BirdTrout Open the map

Minnesota sharp-tailed grouse hunting report

Last updated 2026-09-24 · from MN DNR data · 2026 season year

Sharp-tailed grouse season is open in Minnesota today in Northwest zone, and shuts November 30. The bird is well established in Minnesota.

Season status

Today
Open in Northwest zone
Season
September 19, 2026 to November 30, 2026 — days by zone
Bag
not published

Computed against the day this page was built, from MN DNR's dates. This page carries no weather and no bird count: this app holds neither a hunting-weather model nor a population survey for sharp-tailed grouse, and a report that invented either would be worse than one that says so.

September in the cover

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.

Where the bird is

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.

The other questions

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