Washington

Washington's four forest grouse species, dusky, sooty, ruffed, and spruce grouse, share one combined season but split the state along elevation and geography. Dusky grouse holds the east slope of the Cascades, north-central and northeastern Washington, and the Blue Mountains of the southeast corner, while sooty grouse takes the west side instead, the Olympic Mountains and the west slope of the Cascades, with the two overlapping only at the southern end of the Cascades around Yakima County. Ruffed grouse is the lowest-elevation and most broadly distributed of the four, found in foothill and lowland forest on both sides of the state, alder bottoms and clearcuts in the west and aspen draws in the east. Spruce grouse is the narrowest and highest-elevation of the four, concentrated in the Selkirk Mountains of the far northeastern corner, Ferry, Stevens, and Pend Oreille counties, with a thinner secondary presence in the high country of the Cascades and Olympics.

California quail is huntable statewide, but Eastern Washington, the shrub-steppe and farmland of the Columbia Basin and Yakima Valley, holds by far the larger population; a smaller, longer-established population also persists in the Puget Trough of Western Washington. Chukar and gray partridge are both Eastern Washington only, but split by terrain: chukar holds to steep, rocky canyon breaks along the Yakima and Columbia Rivers and a separate population in the Snake River/Hells Canyon country of the far southeast, while gray partridge prefers the open shrub-steppe and dryland grain country of the Columbia Basin and Waterville Plateau instead. Mountain quail's only huntable population is a non-native, introduced one in Western Washington; the species' actual native range, in Asotin, Garfield, and Columbia counties in the far southeast, is closed to hunting entirely. Northern bobwhite is scattered and unpredictable statewide, with the one population an independent source describes as currently established sitting in the southern Puget Sound prairies of Thurston and Pierce counties. Ring-necked pheasant splits along the same east/west line: Eastern Washington's Palouse and Columbia Basin wheat country holds a genuine wild, self-sustaining population, while Western Washington pheasant hunting depends almost entirely on a put-and-take release program at more than fifty sites statewide. Band-tailed pigeon is open statewide as well.