BirdTrout

Sharp-tailed grouse Hunting in Minnesota

Tympanuchus phasianellus

Open September 19, 2026 to November 30, 2026 — the days depend on the zone, and they are in the table below. In Minnesota it is well established.

Last updated 2026-08-24 · from MN DNR data · 2026 season 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 Minnesota

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

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.

Open this map in the app

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

38 of 72 subbasins draining Minnesota 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

MN DNR's own dates for the 2026 season year, read from MN DNR. Minnesota lists this season as Sharp-tailed grouse.

Zone	Opens	Closes	Days
Northwest zone boundary not mapped	September 19, 2026	November 30, 2026	73
East-central zone	Closed season — Minnesota shuts this zone

Bag limit: not shown No single bag limit is shown for it here. Where MN DNR 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 Minnesota Hunting and Trapping Regulations.
Hunter orange: required

Minnesota requires blaze orange or blaze pink while a firearms deer season is in progress, and it applies to small game hunters too. Treat orange as required for the whole season: missing it during gun deer season is the dangerous error. We have not been able to confirm the exact wording against MN DNR — read the regulations before relying on the detail.
MN DNR publishes no bag limit we could confirm for this season, so none is shown.
Open in the northwest zone only. The east-central zone has been closed since 2021 on low population and is not open in 2026.
The zone boundary is not mapped in this app — the dates are per zone, the zone you are standing in is not yet answered.

Where to hunt it

Minnesota's huntable public land, whole. MN DNR 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
State forest	119	3,342,013
National forest	4	3,233,935
Wildlife management area	959	1,067,345
Total	1,082	7,643,293

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 MN DNR before you park.

Hours, orange and licences

Shooting hours

not carried

MN DNR publishes Minnesota's small game shooting hours in the hunting regulations booklet rather than as a sentence on a page this build reads, and this app holds no copy of it. We do not retype it from memory: the states on this site do not agree with each other about when the day ends — Michigan closes at sunset, Virginia a half-hour after it — so a rule carried across a state line is exactly how a hunter gets a citation. Read the booklet before opening day. MN DNR

Licences

Small game licence
Everyone hunting small game — Bought through MN DNR's licence system, and what the stamps below are added to.
Firearms safety certificate
Anyone born after 31 December 1979 — Or an apprentice hunter validation, which Minnesota limits to a small number of seasons in a lifetime rather than allowing indefinitely.
Federal HIP registration
Woodcock and every other migratory bird — Free registration with the federal harvest survey, and it lapses every season.
Small game surcharge and stamps
Varies by bird — Minnesota attaches its own validations to some birds — the pheasant stamp is the one an upland hunter meets first. Which ones your licence needs is on MN DNR's licence page; this app does not carry the ladder.

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 Michigan low