American woodcock hunting in the Michigan UP

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

American woodcock hunting in the Michigan UP. The season runs September 15, 2025 to October 29, 2025 — 45 days afield, bag 3 per day, 9 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

Wet alder runs, damp aspen bottoms and shrub swamp — soft ground the bird can probe for worms. Woodcock cover is often two hundred yards of a creek bottom rather than a whole block of forest.

Hunt the low wet ground inside grouse country, and hunt it again after a cold front: this is a migratory bird and a covert that was empty on Tuesday can hold a flight on Friday. Birds sit tight and flush straight up through the alders.

Pointing dogs shine on woodcock — the bird holds for a point far better than a grouse does, which is why so many dogs are finished on them.

Season and limits

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

Segment	Opens	Closes	Days
Statewide	September 15, 2025	October 29, 2025	45

Open today: Shut
Bag limit: 3 per day, 9 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.

Federally set — woodcock is a migratory bird, so the season is a US Fish and Wildlife framework Michigan selects within, not a state season.
The stamp is free but it is not optional, and it registers you with HIP.

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 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.

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	830,048	994,772	59% stronghold, 24% regular, 16% present, 1% occasional
Newberry State Forest Area	State forest	SDNR	346,356	348,461	99% regular, 1% no records
Shingleton State Foreset Area	State forest	SDNR	338,298	368,105	92% regular, 7% present, 1% no records
Hiawatha National Forest	National forest	USFS	334,173	899,297	4% stronghold, 33% regular, 51% present, 9% occasional, 3% no records
Crystal Falls State Forest Area	State forest	SDNR	265,374	300,717	88% regular, 12% present
Baraga State Forest Area	State forest	SDNR	77,044	120,323	4% stronghold, 60% regular, 10% present, 26% occasional
Ontonagon, Michigan Wild and Scenic River	Wild & scenic river corridor	USFS	46,104	46,125	100% stronghold
Tahquamenon, Michigan Wild And Scenic River Study Area	Wild & scenic river corridor	USFS	28,776	28,776	100% regular
Paint, Michigan Wild And Scenic River Study Area	Wild & scenic river corridor	USFS	22,307	22,307	100% regular
Paint, Michigan Wild and Scenic River	Wild & scenic river corridor	USFS	16,070	16,070	100% regular
Bullock Ranch State Wildlife Management Area	State game area	SFW	13,392	13,392	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.