BirdTrout

Ruffed grouse Hunting in Michigan

Bonasa umbellus

Open September 15, 2025 to January 1, 2026 — 93 days afield. In Michigan it is a stronghold.

Last updated 2026-08-24 · from MDNR data · 2025–26 licence year

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

The bird

The upland bird of the northern hardwoods — a chicken-sized woodland grouse that holds tight and flushes loud. It lives in young aspen and mixed brush between about five and twenty years old, which is why grouse country is cut-over country rather than big timber. Look for the black neck ruff it is named for and the broad dark band across the end of the fanned tail.

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 Michigan

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

Michigan's premier game bird and the one the state is known for. The northern Lower and the Upper Peninsula carry it in numbers, on the aspen cut that decades of forestry have kept coming.

Open this map in the app

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

47 of 59 subbasins draining Michigan carry a ruffed grouse 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

MDNR's own dates for the 2025–26 licence year, read from MDNR. Michigan lists this season as Ruffed grouse.

Segment	Opens	Closes	Days
Segment 1	September 15, 2025	November 14, 2025	61
Segment 2	December 1, 2025	January 1, 2026	32

Bag limit: 5 per day, 10 in possession
Hunter orange: required Small game hunters must wear a hunter-orange cap, hat, vest, jacket or rain gear as the outermost garment, visible from all sides. Camouflage counts if it is at least 50% orange.
Sundays: No statewide Sunday closure for small game. A few counties restrict firearm hunting on private land under PA 319 of 1994 — not mapped here.

Split season — it closes for the two weeks of firearm deer and opens again December 1.

Where to hunt it

Michigan's huntable public land, whole. MDNR does not publish a per-parcel species list, so this is not filtered to ruffed grouse — it is every unit this app draws as legal to hunt.

Class	Units	Acres
National forest	21	2,879,026
State forest	64	1,817,144
State game area	211	525,385
Wild & scenic river corridor	48	293,856
Total	344	5,515,411

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 MDNR before you park.

Hours, orange and licences

Shooting hours

One half-hour before sunrise until sunset.

Michigan's small-game rule, and the one this app's hunt planner draws every day against. It is not “until half an hour after sunset” — that is the waterfowl rule in some states and it is not this one. Waterfowl and turkey run on their own hours. MDNR

Licences

Base licence
Everyone, before any other licence — Required to hunt small game in Michigan, and it is what every other tag is added to.
Hunter safety certificate
Anyone born on or after 1 January 1960 — Or an apprentice licence, which lets an uncertified hunter hunt under supervision.
Federal HIP registration
Woodcock and every other migratory bird — Free, but not optional — it registers you with the federal harvest survey.
Free woodcock stamp
Woodcock hunters — Free and separate from HIP. Both are required.

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.