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Virginia Hunting Regulations 2026–27

Season dates, bag limits and legal hours for the 6 upland birds VDWR publishes as data, from October 3, 2026 to May 15, 2027 — compiled here so you can read them in one screen instead of a PDF.

Last updated 2026-09-24 · rebuilt nightly from VDWR data · 2026–27 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

VDWR's own dates for the 2026–27 licence year, read from VDWR's season dates. A zoned species has no statewide date and is listed by zone.

Bag limits, stamps and the per-species rules

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

Legal shooting hours

Not Michigan's rule. Virginia gives you the extra half-hour at the end of the day that Michigan does not, and this app's hunt planner draws the Michigan line — so the shaded evening on the planner is conservative here rather than wrong. Spring turkey runs on its own hours: until 12 noon for the first sixteen days, then to sunset. VDWR's hunting 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 Virginia Department of Wildlife 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.

Special regulations

• Hunter orange
  Every hunter, and anyone accompanying one, must wear a solid blaze orange or blaze pink hat, or solid blaze upper-body clothing visible from 360 degrees, or display at least 100 square inches of solid blaze material at shoulder level, visible from 360 degrees.
  Exempt: waterfowl, dove, field trials, mounted fox hunting.
• Sunday hunting
  Virginia allows Sunday hunting, with two exceptions: not within 200 yards of a house of worship, and not for deer or bear with dogs.
• Wild turkey (fall)
  Virginia requires solid blaze orange or blaze pink — a hat, 360-degree upper-body clothing, or 100 square inches at shoulder level. Waterfowl and dove hunters are exempt; upland bird hunters are not.
• Wild turkey (fall)
  Virginia names the fall turkey zones as county lists rather than as drawn boundaries, and this app does not join them to its geography. Confirm your county against the VDWR table before opening day.
• Wild turkey (fall)
  Three turkeys per licence year across the fall and spring seasons in any combination, of which at most one may be beardless. That is a yearly total, not a daily or possession limit.
• Wild turkey (fall)
  Archery runs October 3 to November 13 across the state, on its own dates, in addition to the firearms zones below.
• Ruffed grouse
  The I-95 line is not drawn in this app. The dates are for the western zone; which side of the interstate you are on is not answered here.
• Ruffed grouse
  East of I-95 is a continuous closed season — not a gap in this app's data, a closure Virginia has declared.
• Ruffed grouse
  Virginia's grouse are a Blue Ridge and Allegheny bird and the population has been declining for decades. West of I-95 is where the season is; the mountains are where the birds are.
• Northern bobwhite
  Quail is closed on all public land west of the Blue Ridge Mountains, and on Flippo-Gentry WMA in Sussex County until further notice. That is a rule about the parcel you are standing on, not about a line on this map, and this app cannot draw it — check the ownership of the ground before you hunt quail in the mountains.
• Ring-necked pheasant
  VDWR publishes no daily or seasonal bag limit for pheasant. The null here is that, not an unread digest.
• Ring-necked pheasant
  Virginia holds no self-sustaining wild pheasant population. What is hunted is released birds on a handful of stocked and licensed shooting preserves, and the season above is the wild-bird season that barely applies.
• American woodcock
  Migratory bird: HIP registration is required in addition to the hunting licence, and it lapses every July 1.
• American woodcock
  Two segments, split around the late-December break. The birds in the second are flight birds moving through on cold fronts, not Virginia's own.
• Wild turkey (spring)
  Bearded turkeys only, unlike the fall season, which takes either sex.
• Wild turkey (spring)
  The first segment closes at 12 noon each day. The second runs to sunset — the hours change mid-season, which no other season in this app does.
• Wild turkey (spring)
  Counts against the same three-bird annual limit as the fall season.

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 Virginia Hunting & Trapping Regulations, 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 Virginia — 130 units, about 1,902,412 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.

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. VDWR'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 Virginia 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, muzzleloader and firearms, and the county-by-county differences in season length and antlerless rules
• Black bear, and the separate archery, hound and firearms seasons
• Waterfowl — duck, goose and the split seasons each runs on
• Elk, which is drawn by lottery in the three-county elk management zone
• Rabbit, squirrel, raccoon and the other small game on the same VDWR page
• Youth and apprentice hunt days, and dog training seasons
• The per-WMA rules — many Virginia WMAs carry their own closures, quota hunts and check-in requirements that this app does not have

And VDWR publishes no bag limit we could cite for Ring-necked pheasant — those fields are blank above on purpose.

The official documents

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

• Virginia Hunting & Trapping Regulations →
  The document this page is a searchable compilation of
• VDWR season dates →
  The page every date above was read from
• Buy a Virginia hunting licence →
  Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources, official portal
• VDWR hunting regulations →
  Including any in-season change or emergency order