BirdTrout

Northern bobwhite Hunting in Wisconsin

Colinus virginianus

Open October 17, 2026 to December 9, 2026 — 54 days afield. In Wisconsin it is barely present.

Last updated 2026-08-24 · from WDNR data · 2026 season year

The bird
Where it is
Season and limits
Where to hunt it
Hours, orange and licences
The questions
Other states

The bird

A small covey quail in steep decline across nearly all of its range. It wants brushy fencerows, weedy field corners and shrub thickets — the scruffy edges that modern field margins have largely removed, which is the whole story of what happened to it. The male carries a bold white throat and white eyestripe outlined in black; on the hen both are buff.

Written for this app. Not an agency description and not a regulation — everything below this point that is a rule carries the page it was read from.

Where it is in Wisconsin

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

The extreme south-west, at the northern edge of the species' range and thin even there. Wisconsin does set a season — statewide, five a day, from mid-October to early December — but the season is statewide and the bird is not.

Open this map in the app

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

32 of 43 subbasins draining Wisconsin carry a northern bobwhite record. Observed occurrences, not a range map and not a habitat model. Scored as a share of all bird records in the same cell, so a well-watched county does not read as better bird country than an unwatched one. The mesh is the subbasin — the unit this app scores in — and not the state line, so its edge is a drainage divide rather than a border. The green is the 10 public units in the table below, drawn as PAD-US records their boundaries: context, not permission.

Season and limits

WDNR's own dates for the 2026 season year, read from WDNR. Wisconsin lists this season as Northern bobwhite.

Segment	Opens	Closes	Days
Statewide	October 17, 2026	December 9, 2026	54

Bag limit: 5 per day, 15 in possession
Hunter orange: required At least 50% of clothing above the waist, and any head covering, must be blaze orange or fluorescent pink any time a firearm deer season is in progress. This applies to small game and archery hunters, not only to deer hunters. Waterfowl hunters are exempt.

Wisconsin requires blaze orange or fluorescent pink only while a firearm deer season is in progress — but then it applies to small game hunters too. This app flags orange as required for the whole season because missing it during gun deer season is the dangerous error. Check the gun deer dates.
Possession is three times the daily bag, which is the rule WDNR states for upland birds rather than a separate figure for this species.
Opening day starts at 9:00 a.m., not at first light.
The season is written statewide and the bird is not: bobwhite hangs on in the far south-west of Wisconsin, at the northern edge of its range, and is thin even there.

Where to hunt it

Wisconsin's huntable public land, whole. WDNR does not publish a per-parcel species list, so this is not filtered to northern bobwhite — it is every unit this app draws as legal to hunt.

Class	Units	Acres
County forest	47	2,360,239
National forest	4	1,526,746
State forest	121	553,014
State wildlife area	335	529,548
Total	507	4,969,547

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.

Hours, orange and licences

Shooting hours

not carried

WDNR publishes Wisconsin's shooting hours as a table by date rather than as a single sentence, and this app holds no copy of that table. We do not retype it here from memory: the hours move by a few minutes every week of the season, and a wrong minute at either end of the day is a citation. Read the table in the regulations before opening day. WDNR

Licences

Small game licence
Everyone hunting small game — Bought through Go Wild, WDNR's licence system.
Hunter education certificate
Anyone born on or after 1 January 1973 — Or a mentored hunting licence, which requires a qualified mentor within arm's reach.
Federal HIP registration
Woodcock and every other migratory bird — Free registration with the federal harvest survey.
Pheasant stamp
Pheasant hunters on WDNR-stocked land — Required in addition to the small game licence to hunt land the state stocks.

The questions under this one

A page each, because each one is its own search. This page is the whole picture; those answer one thing and show the rows behind the answer.