| Window | Dates | Days |
|---|---|---|
| Season | 01 SEP 2026 – 01 JAN 2027 | 123d |
As publishedSep 1 - Jan 1, 2027 (combined "Mountain Grouse" season/bag with dusky and spruce grouse)
Regulated jointly with blue (dusky) grouse and Franklin's (spruce) grouse under one combined "Mountain Grouse" bag limit (the 3-bird daily bag is an aggregate across all three species, not per-species). Exempt from the standard 10-day nonresident delay; residents and nonresidents share the same Sep 1, 2026 - Jan 1, 2027 season.
Ruffed grouse in Montana is tied specifically to riparian aspen and mixed-conifer stream-bottom habitat, a narrower requirement than the broader montane-forest range dusky grouse occupies (both share the same combined statewide Mountain Grouse season/bag with spruce grouse, but their real habitat footprints differ). Independent hunting-press and habitat-ecology sourcing describes the species sticking to river bottoms and aspen thickets in the western mountains specifically, most commonly noted around 4,500 ft elevation, while a USDA/NRCS riparian-habitat targeting plan extends the same riparian-aspen ecological system (roughly 360,000 acres) into central Montana's isolated "island" mountain ranges — explicitly naming the Highwood Mountains and the Bear Paw Mountains in Chouteau County alongside the main western range.
Preliminary: Montana FWP's 2026 Upland Game Bird Season Outlook, published August 31, expects mountain grouse numbers in Region 1, the northwest, to come in below normal on poor chick production. That finding covers the mountain grouse group as a whole, ruffed, dusky, and spruce together under Montana's combined bag, rather than a ruffed-specific survey result, so read it as a direction rather than a precise figure. No other region carries a ruffed grouse number this year. Region 2's spring surveys were aimed at dusky grouse and picked up ruffed birds only incidentally, and FWP says the information for Region 3 is more limited.
Poor chick production across the northwest mountain grouse group.
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