How do you hunt ruffed grouse in Minnesota?

How to hunt ruffed grouse in Minnesota

Last updated 2026-09-24 · from MN DNR data · 2026 season year

Ruffed grouse in Minnesota is hunted in aspen and mixed brush between about five and twenty years old. Walk the edges slowly and stop often; a stopped hunter is what makes a tight bird lose its nerve. Birds hold in the thick and flush loud, and most shots are inside twenty-five yards through cover, which is why open chokes and light loads are the tradition. Minnesota's 2026 ruffed grouse season runs September 19, 2026 to January 3, 2027 — 107 days afield.

The cover

Aspen and mixed brush between about five and twenty years old — cut-over ground rather than big timber, thick enough that you cannot see far into it. The best of it is an edge: young cut against older hardwood, or the alder seam where the cut runs down to wet ground.

How it is hunted

Walk the edges slowly and stop often; a stopped hunter is what makes a tight bird lose its nerve. Birds hold in the thick and flush loud, and most shots are inside twenty-five yards through cover, which is why open chokes and light loads are the tradition.

Dogs

A close-working flushing or pointing dog is the difference between finding birds and walking past them. Wide-ranging dogs lose birds in cover this thick.

This app does not carry an equipment and methods table for Minnesota — gauge, choke, shot, capacity and the dog rules. Michigan's is shipped and no other state's is, and printing Michigan's under another agency's name would be a citation error rather than a rounding one. See MN DNR.

The cover, tactics and dog notes above are written for this app — not an agency description and not a regulation. Everything that is a rule carries the page it was read from.

The other questions

Open the hunting map →Public land and bird cover, drawn for the bird you are after.