Ruffed grouse hunting in the Michigan UP

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

Ruffed grouse hunting in the Michigan UP. The season runs September 15, 2025 to January 1, 2026 — 93 days afield, bag 5 per day, 10 in possession. 127 public units and 3,394,419 acres fall inside this region, the largest of them Ottawa National Forest at 994,772 acres. The bird is a stronghold in Michigan.

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

The ground

Two national forests — Ottawa and Hiawatha — and a great deal of commercial timberland, most of it open to walking. Cover is aspen cut, alder swamp and the edges of the cedar. The distances are long, the roads are gravel, and cell coverage is not a thing you should plan around.

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

Aspen and mixed brush between about five and twenty years old — cut-over ground rather than big timber, thick enough that you cannot see far into it. The best of it is an edge: young cut against older hardwood, or the alder seam where the cut runs down to wet ground.

Walk the edges slowly and stop often; a stopped hunter is what makes a tight bird lose its nerve. Birds hold in the thick and flush loud, and most shots are inside twenty-five yards through cover, which is why open chokes and light loads are the tradition.

A close-working flushing or pointing dog is the difference between finding birds and walking past them. Wide-ranging dogs lose birds in cover this thick.

Season and limits

MDNR's dates for the 2025–26 licence year, read from MDNR. Michigan lists this season as Ruffed grouse.

Segment	Opens	Closes	Days
Segment 1	September 15, 2025	November 14, 2025	61
Segment 2	December 1, 2025	January 1, 2026	32

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.

Split season — it closes for the two weeks of firearm deer and opens again December 1.

Public land in the Michigan UP

127 units and 3,394,419 acres, out of 344 huntable units in Michigan. MDNR does not publish a per-parcel species list, so this is not filtered to ruffed grouse.

Ordered by recorded acres — how much of each unit lies inside subbasins where ruffed grouse 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.

MDNR names no geographic restriction on this season, so no unit is excluded for being outside one.
Season geography read against the published rule on 2026-08-23.

Unit	Class	Manager	Recorded acres	Acres	Where the records are
Ottawa National Forest	National forest	USFS	986,240	994,772	75% stronghold, 24% regular, 1% present
Hiawatha National Forest	National forest	USFS	566,693	899,297	11% stronghold, 52% regular, 37% present
Newberry State Forest Area	State forest	SDNR	325,495	348,461	50% stronghold, 44% regular, 7% present
Crystal Falls State Forest Area	State forest	SDNR	300,717	300,717	18% stronghold, 82% regular
Baraga State Forest Area	State forest	SDNR	108,363	120,323	7% stronghold, 83% regular, 10% present
Shingleton State Foreset Area	State forest	SDNR	54,418	368,105	15% regular, 85% present
Ontonagon, Michigan Wild and Scenic River	Wild & scenic river corridor	USFS	46,125	46,125	100% stronghold
Tahquamenon, Michigan Wild And Scenic River Study Area	Wild & scenic river corridor	USFS	28,718	28,776	99% stronghold
Paint, Michigan Wild And Scenic River Study Area	Wild & scenic river corridor	USFS	22,307	22,307	100% regular
Presque Isle, Michigan Wild and Scenic River	Wild & scenic river corridor	USFS	20,224	20,224	100% stronghold
Paint, Michigan Wild and Scenic River	Wild & scenic river corridor	USFS	16,070	16,070	100% regular
Baraga Plains State Wildlife Management Area	State game area	SFW	11,541	13,363	86% regular, 14% present

Class	Units	Acres
National forest	11	1,900,059
State forest	38	1,149,780
Wild & scenic river corridor	37	227,244
State game area	41	117,336

A region here is a bounding box — 45.4° to 48.4° north, 90.5° to 83.3° 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

Colder and earlier than the Lower Peninsula. Leaves are down by early October in the west end, and lake-effect snow in November can end a road before it ends a season.

The place

The UP is where hunters go for the number of birds rather than the ease of the walk. Public ground is enormous and unposted; the constraint is time and tyres, not access.

Other regions in Michigan

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