COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ohio’s fall hunting calendar reaches one of its most popular stretches this week, with seasons for ring-necked pheasants, chukar and bobwhite quail and for cottontail rabbits all opening at sunrise on Friday, Nov. 6, according to The Columbus Dispatch’s outdoors report published Nov. 1.
The pheasant season is statewide, the Dispatch reported. Quail hunting is more restricted: bobwhite quail may be hunted only on private land in 16 southern and southwestern Ohio counties, a limit that reflects how much thinner quail numbers are in Ohio than the pheasant population hunters will chase across the state.
Cottontails join the list the same morning. Rabbits can be hunted beginning Nov. 6 from sunrise to sunset anywhere hunting is legal, with a daily limit of four, the Dispatch reported. It is a season that rewards hunters who can find the right cover — which, the Dispatch noted, is getting harder as development spreads.
That is one of the quiet tensions in this year’s small-game opener. Rabbits thrive in and around towns and suburbs, but locating rabbits where hunting is actually permissible can be a chore on a landscape where sprawl continues to expand, the Dispatch reported. Central Ohio’s growth is the backdrop here as well: NewsForce247 reported this morning on a Columbus metro of 2.23 million people with barely 6,000 homes actively for sale — the same growth pressure that keeps reshaping the fields and fence rows at the metro’s edge.
Permission matters as much as place. While a person or family member with acreage may hunt on it where local restrictions permit, outsiders are required to have written permission, the Dispatch reported. Full rules for the small-game seasons are in the Ohio Hunting and Trapping Regulations 2026-27 and at wildohio.gov, the Ohio Division of Wildlife’s site.
Several seasons already under way are also winding toward their close, and the Dispatch’s calendar is worth marking before Nov. 6 arrives. The first part of the split dove season concludes Nov. 8 at sunset, and the second part does not resume until Dec. 12. Hunting for sora rails, Virginia rails and gallinules ends Nov. 9 at sunset.
Woodcock season runs longer. It opened in mid-October and continues through Nov. 29, with a legal limit of three birds a day, the Dispatch reported. For hunters planning the month, that makes November a layered calendar: new openers on Nov. 6, closers on Nov. 8 and Nov. 9, and woodcock available through the Thanksgiving weekend.
The Dispatch also reported a result that says something about who Ohio’s outdoors belongs to: 16 military veterans with disabilities took 11 deer during guided hunts at Zaleski State Forest last month. Guided hunts like those are a standing part of how the state forest system opens deer season to veterans who might not otherwise be able to hunt on their own.
For newcomers, the week offers a front door as well. Archery for beginners will be offered Nov. 7 from 1 to 3 p.m. at the Campground Amphitheater at Alum Creek State Park, the Dispatch reported — a low-pressure introduction, on a state park just north of Columbus, the day after the small-game seasons open.
One longer-running Ohio debate sits behind this season, and the Dispatch walked through it in its Nov. 1 report: bobcats. Taking bobcats in Ohio remains illegal, and the Dispatch reported that recent research suggesting bobcats filtering in from Kentucky and West Virginia could support limited trapping reached the point where the Ohio Division of Wildlife was considering how soon legal trapping should be proposed — before, reportedly, the state’s top office let it be known it did not support bobcat trapping, and the matter was dropped for now. A fur auction sponsored by the Ohio State Trappers Association at Kidron in March showed why the question carries money as well as biology: a dozen bobcat pelts sold at an average of $93.08, the priciest furs at an auction that also included beaver, otter, mink and fox, the Dispatch reported.
What we know — and what we’re still waiting on: the Nov. 6 openers, the rabbit limit of four, the Nov. 8 and Nov. 9 closers and the Nov. 29 woodcock end date are all set in the regulations the Dispatch cited. What no calendar can settle in advance is field conditions — cover, weather and how many birds and rabbits hunters actually find once the season opens. Those reports come from the field, not the rulebook, and they will shape how this fall is remembered.
What happens next: sunrise on Friday, Nov. 6, is the moment this stretch of the season begins, and hunters heading out should confirm their licenses, permissions and the 2026-27 regulations at wildohio.gov before they go. Central Ohioans looking for a different kind of fall outing this weekend can also catch the closing day of Pumpkins Aglow at Franklin Park Conservatory, which ends Sunday with a free community day first.
Photo: Charles J. Sharp, CC BY-SA