Missouri · Squirrel · 2026–27 Edition
Missouri Squirrel Season 2026–27: Dates & Bag Limits
01 — Seasons
| Season | Zone | Dates |
|---|---|---|
| Squirrel season | Statewide | May 23 – Feb 15 |
02 — Bag limits
| Daily | 10 — eastern gray and fox squirrel combined |
|---|---|
| Possession | 20 |
03 — Shooting hours
No shooting-hours restriction — legal at any hour during the open season.
Rule: No statewide shooting-hours restriction on squirrel. The Wildlife Code chapter was checked for every sunrise/sunset mention and none is tied to squirrel.
04 — License
Squirrel hunters in Missouri need a Missouri hunting license — Requires a Small Game Hunting Permit (or Small Game Hunting and Fishing Permit, Archer's Hunting Permit, or an applicable lifetime/military permit) unless exempt under Missouri law (e.g., landowners hunting their own land, or resident youth/senior exemptions).
Missouri hunting license cost →
Where to hunt public land in Missouri — WMAs by county & access rules →
05 — FAQ
When does squirrel season start in Missouri?
The 2026–27 opener is May 23, 2026. See the table above for the full window.
When does squirrel season end in Missouri?
The 2026–27 closing date is February 15, 2027.
Is there a difference between fox and gray squirrel rules in Missouri?
See the bag limit table above — most states run one combined limit across both species, but this is worth confirming against Missouri Department of Conservation before you hunt.
How many squirrels can you shoot in Missouri per day?
2026–27 bag limits: Daily — 10 — eastern gray and fox squirrel combined. Possession — 20. Limits are set per zone and per permit — check the agency's own regulations before you hunt.
What time can you start shooting squirrel in Missouri?
There is no shooting-hours restriction — squirrel may legally be hunted at any hour during the open season in Missouri. The rule is: No statewide shooting-hours restriction on squirrel. The Wildlife Code chapter was checked for every sunrise/sunset mention and none is tied to squirrel.
Can I hunt squirrels on my own land in Missouri without a license?
Missouri resident landowners with 5 or more acres, and their immediate household, may hunt that land without a permit — except bear, deer, elk, and turkey. Taking deer or turkey under this privilege needs at least 20 contiguous acres, and waterfowl still needs the federal Duck Stamp.
Verified · Missouri Department of Conservation · Last verified 2026-08-14
Publisher's note. Primary source is the codified Wildlife Code of Missouri rule 3 CSR 10-7.425 (Squirrels: Seasons, Limits), read both on its MDC-hosted summary page and via a Cornell LII mirror of the same rule text: 'Squirrels may be taken from the fourth Saturday in May through February 15' with a daily limit of ten squirrels and a possession limit of twenty. The fourth Saturday in May 2026 is May 23, which matches independently-published MDC species pages (mdc.mo.gov/hunting-trapping/species/squirrel/squirrel-regulations), so opener/closes are treated as confirmed for 2026-27. Legal methods, read from the same species-regulations page and the MDC 'Additional Squirrel Regulations' page, are rifles, pistols, revolvers, shotguns, bows, crossbows, air guns, spring-powered devices, slingshots, atlatls, and attended cage-type traps (opening ≤144 sq in, checked daily). shootingHours is deliberately omitted: 3 CSR 10-7.425 itself states no hunting-hours clause (unlike deer, bear, and turkey, which each carry their own explicit 'one-half hour before sunrise to one-half hour after sunset' language in their own CSR sections), and no squirrel-specific MDC page could be found stating a shooting-hours rule, so rather than borrow the general/other-species figure this field is left out per the no-guessing rule. One unusual wrinkle worth flagging: during the November firearms deer season, squirrels may only be taken with .22-caliber-or-smaller rimfire rifles or shotguns loaded with shot no larger than No. 4 (statewide), and in ten southeastern counties — Butler, Carter, Dent, Iron, Madison, Oregon, Reynolds, Ripley, Shannon, and Wayne — dogs may not be used to pursue squirrels during daylight hours of that same period. This is a temporary within-season equipment/method restriction, not a separate segment, so it is not modeled as its own methods[] row, but it is a real deviation from the general season a hunter should know about. SHOOTING HOURS: read 3 CSR 10-7.425 (Squirrels: Seasons, Limits) directly — it sets the season and bag/possession limits only, no time-of-day restriction, unlike the neighboring 3 CSR 10-7.420 (Rabbits), which explicitly states 'between sunrise and sunset'. Checked the whole chapter's sunrise/sunset mentions and found none tied to squirrel. 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: Missouri imposes no statewide hunting-hours restriction on squirrel, so any offset — including 0/0 — would state a limit the regulation does not impose.