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Minnesota spruce grouse hunting report

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

Spruce grouse season is open in Minnesota today, and shuts January 3. The bird is thin and local in Minnesota.

Season status

Today
Open
Season
September 19, 2026 to January 3, 2027 — 107 days afield
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 spruce grouse, and a report that invented either would be worse than one that says so.

September in the cover

Black spruce, jack pine and tamarack — closed conifer and its edges, usually on wet or sandy ground. Aspen cut holds ruffed grouse and does not hold this bird; the two are often a few hundred yards apart and never in the same trees.

Where the bird is

The far north: the Arrowhead, the Boundary Waters and the big peatlands, in black spruce and jack pine rather than in aspen. MN DNR publishes its season on the same row as ruffed grouse, so the dates match — but it is a different bird in different cover, and a hunter walking aspen cut will not meet one.

Open this map in the app
Stronghold Regular Present Occasional No records The 10 units in the table below
20 of 72 subbasins draining Minnesota 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.

The other questions

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