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How to hunt ring-necked pheasant in Michigan
Last updated 2026-09-24 · from MDNR data · 2025–26 licence year
Ring-necked pheasant in Michigan is hunted in the seam between grass nesting cover and grain: switchgrass and crp-style fields, cattail sloughs, weedy fencelines and picked corn. a pheasant runs before it flies, so the cover that matters is the cover it can run through. Work fields toward a hard edge — a road, a ditch, a corner — so running birds run out of ground rather than out the far end. Blocking a corner is worth more than another pass through the middle. MDNR describes the cover as: The seam between grass nesting cover and standing grain, with cattail or switchgrass to winter in. Dogs are legal for this species in Michigan. Michigan's 2025–26 ring-necked pheasant season runs October 10, 2025 to January 1, 2026, on dates that depend on the zone.
The cover
The seam between grass nesting cover and grain: switchgrass and CRP-style fields, cattail sloughs, weedy fencelines and picked corn. A pheasant runs before it flies, so the cover that matters is the cover it can run through.
How it is hunted
Work fields toward a hard edge — a road, a ditch, a corner — so running birds run out of ground rather than out the far end. Blocking a corner is worth more than another pass through the middle.
Dogs
A flushing dog that stays inside gun range, or a pointer steady enough to relocate on a running bird. Retrieving matters here more than on grouse: a hit rooster in heavy grass is a lost rooster without a dog.
- Dogs legal
- Yes, for this species in Michigan.
- Dogs closed
- April 16 – July 7
- Dog training
- July 8 – April 15. The closed season needs a DNR Wildlife Division permit.
Equipment
- Legal devices
- Bow, Crossbow, Firearm, Slingshot
- Gauge
- not regulated
- Choke
- not regulated
- Shot
- not regulated
- Capacity
- Six shells in barrel and magazine combined for a semi-automatic, unless it is .22-caliber or smaller rimfire.
- Prohibited: Snares, traps, cages, nets, pitfalls or deadfalls
- Prohibited: Spears, fully automatic firearms, airbows, or mechanical devices other than bows, crossbows, firearms and slingshots
- Prohibited: Cartridges containing tracer or explosive bullets
- Prohibited: Drugs, poisons, anticoagulants, stupefying substances, smoke, gas or explosives
Read from 2026 Michigan Small Game Hunting Regulations Summary, Equipment regulations pp. 34-38, Hunting methods pp. 40-42.
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
- When does Michigan's 2025–26 ring-necked pheasant season open?
- Where to hunt ring-necked pheasant in Michigan
- Michigan ring-necked pheasant regulations, 2025–26
- Michigan ring-necked pheasant hunting report
- Ring-necked pheasant hunting in Michigan — the whole picture
- Ring-necked pheasant — biology, range and how it is hunted