North Dakota’s fall upland season is opening on top of one of the more lopsided survey years in recent memory. The state’s 2026 brood survey recorded 80 pheasants per 100 miles, up 3.8 percent from 2025 and 57 percent above the 10-year average. Sharp-tailed grouse rose 16 percent statewide to 9.7 birds per 100 miles — still 31 percent below the 10-year benchmark. Gray partridge went the other direction, dropping 17 percent to 13 per 100 miles.
The district-by-district numbers explain how the statewide averages hold together. The southwest, which historically produces the state’s densest pheasant hunts, again led the survey at 112 pheasants per 100 miles with 13 broods and an average brood size of 5.7 chicks. The northwest posted 85 pheasants per 100 miles with an average brood size of 4.7. The southeast slipped to 64 pheasants per 100 miles from 72 in 2025 and to 8.6 broods per 100 miles from 9.4. The northeast, the smallest of the four districts by pheasant volume, showed the most dramatic year-over-year move: 43 pheasants per 100 miles against 22 last year, and five broods per 100 miles against three.
That North Dakota surge is not isolated. Across the state line in Minnesota, the 2026 pheasant index posted 90 birds per 100 miles, up nearly 20 percent from 75 last year, with the west central region up 74 percent year over year. Two adjacent surveys with two different methodologies pointed at the same picture: the Prairie Pothole region put a strong brood year on the board in 2026, and hunters walking Great Plains grass this fall are walking into more birds than they have in years.
Sharp-tailed grouse and gray partridge, the two other upland species tracked in the same survey, add nuance. Grouse are climbing off a long trough — up 16 percent statewide but still nearly a third below their 10-year average, per the same survey table. Partridge continue a multi-year national trend of decline in grassland-margin species, and their 17 percent drop this year takes them further from what an average season used to look like.
