDWP's annual Upland Bird Forecast (pheasant/quail/prairie-chicken narrative), fed by the spring quail whistle-count survey and the July-September roadside Quail/Pheasant/Turkey Brood Survey. Re-confirmed 2026-08-19: the live KDWP forecast page itself still reads "2026 Upland Bird Forecast coming this fall!", no standalone whistle-count or brood-survey report found yet either.

Gated by KDFWR's Rural Mail Carrier Survey (RMCS, running continuously since 1960), which explicitly functions as the season's pre-season outlook via the annual "Quail Report." A fresh check of fw.ky.gov's Bobwhite Quail page (2026-08-19) confirms the latest linked edition is still the 2022-23 Quail Report — no 2023-24, 2024-25, or 2025-26 edition found. Fieldwork itself is real and recurs every July; this is the same "active program, no dated fresher report" pattern as ruffed grouse in this state, not a confirmed absence.

Gated by LDWF's Fall Bobwhite Whistle Survey (FBWS, 54 routes statewide since 1983), explicitly designed to forecast fall hunting abundance. Re-confirmed 2026-08-19: FBWS fieldwork itself runs late October-early November, which hasn't opened yet — no 2026 result can exist this early, distinct from most other combos in this batch where fieldwork has already happened but the report hasn't published. No fixed historical publish-date pattern was found for results once fieldwork completes.

Confirmed absence: no wild Maine population and no state stocking program. Bobwhite quail is administratively combined into a single regulatory row with ruffed grouse ("Ruffed Grouse & Bobwhite Quail," shared bag limit) as a long-standing administrative artifact, not an active managed hunt.

Confirmed absence of survey infrastructure: a fresh 2026-08-19 check of DNR's Bobwhite Quail page and a search pass found only descriptive/life-history content — no whistle-count, covey-count, or forecast document of any kind, despite the species being present in southern Maryland and the Eastern Shore.

Confirmed absence: MassWildlife's own explicit position is "there are no wild bobwhite in Massachusetts today" — the entire huntable supply is ~4,000 stocked birds/year at two sites (Myles Standish State Forest, Francis Crane WMA).

MI DNR's only bobwhite instrument is the long-running Pheasant/Quail Cooperators survey (since 1999) — hunter-reported flush counts submitted during the season itself, an in-season/concurrent tool rather than a discrete pre-season forecast document. A real, active program exists but produces no dated pre-season report to cite; classified not_yet_published on that basis (active monitoring, no dated report), not no_program.

MDWFP runs an annual June whistle-count call survey on selected WMAs (12-20 points per area, same points counted each year), published on a standing “Quail Population Trends” page overwritten in place rather than archived per year. mdwfp.com returns a TLS certificate error to every direct fetch attempt (re-confirmed this pass, same as the Tier A pass); could not verify current page content directly. A real, active program — classified not_yet_published (pending confirmation the page reflects 2026 data) rather than no_program.

MDC's combined Quail and Pheasant Roadside Survey (Conservation Agents drive permanent 30-mile routes across 111/114 counties, fieldwork Aug 1-15) is published each October. The 2025 edition is already out (1.68 quail/route, down 20% vs. 2024) but that's last year's data, not this year's outlook; 2026 fieldwork (Aug 1-15, 2026) has just closed as of this capture, with the report expected ~October 2026 per the URL-path precedent (the 2023 edition's path is dated `2023-10`).

Tracked via the same NGPC Upland Game Bird Hunting Outlook PDF as prairie-chicken (folding in April/July Rural Mail Carrier Surveys and the mid-June-mid-July bobwhite whistle-count survey). A fresh check this pass caught a stale-attribution trap: a WebSearch summary and a syndicated Outdoor Wire mirror of NGPC's press release both initially read as describing the current 2026 season, but a direct fetch of the Outdoor Wire release confirmed its actual publish date is August 26, 2025, describing the 2025-26 season (comparing spring/summer 2025 survey results to 2024) — not a 2026 finding. outdoornebraska.gov itself returns HTTP 403 to every direct fetch attempt. No genuine 2026 edition found; expected late August 2026 (within about a week) per the 2025 precedent (Aug 26, 2025 publish date).

Jointly regulated with chukar and Hungarian partridge under one season/bag line, with no wild NH population confirmed by secondary sources (Project Upland, Ultimate Upland), consistent with the CT/DE/ME/NJ put-and-take pattern already documented in this registry. A fresh targeted search this pass (beyond the Tier A pass) found no NHFG-specific bobwhite population or program evidence either way -- a lower-confidence closure, flagged explicitly since no NHFG primary source addresses bobwhite specifically.

Governing source is NMDGF's “Fall Roadside Survey” (combined scaled/Gambel's/bobwhite/Montezuma quail), described by NMDGF's own Turkey and Upland Game Biologist Casey Cardinal as being in “preliminary stages of implementation” as of 2022 reporting -- whether it has since matured into a regularly published index remains genuinely unconfirmed, not a confirmed absence. Stale-attribution catch this pass: a WebSearch result surfaced a Cardinal quote describing quail as having “rebounded extremely well” with “outstanding production,” read with no year label attached; direct-fetching the source article (wildlife.dgf.nm.gov, “Southeast New Mexico is your best bet for quail”) confirmed it is dated November 23, 2016, describing the 2016-17 season -- not a 2026 finding. No genuine 2026 NMDGF quail forecast (survey or narrative) was found. 2026 statewide drought conditions (D2 Severe Drought by late April, earliest snowmelt on record) point toward a weaker year by the same precipitation-driven logic used in Cardinal's prior commentary, but that is inference, not a published 2026 finding -- noted for color, not treated as a rating.

NY's one wild, self-sustaining bobwhite population is confined to Long Island (Suffolk County), backed by a long-running call-count survey (since 1979) documented in DEC's own Species Status Assessment -- from an average of ~101 calling males/year in the 1980s down to ~41 more recently, a steep decline paralleling Georgia's and Kentucky's already-documented bobwhite findings in this registry. The underlying SSA PDF remains binary/uncompressible via this session's fetch tooling (re-confirmed this pass); current 2026 cadence not independently confirmed -- active, real, long-running program with no discrete dated 2026 report found, not a program lapse.

Governing source is NCWRC's annual Spring Breeding Bobwhite Quail Call Count (21-stop routes, 1-mile spacing, 3-minute listening periods, documented back to the 1950s-1970s), showing a steep, still-ongoing decline (a 2012 summary cites -4.0%/year statewide, with reliable estimates now confined mostly to the eastern third of the state). A fresh direct-fetch attempt at the species page 404'd, and a fresh search this pass confirmed no summary edition newer than 2012 was found -- the underlying annual survey is described by NCWRC as ongoing, so this is a genuine research gap (matching the Kentucky Quail Report precedent already documented in this registry), not a confirmed program lapse.

ODNR's Crown City Wildlife Area Northern Bobwhite Population Status Report (Lawrence/Gallia counties, roadside call-count + distance sampling, annual since 2019) is a real, rigorous, but narrowly-scoped instrument -- the 2025 edition (published June 2025) estimated 159 bobwhite (95% CI: 88-287), broadly stable-to-increasing since 2019. A 2026 edition was checked for directly this pass (guessed URL 404s) and via fresh search -- not found. Fieldwork runs May 15-June 30 annually; exact report-publish lag versus fieldwork completion isn't independently confirmed, so an exact expected date can't be stated, but no 2026 edition exists yet as of 2026-08-19.

ODWC's August + October Roadside Quail Survey (81 routes/75 counties, combined bobwhite + scaled quail, unbroken since 1990) is the governing source -- the 2025 August edition (published Sept 2025) put the statewide index at 4.98 quail/route, just below the 36-year average and well above the 10-year average. Checked directly this pass via search for a 2026 August edition; not found. Expected ~September 2026 based on the 2025 precedent, roughly 1-6 weeks out from this 2026-08-19 check.

Confirmed absence of a wild, surveyed population: PGC's own 2013-14 route surveys found the species fully extirpated statewide. The 'open,' no-bag-limit Sept-March season is a nominal legacy entry against an active but nascent reintroduction effort (Letterkenny Army Depot Bobwhite Quail Recovery Area, 76 birds released as of the 2024 restart, hunting itself closed there) -- a population-building effort, not a survey-and-forecast program.

No RIDEM population survey or forecast exists for bobwhite quail; it shares the same Game Bird Permit and stocked-WMA infrastructure as pheasant, with no standalone quail survey identified across the Tier A pass or a fresh check this pass.

SCDNR's Bobwhite Quail Whistling Cock Census (73 routes statewide, unbroken since 1979) is the governing source; 2026 fieldwork ran June 15-July 10, but the 2026 report has not been published yet -- a guessed 26WCSurveyRpt.pdf filename returned a 404 on direct fetch 2026-08-19, and the most recent edition found remains the 2025 report. Expected sometime after fieldwork closes, no fixed publish date confirmed.

SD GFP's quail program has no quantitative or qualitative pre-season survey of any kind - confirmed absence of any outlook/forecast infrastructure for this species, any year (per knowledge-base's 2026 outlook data-collection-plan registry).

TWRA's own quail page describes habitat/restoration work only, with no published survey methodology or results. The strongest concrete signal is NBCI's Coordinated Implementation Program, which requires an annual spring call count and fall covey count at TWRA's Wolf River WMA focal area -- active monitoring confirmed, but it remains unconfirmed whether TWRA publishes a standalone TN-specific result, or whether it surfaces only inside NBCI's national reporting. Classified not_yet_published on the active-monitoring-no-dated-report basis rather than no_program.

Governed by TPWD's Roadside Quail Survey (statewide by ecoregion, established 1976); fieldwork ran the first two weeks of August 2026, but results are not published until mid-October historically (Oct 15, 2025 and Oct 21, 2024 confirmed prior dates). No 2026 edition found as of 2026-08-19.

Confirmed absence: per VFWD's own framing, bobwhite quail is 'practically non-existent in the wild except by private stocking' in Vermont. No population survey of any kind exists for what is not an established wild population.

VA DWR runs a real two-instrument suite (a spring whistle-count survey and a rural mail carrier survey), cited via secondary sources as showing ongoing decline (4.0%/year and 2.9%/year respectively), plus a Hunter Cooperator program whose own participation has fallen to 58 active cooperators from a 200+ peak (VA DWR describes it as "in danger" of being lost). A direct fetch of DWR's own quail trends page (dwr.virginia.gov/quail/hunting-information/trends/) on 2026-08-19 found no dated 2025 or 2026 update -- active monitoring confirmed, but no discrete dated report located this pass.

WDFW publishes no discrete, forward-looking pre-season outlook for this species comparable to SD/NE/KS-style flagship documents. The only WA-specific data source found is the retrospective, all-species "Game Status and Trend Report" (535 pages, 2025 edition published Feb 25, 2026), which reports the completed prior season's harvest/status rather than forecasting the upcoming one -- treated as no dedicated forecast program exists, per this plan's established convention for retrospective-only coverage.

A multi-year translocation/restoration project (begun 2020 at Tomblin WMA using Texas-sourced, radio-collar-monitored birds, since expanded to five additional WMAs and one state forest, ~12,000 of a stated 20,000-bird goal released as of the most recent figures found) is active and ongoing, with a stated 10-30% regeneration-rate goal -- a program-progress effort, not a wild-population census or hunter-facing pre-season forecast. Tomblin WMA itself is closed to bobwhite hunting while the restoration continues. Active monitoring confirmed, no discrete dated 2026 report found.

WI DNR runs a real, if infrequent, Regional Bobwhite Quail and Cottontail Rabbit Survey (whistling-male call counts) -- editions confirmed found for 2015, 2019, and 2021 (2019: 0.003 whistling males/stop, down from 0.008 in 2017, a significant decline). A search on 2026-08-19 found no edition newer than 2021 -- active program, but no confirmed 2025 or 2026 report located this pass (quick classification only, per this plan's process; not deep-dived further).