Minnesota

Minnesota's farmland upland hunting centers on ring-necked pheasant, which the Department of Natural Resources' (DNR) August Roadside Survey, a set of 170 routes run continuously since 1955, tracks across seven farmland regions of the state. Pheasant range covers the southern half of Minnesota, absent only from the bluffs and coulees of the driftless area in the state's southeastern corner, with the Southwest, South Central, West Central, and Central regions consistently identified as the state's best hunting. The season is roosters-only, running from early October through the start of January. Gray (Hungarian) partridge shares the same survey framework and a similar rifle restriction to pheasant, with the Southwest and Southeast regions carrying the most observations of the seven; its season runs longer, from mid-September through the start of January. Greater prairie-chicken hunting is a lottery-permit hunt open only to Minnesota residents, drawn across nine named permit zones for a nine-day season in late September and early October; nearly all of the state's remaining birds sit on the beach ridges of glacial Lake Agassiz in the state's northwestern corner, Polk, Norman, Clay, and Wilkin Counties, a landform left behind by a prehistoric lake, with a smaller population extending south of that core.

Minnesota's three forest grouse species split by geography. Ruffed grouse is strongest in the Northeast region's forested core, spanning the Superior and Chippewa National Forests, and weakest in the Southeast's driftless area at the opposite end of the state; its season runs from mid-September through the start of January, the same window as spruce grouse, which shares its bag limit and is centered on the Arrowhead region's Northern Superior Uplands in the state's northeastern corner, with a secondary population in the northwestern peatlands near the Canadian border and its thinnest, southern-edge population in the north-central drift and lake plains area. Sharp-tailed grouse runs a shorter season, mid-September through late November, and is open only in the Northwest region, where the population has been expanding south into range historically held by prairie-chicken; the East-Central region has been closed to sharp-tailed grouse hunting since 2021 after a sustained decline, with its remaining birds concentrated around the Aitkin work area.