BirdTrout

Spruce grouse Hunting in Michigan

Falcipennis canadensis

Michigan has this bird and sets no season for it. In Michigan it is barely present.

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

The grouse of the black spruce and jack pine, and the one bird here that will often not flush at all — its defence is to sit still in a conifer and be a branch, which is where the old name “fool hen” comes from. It eats conifer needles through the winter, which is why it lives where it does and why it tastes of them. The male is unmistakable at any range you can see it: sooty black throat and breast bordered in white, and a comb of bare red skin over the eye.

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

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

Upper Peninsula conifer only, and protected — Michigan sets no season for it. A bird you may meet grouse hunting and may not shoot.

Open this map in the app

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

22 of 59 subbasins draining Michigan carry a spruce 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 sets no spruce grouse season in Michigan. The bird is here — see above — but there is no open season for it in this app's copy of the 2025–26 licence year. That is a real answer rather than missing data. Confirm against MDNR before assuming it, and read the Michigan hunting regulations for what is open.

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 spruce 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.

Spruce grouse in other states

Spruce grouse hunting in Minnesota low