BirdTrout

Ruffed grouse Hunting in Wisconsin

Bonasa umbellus

Open September 12, 2026 to January 3, 2027 — the days depend on the zone, and they are in the table below. In Wisconsin it is a stronghold.

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
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 Wisconsin

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

A stronghold. The northern and central forest is Zone A and holds the bird through a long season; the south-east is Zone B and thin.

Open this map in the app

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

34 of 43 subbasins draining Wisconsin 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

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

Zone	Opens	Closes	Days
Zone A	September 12, 2026	January 3, 2027	114
Zone B	October 17, 2026	December 8, 2026	53

Bag limit: not shown No single bag limit is shown for it here. Where WDNR publishes one that changes by zone or partway through the season, the figures are in the notes below and this page will not pick one of them; where it publishes none at all, this page leaves it empty rather than guess — a wrong limit is worse than a missing one, because it looks researched. Check the Wisconsin Small Game Hunting Regulations.
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.
WDNR sets the daily bag at five birds in Zone A and two in Zone B. This app shows one bag limit per species and cannot yet give a different one per zone, so the figure is left empty rather than printed wrong in half the state — take the one for the zone you are standing in.
Zone A is the northern and central forest; Zone B the south-east. The boundary is WDNR's own zone polygons, from season_zones_wi.geojson, and the map resolves which side of it you are on — so the dates shown are the ones for where you are standing.

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 ruffed grouse — 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.