As publishedOct 17–Nov 28, 2026
Zones 1-14 (all Wildlife Management Zones statewide).Season framework is 'first Saturday after Columbus Day to the Saturday after Thanksgiving,' which lands on Oct 17–Nov 28 for 2026; the codified statute text separately gives a 'November 30' outer ceiling which is superseded by the more specific season-summary date. Season already ends before shotgun deer season opens (Nov 30), so no mid-season closure gap. No permit beyond standard hunting/sporting (or small-game/big-game) license required.
MassWildlife states its upland-bird assessment "incorporates ruffed grouse monitoring and harvest information," including a voluntary Game Bird Hunting Log — confirming a real program exists — but no dedicated spring drumming-count survey or standalone published forecast document has been confirmed. mass.gov returned HTTP 403 to every direct fetch attempt again this pass (ruffed-grouse-hunting-regulations page), and no Wayback Machine workaround is available in this session's tools, so this closure leans on WebSearch snippets and the Tier A registry's own prior findings rather than a fresh primary-source read — flagged as the least independently verified combo in this batch, consistent with the registry's own note calling out Massachusetts on exactly this point. (A third-party aggregator, Ultimate Upland, rates MA ruffed grouse "FAIR" this pass, but per the precedent set for Colorado in an earlier Tier B batch, that site's ratings aren't tied to a specific MassWildlife-published count and were not used as a governing source here.)