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When does Wisconsin's 2026 ruffed grouse season open?
Last updated 2026-09-24 · from WDNR data · 2026 season year
Wisconsin's 2026 ruffed grouse season runs September 12, 2026 to January 3, 2027, on dates that depend on the zone. Wisconsin zones this season: 2 of 2 zones open, and the dates differ between them.
The dates
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 |
The best weeks
This app carries no agency-sourced peak for ruffed grouse in Wisconsin, so none is claimed here. Within the dates above, the two weeks either side of the leaf drop are the traditional answer in the northern states and the first hard frost is the southern one — both are hunters' rules of thumb rather than anything an agency published.
Shooting hours
- Legal 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
The other questions
- How to hunt ruffed grouse in Wisconsin
- Where to hunt ruffed grouse in Wisconsin
- Wisconsin ruffed grouse regulations, 2026
- Wisconsin ruffed grouse hunting report
- Ruffed grouse hunting in Wisconsin — the whole picture
- Ruffed grouse — biology, range and how it is hunted