A Tough Year in the Field, But the Birds Are Still Out There
North Dakota's 2025 upland bird season came in below expectations across the board. Pheasant, sharp-tailed grouse, and gray partridge harvests all dropped compared to 2024, and the numbers tell a story that goes well beyond just a slow season — they point to specific conditions on the ground that every serious bird hunter needs to understand heading into 2026.
The good news? The situation is far from dire. In fact, for pheasant hunters especially, there may be more birds out there right now than the harvest numbers suggest.
Pheasants: Fewer Chicks, But the Roosters Are Still There
The pheasant harvest dropped from 357,018 roosters in 2024 to 344,975 in 2025 — a decline of about 3%. The number of hunters also fell, from 55,401 down to 53,008. On the surface, those numbers look discouraging, but the state's upland game biologist offers a more nuanced picture.
"We were not surprised by a decrease in pheasant harvest in the fall of 2025 based on decreases of chicks in our late summer roadside counts. Chick production was negatively impacted by the cool, wet nesting season and these juvenile birds are often what make up a significant portion of a hunter's bag. However, adult pheasant densities remain high due to good survival from the mild winter," said RJ Gross, North Dakota Game and Fish Department upland game biologist.
That distinction matters. The drop in harvest wasn't necessarily because there were fewer birds across the state — it was because fewer young birds came through the pipeline that season. Juvenile pheasants, born that spring and summer, typically make up a large share of what hunters are actually shooting. When a cold, rainy June hammers the nesting season, the math changes fast.
What makes the 2025 pheasant situation particularly interesting is what Gross says about access. Even with the lower numbers, he believes the birds were out there — hunters just couldn't always get to them. "Given the number of roosters remaining on the landscape post-season, access was likely the most limiting factor for pheasant hunter success," Gross said.
The counties that produced the most pheasant action in 2025 were Hettinger, Divide, Williams, Stark, and McLean — a familiar lineup for anyone who has hunted North Dakota's best rooster country.
Sharp-Tailed Grouse: A Harder Story
The sharptail numbers are where things get genuinely concerning. The harvest dropped from 73,010 birds in 2024 to just 55,539 in 2025 — a 24% decline. Hunter numbers fell from 21,660 to 18,241, a drop of 16%.
The summer roadside brood counts had already telegraphed trouble. Sharp-tailed grouse were down 38% in those surveys, which set a low ceiling for what the season could realistically deliver. But the drop from spring survey numbers to late summer numbers pointed to something beyond just bad weather for nesting.
"In addition to cool, wet weather in June, which is unfavorable for chick survival, we suspect sharptail may have been impacted by West Nile virus because they declined from spring surveys to late summer surveys. Those declines appeared to have hampered the rebounding population, and the 24% drop in sharptail harvest reflects this," Gross said.
West Nile virus has been a known threat to upland birds for years, but it doesn't always show up clearly in the harvest data. The fact that biologists are specifically flagging it as a likely factor in the 2025 sharptail decline is significant. It suggests the population was already working against a headwind before hunters ever took to the field.
Top counties for sharptails in 2025 were Divide, Hettinger, Mountrail, Adams, and Bowman.
Gray Partridge: Quietly Following the Same Trend
Hungarian partridge — or Huns, as most hunters call them — also had a rough go in 2025. The harvest fell from 67,465 birds in 2024 to 50,445, a 25% drop. Hunter participation slid from 21,887 to 18,343, down 16%.
Like the pheasant and sharptail declines, the partridge numbers reflect the same underlying pressure: a cool, wet spring that made for poor nesting conditions across the board. Gray partridge tend to nest in similar habitat and timing windows as pheasants, so when the weather turns on one species, it typically hits the others too.
The best Hun country in 2025 was concentrated in Stark, McLean, Hettinger, Williams, and Divide counties — with some geographic overlap with the top pheasant and sharptail areas, which is typical for North Dakota's mixed upland bird landscape.
What 2026 Could Look Like
Here is where the outlook starts to brighten, at least for pheasant hunters. North Dakota came through another mild winter heading into 2026, which is exactly the kind of survival condition that sustains adult bird populations between breeding seasons. Roosters that made it through 2025 and survived a mild winter are still on that landscape right now, ready to contribute to this year's hatch.
"Although hunters harvested fewer pheasants in 2025, we are optimistic after yet another mild winter, that the high pheasant population should carry through to 2026," Gross said.
That's not a guarantee, and Gross is careful to frame it that way. The fall forecast still depends heavily on what happens between now and September. Nesting success and brood survival are the variables that nobody can predict in February or March. A warm, dry June can flip the outlook fast. A cold, wet one can erase a strong adult base in a hurry.
For hunters planning their fall trips into North Dakota, the honest answer right now is that the foundation looks solid — particularly for pheasants — but the picture will sharpen significantly once summer roadside counts come in. Those late summer surveys are the closest thing to a preview of what October will deliver, and paying attention to that data is worth the effort for anyone investing in licenses, travel, and time off.
Why Access Is the Conversation Nobody Wants to Have
There is something buried in Gross's comments about pheasant access that deserves a longer look. If roosters were plentiful enough post-season to suggest that access — not bird numbers — was the primary limiting factor for hunter success, that is a land access story as much as a wildlife management story.
North Dakota has a complicated relationship with public land and hunter access. The Walk-In Area program has helped open private acres over the years, but competition for good bird country is real, and the best-producing ground often belongs to private landowners with the power to decide who gets on and who doesn't. If the birds were there in 2025 and hunters still couldn't fill their limits, that gap between population and harvest is worth paying attention to — both for the state's wildlife managers and for hunters who want to do their homework before the season opens.
The Bottom Line for Hunters
North Dakota's 2025 upland season was down across all three major species — pheasants, sharptails, and gray partridge — driven primarily by a poor nesting year and, in the case of sharp-tailed grouse, likely compounded by West Nile virus pressure. Those are real factors that produced real declines in the field.
But the underlying adult pheasant population came through another mild winter in strong shape, and that provides genuine reason for optimism heading into 2026. The sharptail and Hun situations bear watching, as both species took harder hits and will need favorable conditions to rebound.
For hunters who have been on the fence about making a North Dakota trip, the smart move is to wait for the summer brood survey data before booking anything. If June cooperates and chick production bounces back, the 2026 season could look very different from 2025. If the weather turns wet again, the numbers may stay soft.
Either way, the adult birds are there. North Dakota's upland country still holds some of the best rooster hunting on the continent, and one tough season doesn't change that. What it does change is the homework required before showing up and expecting limits to fall the way they used to.
