This state's classification carries no date range for the species.
Ruffed grouse is listed as CLOSED (no open season) for 2026-2027 in RI DEM's official regulation guide, corroborated across two independent tables in the same document (Small Game Hunting table p.27 and Hunting Season Summary p.31). The guide's 'Significant Regulation Changes & Highlights 2026-2027' section does not flag this as a new closure this cycle.
Rhode Island's ruffed grouse population has collapsed to the point that the season is fully closed statewide for 2026-2027, with a state DEM official citing concern over the decline in ruffed grouse in Rhode Island and minimal recent hunter harvest, prompting a public-comment-driven closure and a DEM population survey. To the extent any remnant population persists, birdwatcher-documented reports place it in Rhode Island's forested northwestern interior, the same Northwest Hills & Inland Woods region (Foster, Glocester, Burrillville, and parts of Coventry/Exeter/West Greenwich) that hosts the state's largest contiguous forest blocks and public land anchors (Arcadia and George Washington Management Areas), consistent with the species' dependence on the young-forest habitat concentrated there. A birding-site account for Foster notes grouse have become a very difficult bird to find in Rhode Island, though one can sometimes still be heard drumming at that location, real geography, but describing an increasingly marginal remnant presence rather than a huntable stronghold.
No formal population survey program exists for this species in this state.
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