| Window | Dates | Days |
|---|---|---|
| Season | 26 SEP 2026 – 15 FEB 2027 | 143d |
As publishedSept. 26, 2026-Feb. 15, 2027
Statewide except Antelope Island (closed to all upland game hunting).Youth hunt Sept. 19-21, 2026. UDWR's 2025 chukar population annual report (most recent published as of Aug 2026) noted below-average production for the 2025 brood year statewide due to unfavorable 2024-25 precipitation, following two better years (2022-24 winters).
Chukar is statewide by regulation, and UDWR's own 2022 Upland Game Management Plan states that self-sustaining chukar populations currently occupy the vast majority of suitable habitat in Utah, genuinely close to uniform across the species' steep, rocky, semi-arid range. Even so, the plan's Regional Species Priorities section names concrete strongholds and expansion targets rather than treating the range as flat: the Central Region calls out extensive chukar habitat across Tooele and Juab counties, naming the specific West Desert island mountain ranges involved: Deep Creek, Silver Island, Grassy, Lakeside, Stansbury, Cedar, Simpson, Sheeprock, Desert and Keg Mountains. These are the target of the state's ongoing guzzler/water-development program (511 upland-game water developments statewide, 424 of them chukar-targeted). The Southeastern Region separately names Carbon and Emery counties as its population centers, with active habitat-improvement and translocation work to expand wild chukar availability near those population centers.
Preliminary: Utah's own DWR is calling chukar numbers average or slightly increased across most of the state this year, with declines specific to the south and southeast tied to drought. UDWR's more rigorous Chukar Partridge Update, a camera-based water-source production index, hasn't published its 2026 edition yet, so this narrative read is the best signal available for now. That survey's 2025 edition had noted a single below-average production year statewide, following two better winters, so it's a newer, more localized drought in the south and southeast driving this year's picture, not a longer multi-year decline.
Two consecutive years of limited precipitation, concentrated in southern and southeastern Utah, is what's driving those regional declines; most of the state isn't carrying that same drag this year.
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