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Minnesota ruffed grouse hunting report

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

Ruffed grouse season is open in Minnesota today, and shuts January 3. The bird is a stronghold in Minnesota.

Season status

Today
Open
Season
September 19, 2026 to January 3, 2027 — 107 days afield
Bag
not published

Computed against the day this page was built, from MN DNR's dates. This page carries no weather and no bird count: this app holds neither a hunting-weather model nor a population survey for ruffed grouse, and a report that invented either would be worse than one that says so.

September in 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.

Where the bird is

The other Great Lakes stronghold, and the state that reports the biggest harvest in the country most years. Aspen cut across the northern forest and the Arrowhead carries it; MN DNR called the population into the declining phase of its cycle in July 2026, which is where in the ten-year swing it sits rather than a reason not to go.

Open this map in the app
Stronghold Regular Present Occasional No records The 10 units in the table below
45 of 72 subbasins draining Minnesota 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.

The other questions

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