BirdTrout

Sharp-tailed grouse Hunting in Michigan

Tympanuchus phasianellus

Open October 10, 2025 to October 31, 2025 — the days depend on the zone, and they are in the table below. In Michigan it is thin and local.

Last updated 2026-08-24 · from MDNR data · 2025–26 licence year

The bird
Where it is
Season and limits
Where to hunt it
Hours, orange and licences
The questions
Other states

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 carries the page it was read from.

Where it is in Michigan

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

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.

Open this map in the app

Stronghold Regular Present Occasional No records The 10 units in the table below 2 units too small to draw

22 of 59 subbasins draining Michigan carry a sharp-tailed 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

MDNR's own dates for the 2025–26 licence year, read from MDNR. Michigan lists this season as Sharp-tailed grouse.

Zone	Opens	Closes	Days
Zone 1 sharp-tailed grouse unit — partly open boundary not mapped	October 10, 2025	October 31, 2025	22
Closed to sharp-tailed grouse	Closed season — Michigan shuts this zone

Bag limit: 2 per day, 4 in possession
Hunter orange: required Small game hunters must wear a hunter-orange cap, hat, vest, jacket or rain gear as the outermost garment, visible from all sides. Camouflage counts if it is at least 50% orange.
Stamps: Free sharp-tailed grouse stamp
Sundays: No statewide Sunday closure for small game. A few counties restrict firearm hunting on private land under PA 319 of 1994 — not mapped here.

The Department of Natural Resources opens sharp-tailed grouse only inside the zone 1 sharp-tailed grouse management unit, in the eastern Upper Peninsula, and states that the remaining portion of the state is closed. Wildlife Conservation Order 3.503(1) with the unit of 12.751, read August 2026.
The unit lies within Chippewa and Mackinac counties but is not the whole of either. Its boundary is described as a chain of roads, rivers and section corners and is not drawn in this app — being in one of those two counties is not the same as being in the unit. Read 12.751 or the digest's map before you hunt.
Beyond the daily and possession limits there is a season limit of 6 sharp-tailed grouse — Wildlife Conservation Order 3.503(2). It is the only season limit in this app.
The free sharp-tailed grouse stamp is issued on request and becomes part of the licence. It is free and it is not optional.
Do not confuse it with the spruce grouse, which shares the same Upper Peninsula country, is protected in Michigan and has no season at all.

Where to hunt it

Michigan's huntable public land, whole. MDNR does not publish a per-parcel species list, so this is not filtered to sharp-tailed grouse — it is every unit this app draws as legal to hunt.

Class	Units	Acres
National forest	21	2,879,026
State forest	64	1,817,144
State game area	211	525,385
Wild & scenic river corridor	48	293,856
Total	344	5,515,411

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 MDNR before you park.

Hours, orange and licences

Shooting hours

One half-hour before sunrise until sunset.

Michigan's small-game rule, and the one this app's hunt planner draws every day against. It is not “until half an hour after sunset” — that is the waterfowl rule in some states and it is not this one. Waterfowl and turkey run on their own hours. MDNR

Licences

Base licence
Everyone, before any other licence — Required to hunt small game in Michigan, and it is what every other tag is added to.
Hunter safety certificate
Anyone born on or after 1 January 1960 — Or an apprentice licence, which lets an uncertified hunter hunt under supervision.
Federal HIP registration
Woodcock and every other migratory bird — Free, but not optional — it registers you with the federal harvest survey.
Free woodcock stamp
Woodcock hunters — Free and separate from HIP. Both are required.

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.

Sharp-tailed grouse in other states

Sharp-tailed grouse hunting in Minnesota mid