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Where to hunt ring-necked pheasant in Wisconsin

Last updated 2026-09-24 · from WDNR data · 2026 season year

In Wisconsin, ring-necked pheasant is well established. Statewide season, southern farmland bird, and heavily supported by WDNR stocking — a pheasant stamp is required on the land the state stocks. Wisconsin's huntable public estate is 4,969,547 acres across 507 units, not filtered by species because WDNR does not publish a per-parcel list. The best-supported of them is Jackson County Forest: 110,271 of its 121,297 acres lie in cells where the bird is recorded. Units here are ordered by how much of each one lies in subbasins where ring-necked pheasant is recorded at regular strength or better, not by how big the unit is.

Where the bird is

well established An editorial summary of the bird's status in this state — not a population estimate and not a survey.

Statewide season, southern farmland bird, and heavily supported by WDNR stocking — a pheasant stamp is required on the land the state stocks.

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Stronghold Regular Present Occasional No records The 10 units in the table below

The public units with the most recorded ground

Wisconsin's huntable public units. WDNR does not publish a per-parcel species list, so this is not filtered to ring-necked pheasant.

Ordered by recorded acres — how much of each unit lies inside subbasins where ring-necked pheasant is recorded at regular strength or better — rather than by how big the unit is. The biggest block in a state is often not in the half of it the bird is in. PAD-US splits a forest into many parcels, so acreage is summed over the unit's name, and the share is measured against the unit's drawn boundary rather than a centroid: a national forest can be two polygons across half a peninsula.

WDNR names no geographic restriction on this season, so no unit is excluded for being outside one.
Season geography here is read off a dates table rather than the rule itself, and a dates table carries no boundary.

The whole public estate, by land class

Every huntable unit in Wisconsin, not the ranked ten above and not narrowed to where ring-necked pheasant is recorded or where the season is open. It is here as the denominator the table above was drawn from.

PAD-US says who manages a parcel, not where its boundary runs on the ground and not whether a unit carries a local closure. Context, not permission — check the unit with WDNR before you park.

Within a drive of a town

The same ground read from where a reader starts rather than from the state line: the public units within forty miles of one town, ordered the same way. A town is on this list only where at least three units reach that far and hold ten thousand recorded acres between them.

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The other questions

• How to hunt ring-necked pheasant in Wisconsin
• When does Wisconsin's 2026 ring-necked pheasant season open?
• Wisconsin ring-necked pheasant regulations, 2026
• Wisconsin ring-necked pheasant hunting report
• Ring-necked pheasant hunting in Wisconsin — the whole picture
• Ring-necked pheasant — biology, range and how it is hunted

By region

• Ring-necked pheasant hunting in south-east Wisconsin

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