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Virginia ruffed grouse hunting report

Last updated 2026-09-24 · from VDWR data · 2026–27 licence year

Ruffed grouse season is shut in Virginia today. It opens October 24, 2026 in West of I-95 — 30 days away. The bird is thin and local in Virginia.

Season status

Today
Shut
Next opening
October 24, 2026 — West of I-95
Season
October 24, 2026 to February 13, 2027 — days by zone
Bag
3 per day

Computed against the day this page was built, from VDWR'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

Blue Ridge and Allegheny mountains only, and declining hard — the young forest the bird needs has aged out across most of its Virginia range. The season is closed outright east of I-95.

Open this map in the app
Stronghold Regular Present Occasional No records The 10 units in the table below 3 units too small to draw
24 of 53 subbasins draining Virginia 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

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