Northern bobwhite hunting in southern Michigan

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

Northern bobwhite hunting in southern Michigan. The season runs October 20, 2025 to November 14, 2025 — on dates that depend on the zone, bag 5 per day, 10 in possession. 95 public units and 280,132 acres fall inside this region, the largest of them Tuscola State Game Area at 9,100 acres. The bird is barely present in Michigan.

The ground
The cover
Season and limits
Public land here
Weather and timing
The place

The ground

Farm country: grain, grass, drainage ditches and small state game areas rather than forest blocks. The public units are measured in hundreds of acres and are surrounded by private land, so the hunting is a matter of working a small piece well rather than covering ground.

Written for this app — not an agency description. Everything below that is a rule or a number names the source it came from.

The cover, and how it is hunted

Broomsedge and native warm-season grass with bare ground under it, brushy field borders, and the edge of a cut field against a hedgerow. Quail need to walk under the cover, not through it, which is why manicured ground holds none.

Hunt the edges of managed early-succession fields and the borders between crop and brush. Coveys hold in a few known spots and use them year after year; the singles after a covey rise scatter into the thickest nearby cover.

A pointing dog with range, on ground open enough to use it. Wild-bird quail hunting on public land is a matter of covering a lot of edge to find few coveys.

Season and limits

MDNR's dates for the 2025–26 licence year, read from MDNR. Michigan lists this season as Northern bobwhite. It is zoned, and this region is not a zone — check which zone a unit falls in before you go.

Zone	Opens	Closes	Days
Open counties	October 20, 2025	November 14, 2025	26
Closed to quail	Closed season

Open today: Shut
Bag limit: 5 per day, 10 in possession
Hunter orange: requiredSmall 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.
Shooting hours: One half-hour before sunrise until sunset.
Sundays: No statewide Sunday closure for small game. A few counties restrict firearm hunting on private land under PA 319 of 1994 — not mapped here.

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.
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.
Effectively gone from Michigan outside a few southern counties — 1,769 recorded observations statewide against the grouse's 36,948.

Public land in southern Michigan

95 units and 280,132 acres, out of 344 huntable units in Michigan. MDNR does not publish a per-parcel species list, so this is not filtered to northern bobwhite.

Ordered by recorded acres — how much of each unit lies inside subbasins where northern bobwhite 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.

Season boundary drawn Narrowed to ground MDNR opens a season on (Open counties), which leaves 37 eligible units.
Boundary: county lines (Census TIGER). The order names counties rather than describing a boundary, so the county edges are the rule itself and not a simplification of it.
Season geography read against the published rule on 2026-08-23.

Unit	Class	Manager	Recorded acres	Acres	Where the records are
Tuscola State Game Area	State game area	SFW	9,100	9,100	100% stronghold
Lapeer State Game Area	State game area	SFW	8,555	8,555	100% regular
Port Huron State Game Area	State game area	SFW	6,676	6,676	100% regular
Waterloo State Wildlife Area	State game area	SFW	5,732	5,732	100% regular
Dansville State Game Area	State game area	SFW	4,755	4,755	100% regular
Sharonville State Game Area	State game area	SFW	4,330	4,330	96% stronghold, 4% regular
Rose Lake State Wildlife Area	State game area	SFW	4,073	4,073	100% regular
Vassar State Game Area	State game area	SFW	3,391	3,391	100% stronghold
Gregory State Game Area	State forest	SDNR	2,817	2,817	100% regular
Murphy Lake State Game Area	State game area	SFW	2,697	2,697	87% stronghold, 13% regular
Lost Nation State Game Area	State game area	SFW	2,471	2,471	100% regular
Portland State Game Area	State game area	SFW	2,374	2,374	100% regular

Class	Units	Acres
State game area	92	279,979
State forest	2	144
National forest	1	9

A region here is a bounding box — 41.6° to 43.5° north, 87.0° to 82.3° west — and not a boundary anybody drew on the ground. A unit that straddles the edge is placed by where its middle is. PAD-US says who manages a parcel, not where its line runs and not whether it carries a local closure: context, not permission. Check the unit with MDNR before you park.

Weather and timing

Mild into November. A hard frost that knocks the standing cover down makes birds easier to move; a wet snow on cattails makes them harder.

The place

The state's pheasant tradition, held up by release programmes and by the game areas that keep grass in the ground. Wild-bird numbers are a fraction of what the older hunters remember, and the pages here do not pretend otherwise.

Other regions in Michigan

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