Interior view of northern hardwood and spruce-fir mixed forest along Long Trail at Mount Mansfield State Forest, showing healthy moss-covered understory and canopy structure typical of Vermont upland habitat — Interior view of northern hardwood and spruce-fir mixed forest along Long Trail at Mount Mansfield State Forest, showing healthy moss-covered understory and canopy structure typical of Vermont upland habitatMount Mansfield Spruce-Fir Forest · CC BY-SA 4.0

Vermont

Species on recordOpen now3Classified6Record year2026

The place

What/when/where in Vermont

Ruffed grouse, also called partridge locally, is Vermont's primary upland game bird, found statewide but with the Northeast Kingdom offering the best hunting in the state and the Green Mountains holding the largest share of the statewide population.

Ring-necked pheasant persists in small numbers in the Champlain Valley, some wild but most descended from private stocking; the state ran its own release program there and in the lower Connecticut River valley and Bennington County before ending it decades ago. Chukar and northern bobwhite quail are both legally open with no closed season, but neither has an established wild population anywhere in the state; both occur only through scattered, unmapped private releases, which is why the law treats them as open year-round rather than setting a discrete season.

Issuing agencyVermont Fish and Wildlife Departmentvtfishandwildlife.comRecord year 2026

The reason people drive here

Ring-necked pheasant

Ring-necked pheasant

#1Ring-necked pheasantRing-necked pheasant is an adaptable bird with no single cover type: grassy roadsides and ditches for spring nesting, hayfields as they green up, and dense cattail marsh or stiff native grass for winter. Cover use shifts by season more than any one habitat matters.

Open (practically nonexistent wild population)

26 SEP – 31 DEC 202644 statesUpland

Every bird classified here

Species run

Status is computed from the published dates, not stored — a stale build cannot show an ended season as open.

Ruffed grouse

#3Ruffed grouseRuffed grouse depends on young, dense deciduous forest, especially aspen roughly 6 to 16 years past a cut or disturbance. Birds concentrate at edges, where young regrowth meets older timber or a brushy swamp, rather than in open ground.

Open

26 SEP – 31 DEC 202639 statesUpland

Ring-necked pheasant

#1Ring-necked pheasantRing-necked pheasant is an adaptable bird with no single cover type: grassy roadsides and ditches for spring nesting, hayfields as they green up, and dense cattail marsh or stiff native grass for winter. Cover use shifts by season more than any one habitat matters.

Open (practically nonexistent wild population)

26 SEP – 31 DEC 202644 statesUpland

Northern bobwhite quail

#2Northern bobwhite quailNorthern bobwhite needs early-successional habitat: weedy fields, thinned pine woods, fallow field borders, and hedgerows, wherever disturbance has reset the ground to brushy young growth. Birds shelter in dense cover and walk out into adjacent open ground to feed.

No Closed Season (open year-round)

42 statesUpland

Chukar

#7ChukarChukar live in steep, dry, rocky country: canyon walls, talus slopes, rimrock, and cheatgrass hillsides, usually within reach of a spring or seep. This is terrain-first hunting; expect a serious climb wherever chukar are found.

No Closed Season (open year-round)

24 statesUpland

Gray (Hungarian) partridge

#8Gray (Hungarian) partridgeGray (Hungarian) partridge is an edge species of open farm country: hayfields, small grain, and row crops broken up by fencerows, shelterbelts, and grassy margins. Coveys are sedentary, rarely ranging more than a mile from home.

No open season

23 statesUpland

American woodcock

#10American woodcockAmerican woodcock favor damp, early-successional cover: alder swales, regenerating cuts, and creek-bottom edges where the soil stays moist enough to hold earthworms. Look along the margins of young aspen or hardwood regrowth rather than deep in the thickest brush.

Open

26 SEP – 09 NOV 202638 statesFederal framework

Free · invite-gated beta

Have a season you’re trying to plan?

Join the waitlist and tell us what you’re working on — the planner reads it first once your access opens.

Free, invite-gated, unsubscribe anytime. See what it returns