Northern bobwhite hunting in the Virginia Piedmont

Last updated 2026-09-24 · from VDWR data · 2026–27 licence year

Northern bobwhite hunting in the Virginia Piedmont. The season runs November 7, 2026 to January 31, 2027 — 86 days afield, bag 6 per day. 68 public units and 1,086,850 acres fall inside this region, the largest of them Oakley Forest Wildlife Management Area at 4,454 acres. The bird is thin and local in Virginia.

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

The ground

Rolling farm and pine country between the mountains and the Tidewater. Quail cover where it exists is managed early succession — broomsedge, field borders, and the state's quail-focused wildlife management areas — surrounded by ground that is farmed or planted too clean to hold birds.

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

VDWR's dates for the 2026–27 licence year, read from VDWR. Virginia lists this season as Northern bobwhite.

Segment	Opens	Closes	Days
Statewide	November 7, 2026	January 31, 2027	86

Open today: Shut — next opening November 7, 2026
Bag limit: 6 per day
Hunter orange: requiredEvery 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.
Shooting hours: One half-hour before sunrise to one half-hour after sunset.
Sundays: Virginia allows Sunday hunting, with two exceptions: not within 200 yards of a house of worship, and not for deer or bear with dogs.

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.
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.

Public land in the Virginia Piedmont

68 units and 1,086,850 acres, out of 130 units in Virginia that name 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.

VDWR names no geographic restriction on this season, so no unit is excluded for being outside one.
Season geography here is read off a dates table rather than the rule itself, and a dates table carries no boundary.

Unit	Class	Manager	Recorded acres	Acres	Where the records are
Oakley Forest Wildlife Management Area	State wildlife management area	SFW	4,454	4,454	100% stronghold
White Oak Mountain Wildlife Management Area	State wildlife management area	SFW	2,683	2,683	100% regular
Mattaponi Wildlife Management Area	State wildlife management area	SFW	2,550	2,550	100% stronghold
Big Woods Wildlife Management Area	State wildlife management area	SFW	2,208	2,208	100% stronghold
Dick Cross Wildlife Management Area	State wildlife management area	SFW	1,524	1,524	100% regular
Robert W. Duncan Wildlife Management Area	State wildlife management area	SFW	1,347	1,347	100% stronghold
Pettigrew Wildlife Management Area	State wildlife management area	SFW	917	917	100% stronghold
Lands End Wildlife Management Area	State wildlife management area	SFW	479	479	100% stronghold
Mattaponi Bluffs Wildlife Management Area	State wildlife management area	SFW	469	469	100% stronghold
Vic Thomas Fish Hatchery	State wildlife management area	SFW	238	238	100% regular
General Vaughns Bridge Wildlife Management Area	State wildlife management area	SFW	165	165	100% stronghold
Lake Brunswick Public Fishing Lake	State wildlife management area	SFW	159	159	100% stronghold

Class	Units	Acres
National forest	5	961,848
State wildlife management area	63	125,002

A region here is a bounding box — 36.5° to 39.0° north, 79.6° to 76.9° 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 VDWR before you park.

Weather and timing

Mild. The season runs into winter without the cover ever really flattening, so hunting is a matter of finding managed ground rather than waiting for conditions.

The place

The old bobwhite country of Virginia, and the birds are a shadow of it. Wild coveys exist on managed units and are worked hard; most quail hunting in the state now happens on licensed preserves, which this app does not carry.

Other regions in Virginia

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