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Michigan Hunting Regulations 2025–26

Season dates, bag limits and legal hours for the 6 upland birds MDNR publishes as data, from September 15, 2025 to January 1, 2026 — compiled here so you can read them in one screen instead of a PDF.

Last updated 2026-09-24 · rebuilt nightly from MDNR data · 2025–26 licence year

• Season dates
• Bag limits
• Hunting hours
• Licences and stamps
• Zones
• Special regulations
• Where to hunt
• What this page does not cover
• Official documents

Season dates by species

MDNR's own dates for the 2025–26 licence year, read from MDNR's season dates. A zoned species has no statewide date and is listed by zone.

Bag limits, stamps and the per-species rules

Everything MDNR publishes for each bird, and — where it publishes nothing — the word “not verified” rather than a number.

Legal shooting hours

This is the frame BirdTrout's own hunt planner draws every day inside — first legal light rather than the hour of sunrise, because legal light is the thing that is a rule. MDNR's general regulations →

Licence requirements

What a small-game hunter has to be carrying. Prices are deliberately absent: they change without notice and are the field this page would be wrong about first.

Buy through Michigan Department of Natural Resources's own portal. We do not sell licences and we do not take a fee on one.

Zone maps

The part of a small-game regulation that is actually spatial. Everything else on this page is the same rule in every county; these are not.

Michigan's pheasant zones are drawn on this map from 6 polygons stitched from the Wildlife Conservation Order's own boundary — chains of named roads, not county lines. The zone 2/3 line runs Memorial Drive, M-120, M-20, US-10, Garfield Road, Pinconning Road, Seven Mile Road, M-61, US-23 and then down the Au Gres River, and those roads cut counties in half. Open the map in hunt mode → and it will tell you which zone the ground under the cursor is in.

Special regulations

• Hunter orange · August 15 – April 30
  Small game hunters must wear a hunter-orange cap, hat, vest, jacket or rain gear as the outermost garment, visible from all sides. Camouflage counts if it is at least 50% orange.
  Exempt: waterfowl, crow, wild turkey, falconry.
• Sunday hunting
  No statewide Sunday closure for small game. A few counties restrict firearm hunting on private land under PA 319 of 1994 — not mapped here.
• American woodcock
  Federally set — woodcock is a migratory bird, so the season is a US Fish and Wildlife framework Michigan selects within, not a state season.
• American woodcock
  The stamp is free but it is not optional, and it registers you with HIP.
• Ruffed grouse
  Split season — it closes for the two weeks of firearm deer and opens again December 1.
• Wild turkey (fall)
  The Department of Natural Resources opens the fall season in its fall turkey management units, not statewide: unit M is the Upper Peninsula and unit I is the Lower Peninsula except Monroe county. Wildlife Conservation Order 3.303 with 12.654 and 12.675, read August 2026.
• Wild turkey (fall)
  Fall turkey is also quota-limited and licensed by unit. Being inside a unit is not the same as holding a tag for it — this app draws where the season is, not what you are licensed for.
• Wild turkey (fall)
  Exempt from the hunter-orange requirement.
• Ring-necked pheasant
  Male (rooster) only.
• Sharp-tailed grouse
  The Department of Natural Resources opens sharp-tailed grouse only inside the zone 1 sharp-tailed grouse management unit, in the eastern Upper Peninsula, and states that the remaining portion of the state is closed. Wildlife Conservation Order 3.503(1) with the unit of 12.751, read August 2026.
• Sharp-tailed grouse
  The unit lies within Chippewa and Mackinac counties but is not the whole of either. Its boundary is described as a chain of roads, rivers and section corners and is not drawn in this app — being in one of those two counties is not the same as being in the unit. Read 12.751 or the digest's map before you hunt.
• Sharp-tailed grouse
  Beyond the daily and possession limits there is a season limit of 6 sharp-tailed grouse — Wildlife Conservation Order 3.503(2). It is the only season limit in this app.
• Sharp-tailed grouse
  The free sharp-tailed grouse stamp is issued on request and becomes part of the licence. It is free and it is not optional.
• Sharp-tailed grouse
  Do not confuse it with the spruce grouse, which shares the same Upper Peninsula country, is protected in Michigan and has no season at all.
• Northern bobwhite
  The Department of Natural Resources opens quail in 27 counties — Branch, Calhoun, Clinton, Eaton, Genesee, Gratiot, Hillsdale, Huron, Ingham, Ionia, Jackson, Kent, Lapeer, Lenawee, Livingston, Macomb, Monroe, Montcalm, Oakland, Saginaw, St. Clair, St. Joseph, Sanilac, Shiawassee, Tuscola, Washtenaw and Wayne — and states that quail may be taken in those counties only. Wildlife Conservation Order 3.504(2), read August 2026.
• Northern bobwhite
  Section 3.504(3) lets the Department's director close any or all of those counties by interim order on the June breeding quail survey. An interim order is not carried in this app — check the digest for the county you are hunting.
• Northern bobwhite
  Effectively gone from Michigan outside a few southern counties — 1,769 recorded observations statewide against the grouse's 36,948.

Youth hunts, apprentice and mentored licences, dog training seasons, and the ORV rules on state land are all real regulations and none of them is covered here. They are in the Michigan Hunting Digest, and they are listed again under what this page does not cover so a reader does not take the silence for “no rule”.

Where to hunt

The hunting-legal public land BirdTrout draws in Michigan — 344 units, about 5,515,411 acres. This is not every public parcel: national wildlife refuges, military land and city parks are all public and none is here, because hunting them is restricted, closed, or decided unit by unit.

Hunting Access Program

135 private parcels across 26 counties — about 20,989 acres — that MDNR rents walk-in access to. It answers the same question a state game area answers, but not the same way: the permission is conditional, it is somebody's farm, you sign in at a box, and the parcel can leave the programme. Our copy locates these to the PLSS section, a 640-acre square around a parcel averaging 156 acres, so most of what is drawn around a HAP unit is private land you may not walk on.

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. MDNR's public land →

Open the live map in hunt mode → — the same land, drawn, with observed bird occurrence, upland cover and a wind-and-weather read on the day you are going. Per-species pages are the next thing planned; today the depth is in the app.

Recent changes

Nothing has moved since the previous build. This page is rebuilt nightly and this section fills in the night a season date, a bag limit or a required stamp changes.

What this page does not cover

Named rather than left silent. Every line below is a real Michigan season or rule that is not in the data behind this page, so its absence here says nothing at all about it.

• White-tailed deer — archery, firearm, muzzleloader and the late antlerless seasons
• Spring turkey, which is licensed by hunt unit and drawn by application
• Waterfowl — duck, goose and the three zones each runs on
• Sharp-tailed grouse, open only in a few Upper Peninsula counties under a permit
• Bear, elk and the drawn-permit species
• Rabbit, hare, squirrel and the other small mammals
• Youth hunts, the Liberty and Independence hunts, and dog training seasons
• ORV and ATV rules on state land, which vary by unit

And MDNR publishes no bag limit we could cite for Wild turkey (fall) — those fields are blank above on purpose.

The official documents

We do not reproduce MDNR's digest or its licence pages. These are the originals, and they are the authority.

• Michigan Hunting Digest (PDF) →
  The document this page is a searchable compilation of
• MDNR season dates →
  The page every date above was read from
• Buy a Michigan hunting licence →
  Michigan Department of Natural Resources, official portal
• MDNR hunting regulations →
  Including any in-season change or emergency order