North Dakota Young Pheasant Season is This Weekend

North Dakota’s two-day junior pheasant season is this weekend.

Licensed residents and non-residents age 15 and under may hunt rooster pheasants statewide on Saturdays and Sundays. An adult at least 18 years old must accompany the young hunter. The adult cannot carry a weapon.

The goal of the season is to introduce new hunters to the great outdoors, with limited competition in the field, according to the state Department of Fish and Game.

Hunters over the age of 12 must have passed a certified hunter education course or obtained an apprentice hunter validation, which allows a youth to hunt small game for one year of license without completing hunter education.

This year’s regular pheasant hunting season begins next Saturday, October 8, and runs through next January 1. North Dakota’s overall pheasant population has increased since a drought-plagued 2021, but numbers remain low in the major hunting territory in the Southwest, according to the Department of Fish and Game’s annual late-summer pheasant survey.