West Virginia · Rabbit · 2026–27 Edition
West Virginia Rabbit Season 2026–27: Dates & Bag Limits
01 — Seasons
| Season | Zone | Dates |
|---|---|---|
| Cottontail rabbit | Statewide | Nov 7 – Feb 28 |
02 — Bag limits
| Daily | 5 |
|---|---|
| Possession | 20 |
| Season | None |
03 — Shooting hours
No shooting-hours restriction — legal at any hour during the open season.
Rule: No statewide shooting-hours restriction on rabbit. WVDNR's regulations name the species that carry the half-hour-before-sunrise to half-hour-after-sunset margins, and rabbit is not among them; no other passage sets small-game hours.
04 — License
Rabbit hunters in West Virginia need a West Virginia hunting license — Covered by any WV hunting license plus the Conservation Stamp; hunters who only want small game can instead buy the six-consecutive-day Small Game Hunting License (Class H, $27), which also requires the Conservation Stamp.
West Virginia hunting license cost →
Where to hunt public land in West Virginia — WMAs by county & access rules →
05 — FAQ
When does rabbit season start in West Virginia?
The 2026–27 opener is November 7, 2026. See the table above for the full window.
When does rabbit season end in West Virginia?
The 2026–27 closing date is February 28, 2027.
Is there a closed season on rabbit in West Virginia?
Yes — see the dates above. Outside that window, taking rabbit is closed in West Virginia.
How many rabbits can you shoot in West Virginia per day?
2026–27 bag limits: Daily — 5. Possession — 20. Season — None. Limits are set per zone and per permit — check the agency's own regulations before you hunt.
What time can you start shooting rabbit in West Virginia?
There is no shooting-hours restriction — rabbit may legally be hunted at any hour during the open season in West Virginia. The rule is: No statewide shooting-hours restriction on rabbit. WVDNR's regulations name the species that carry the half-hour-before-sunrise to half-hour-after-sunset margins, and rabbit is not among them; no other passage sets small-game hours.
Can I hunt rabbits on my own land in West Virginia without a license?
West Virginia resident landowners, their resident children or parents, and resident tenants may hunt, trap, or fish their own land without a license — except on land designated a wildlife refuge or preserve. Some species stamps carry their own separate landowner rules.
Verified · West Virginia Division of Natural Resources · Last verified 2026-08-14
Publisher's note. Official WVDNR 'Hunting and Trapping Regulations Summary, July 2026 – June 2027' PDF, text-extracted directly from its 2026-2027 seasons/dates/limits table, corroborated by a WVDNR press release confirming this is the current released edition. Statewide dates and limits, no county/zone split (unlike WV's deer/bear/turkey seasons) and no youth-only day for rabbit specifically (only squirrel has one). Snowshoe/varying hare is a separate line item in the same table with its own, lower limits (2 daily / 8 possession) — this file covers cottontail rabbit only. A rabbit-specific shooting-hours bracket was not found in the regulations text (only deer/bear/boar/turkey have an explicit hours rule stated). RECONFIRMED 2026-08-16: the regulations summary's general prohibitions list bans hunting 'deer, bear or boar' outside the half-hour margins by name — rabbit is not among them, and no other passage in the document sets small-game hours. EXPLICIT shootingHours MARKER (2026-08-27): this file now carries shootingHours.unrestricted = true. Simply omitting the field did NOT work and had been silently wrong on the live page: the season templates read season.shootingHours ?? meta.shootingHours, so an absent block fell through to the state-level default in states.json and the page printed a computed sunrise/sunset window plus a rule the law does not impose - while the licence section right below it said the opposite. The templates now honour the marker and print the no-restriction sentence instead. The original reasoning stands: West Virginia imposes no statewide hunting-hours restriction on rabbit, so any offset — including 0/0 — would state a limit the regulations do not impose.