This state's classification carries no date range for the species.
Absent from every season/bag/fee table and the statutory 'game animal' list in MI DNR's 2026-27 small game regulations summary; falls under the statute's general nongame-bird protection ('cannot be taken at any time'). Michigan voters rejected a 2006 ballot referendum (Proposal 06-3) that would have authorized dove hunting.
Michigan runs no dove hunting season at all (commonly attributed to voters rejecting a 2006 ballot referendum, Proposal 06-3; the species is protected as a nongame bird under the state's 2026-27 small game regulations), so there is no zone map, stocking program, or harvest survey that could have produced a sub-state signal through the usual hunting-management channel. A real, sourced geographic claim survives independent of that absence, though: independent sourcing describes doves as abundant in Michigan, especially south of a line from Bay City to Ludington (the boundary between the state's southern agricultural belt and its more forested northern two-thirds), and Michigan sits at the species' breeding range's northern edge. The Michigan Breeding Bird Atlas also documented a real range-dynamics finding, a significant increase in Upper Peninsula detections between Atlas I (1983-1988) and Atlas II (2002-2008), a northward range-expansion signal, not a current-density claim. 'No hunting program' and 'no sub-state answer' are not the same thing: there is a real named region here, not a uniform-statewide default.
No formal population survey program exists for this species in this state.
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