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Sharp-tailed grouse

Tympanuchus phasianellus

Sharp-tailed grouse (Tympanuchus phasianellus) is present in 2 of the 5 states this app covers, and every one of them sets a season for it. It is strongest in Minnesota, where it is well established.

Last updated 2026-09-24 · seasons from each state's own agency

• The bird
• State by state
• Cover and tactics
• By region

The bird

A prairie grouse, not a forest one — the bird of open brushland, bog margin and sharptail country's characteristic mix of grass and scattered scrub, where a ruffed grouse would find nothing to hold it. It gathers on leks in spring, and the dancing grounds are how biologists count it. Two marks separate it from everything else on this list: the tail is short and sharply pointed with white outer feathers that flash going away, and the underparts are marked with dark Vs rather than the barring of a ruffed grouse.

Written for this app. Not an agency description and not a regulation — everything below this point that is a rule or a date carries the agency it was read from.

State by state

The comparison this page exists for. The band is an editorial summary of the bird's status on the same five-step scale in every state — not a population estimate — and the season is that state's own, against that state's own licence or season year, which do not line up with each other.

A bag this app cannot state as one number is left empty here rather than guessed. Some of these states publish none for a species; others publish one that changes by zone, or partway through the season, and no single figure would be true of the whole of it. A wrong limit is worse than a missing one, because it looks researched.

Sharp-tailed grouse in Michigan

Michigan's sharptail is one population in the eastern Upper Peninsula and the state hunts it — four fifths of Michigan's records fall in Chippewa and Mackinac counties, and so does the whole of the open unit. The Department of Natural Resources opens it October 10 to 31 inside the zone 1 sharp-tailed grouse management unit and nowhere else in the state, on a free stamp. The unit's boundary runs on roads and rivers inside those two counties and is not drawn in this app.

• Sharp-tailed grouse hunting in Michigan — the whole picture
• How to hunt it — Michigan
• When the season opens — Michigan
• Where to hunt it — Michigan
• Regulations — Michigan
• Hunting report — Michigan
• Michigan hunting regulations

Sharp-tailed grouse in Minnesota

The strongest sharptail range east of the Dakotas, on the brushland of the northwest and the pine-barren openings of the east-central counties. MN DNR runs it as two zones: the northwest is open, and the east-central zone has been closed since 2021 on low population. The boundary between them is not mapped in this app.

• Sharp-tailed grouse hunting in Minnesota — the whole picture
• How to hunt it — Minnesota
• When the season opens — Minnesota
• Where to hunt it — Minnesota
• Regulations — Minnesota
• Hunting report — Minnesota
• Minnesota hunting regulations

Cover and tactics

Open brushland — grass and low scrub with scattered clumps of aspen or willow, bog margin, and the pine barrens where sand keeps the timber from closing in. It is the opposite of grouse cover: if you cannot see a long way, you are in the wrong place.

Walk the open ground and expect flushes well out; birds hold poorly once the season is a week old and often go up in a bunch and fly a long way. Early season, before they pack, is the only time they sit. Mark where the flock lands and walk it again rather than following singles.

A wide-ranging pointing dog is the right tool here — the ground is open enough to use one, and covering it on foot without a dog finds very little.

Written for this app, and general to the bird rather than to a state. Where a place changes it, the regional pages below say so.

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