Where can you hunt american woodcock in Minnesota?

Where to hunt american woodcock in Minnesota

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

In Minnesota, american woodcock is a stronghold. Minnesota is both breeding ground and the top of the Mississippi flyway, so the state holds local birds all season and then the flight birds move through the alder and lowland brush in October. Minnesota's huntable public estate is 7,643,293 acres across 1082 units, not filtered by species because MN DNR does not publish a per-parcel list. The best-supported of them is Superior National Forest: 2,161,598 of its 2,440,608 acres lie in cells where the bird is recorded. Units here are ordered by how much of each one lies in subbasins where american woodcock is recorded at regular strength or better, not by how big the unit is.

Where the bird is

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

Minnesota is both breeding ground and the top of the Mississippi flyway, so the state holds local birds all season and then the flight birds move through the alder and lowland brush in October.

Open this map in the app

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

58 of 72 subbasins draining Minnesota carry a american woodcock 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 public units with the most recorded ground

Minnesota's huntable public units. MN DNR does not publish a per-parcel species list, so this is not filtered to american woodcock.

Ordered by recorded acres — how much of each unit lies inside subbasins where american woodcock is recorded at regular strength or better — rather than by how big the unit is. The biggest block in a state is often not in the half of it the bird is in. PAD-US splits a forest into many parcels, so acreage is summed over the unit's name, and the share is measured against the unit's drawn boundary rather than a centroid: a national forest can be two polygons across half a peninsula.

MN DNR names no geographic restriction on this season, so no unit is excluded for being outside one.
Season geography here is read off a dates table rather than the rule itself, and a dates table carries no boundary.

Unit	Class	Recorded acres	Acres	Where the records are
Superior National Forest	National forest	2,161,598	2,440,608	81% stronghold, 7% regular, 4% present, 8% occasional
Pine Island	State forest	632,087	632,087	17% stronghold, 83% regular
Chippewa National Forest	National forest	500,474	708,168	9% stronghold, 62% regular, 29% present
Red Lake WMA	Wildlife management area	278,879	297,131	58% stronghold, 35% regular, 6% present
Beltrami Island	State forest	229,822	288,157	29% stronghold, 51% regular, 20% present
Koochiching	State forest	191,382	318,363	20% stronghold, 40% regular, 40% present
Lake of the Woods	State forest	138,600	138,600	55% stronghold, 45% regular
Kabetogama	State forest	116,068	162,302	33% stronghold, 39% regular, 28% present
Savanna	State forest	91,550	128,805	71% stronghold, 29% occasional
Nemadji	State forest	88,262	90,138	58% stronghold, 40% regular, 2% occasional

The whole public estate, by land class

Every huntable unit in Minnesota, not the ranked ten above and not narrowed to where american woodcock is recorded or where the season is open. It is here as the denominator the table above was drawn from.

Class	Units	Acres
State forest	119	3,342,013
National forest	4	3,233,935
Wildlife management area	959	1,067,345

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.

Within a drive of a town

The same ground read from where a reader starts rather than from the state line: the public units within forty miles of one town, ordered the same way. A town is on this list only where at least three units reach that far and hold ten thousand recorded acres between them.

The other questions

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