Where can I hunt on Crown land?

What a WMU is

A Wildlife Management Unit (WMU) is a numbered geographic area Ontario uses to manage wildlife populations. There are 151 mapped units, identified by a number and sometimes a letter suffix: 60, 63A, 76E, 69A-2. Boundaries follow rivers, roads, townships and other recognizable features rather than a grid, and they are published by the province as an authoritative spatial dataset.

Units exist because wildlife does not spread evenly across the province. A deer herd in Chatham-Kent farmland and one in the boreal forest north of Sioux Lookout need different harvest levels, so Ontario tunes seasons and tag numbers unit by unit. The practical consequence for hunters is that the same species can be open in one unit and closed in the unit next door, and the boundary may be a road you drive across without noticing.

Units are also the unit of account for reporting. Your mandatory hunter report asks which WMU you hunted, and those reports feed the population estimates that set next year's quotas.

What the unit decides

Once you know your unit, the regulations summary tells you five separate things:

• Season dates, and there is usually more than one. Deer in much of central Ontario has a gun season, a muzzle-loader season and a bows-only season, each with its own dates, sometimes split into several windows across the fall.
• Firearm type. Some units allow rifles, others restrict you to shotguns, muzzle-loaders or bows. In several southern units rifles are prohibited outright during the open season.
• Resident vs non-resident. Many units are open to Ontario residents but closed to non-residents, or open to non-residents on a shorter window.
• Tags and draws. A licence is not always enough. Moose runs on a tag allocation process, elk and antlerless deer on draws, and controlled deer hunts need a validation you applied for between July 1 and 31.
• Local exceptions: dog restrictions, landowner permission requirements, named geographic townships that are closed, and units with unique administration that only the local MNR work centre can explain.

What WMU am I in?

Open the map, turn on Wildlife Units (WMU) under "Where can I hunt?", and tap where you plan to hunt. The unit number is labelled on the map and the panel lists every season that applies there. If you already know the number, type it into the Find a WMU box.

Two things worth knowing before you rely on the answer. Unit boundaries follow rivers, roads and township lines, so you can cross one without noticing anything on the ground. And a boundary drawn on a map is a rendering of a legal description: if you are hunting within a few hundred metres of a line, work out which side you are on before you shoot, not after.

The numbering runs roughly 1 to 95, north to south, with letter suffixes where a unit has been split. WMU 63A is one of those splits, and its rules are its own: the suffix is not decoration, and 63A and 63B can differ on season, firearm and draw.

Where you can hunt

A season tells you when. It does not tell you where you are allowed to stand. CrownAccess draws the second answer as its own layer: unpatented Crown land where CLUPA policy supports hunting, with private land, provincial parks, conservation reserves, First Nation reserves and non-freehold dispositions already taken out.

That is 42,569 parcels across the province, so it is the densest of the five activity layers. The link below opens near Temagami.

Crown Game Preserves

Hunting is closed inside a Crown Game Preserve. Not restricted, not seasonal: closed. Ontario has fourteen of them, covering about 8,160 square kilometres, and they sit inside Crown land that is otherwise open, which is exactly what makes them easy to walk into.

One of them is most of the total. Chapleau Crown Game Preserve is 7,312 square kilometres of northern Ontario, the largest game preserve in the world, and if you are hunting anywhere between Chapleau and Foleyet you are close to its edge. Nipissing is the next largest at 554. The rest are small and southern: Puslinch, Dumfries, Brigden, Conestogo, Peterborough, Pembroke, Shirley Bay, Himsworth, Conroy Marsh, Miner, Nopiming and Geikie Island.

A preserve is rarely fenced. Some are signed at the road and some are not signed at all. CrownAccess cuts them out of the hunting layer, the same way posted no-camping signs erase ground from the camping layer, so the land inside one is not drawn as huntable. Confirm against the province's mapping before you go.

See what is open today, by unit

CrownAccess turns the season tables into a map. Turn on Wildlife Management Units under Hunting, pick a species, and every unit is shaded by its status right now: open, opening later this year, finished for the year, or no season at all. Tap a unit for its full rules.

Seasons: 2026 Ontario Hunting Regulations Summary, effective April 1, 2026. Boundaries: Ontario Wildlife Management Unit dataset. A convenient reference only. Confirm against the official summary before you hunt.

Species covered

The map carries the season tables for every species in the summary that is organized by unit. Jump straight to one:

• White-tailed deer: gun, muzzle-loader, bows-only and controlled-hunt seasons, with hunt codes. Licences and the draw open March 1; reports are due January 14, 2027.
• Moose: gun, bow, and bows-and-muzzle-loaders seasons, plus the units with controlled hunter numbers. Tag allocation opens April 1; reports are due December 29.
• Elk, a single resident-only draw season in a handful of units around Bancroft and North Hastings. Tags are valid for harvest areas smaller than the unit itself.
• Black bear: separate spring and fall seasons, with the Bruce Peninsula closed in fall and cub protection in spring.
• Wild turkey, a spring bearded-bird season and two fall seasons, one shotgun-or-bow and one bow-only.
• Wolf and coyote: tag required across the north on a September to March season, open all year with no tag across much of the south, with township closures protecting Eastern wolf.
• Ruffed and spruce grouse, including the units where spruce grouse has no season, and sharp-tailed grouse.
• Other small game and furbearers : pheasant, ptarmigan, partridge, cormorant, hare, squirrel, and the furbearers you may take on a Small Game Licence.

How to read a season

Season dates in the summary are inclusive. The first and last dates listed are both open days. A single unit often shows several date ranges separated by commas, which means the season closes and reopens: in WMU 65 the deer bow season runs October 1–4, October 15 to November 1, November 16–29 and December 7–31, and the gaps are closed days.

The regulations year runs April 1 to March 31, not January to December, so a season written "September 15 to March 31" crosses into the next calendar year. Where a tag is dated, you may need two: the wolf and coyote season needs a 2026 tag through December 31 and a 2027 tag from January 1.

An open season is permission to hunt, not permission to keep. Bag and possession limits are separate, and for small game they change between units. Snowshoe hare allows five a day across the north and centre but only two in the south.

Where hunting is allowed on Crown land

Crown land is generally open to hunting by Ontario residents, and about 77% of the province is Crown land managed under the Public Lands Act, but an open season in your unit does not make the whole unit huntable. The further 10% held as provincial parks and conservation reserves is managed under separate legislation and most of it prohibits hunting, Crown Game Preserves are closed to it, and safety zones and municipal firearm bylaws restrict discharge near buildings, roads and settlements. Some units are closed only in named geographic townships.

Patent (private) land inside a unit is not yours to hunt without permission, and in a few units (43A, 43B and 44) the summary requires that permission in writing. Our Crown land explainer covers the tenure side, the roads guide explains which bush roads carry a public right of passage, and the camping guide covers where you can set up a base camp.

Indigenous communities hold constitutionally protected rights to hunt in Ontario that are fundamentally different from the privileges granted to licensed hunters, and may involve different methods or times. Those rights pre-date the province.

Before you go

• Carry your Outdoors Card, the licence for your species listed on your Licence Summary, any required tag validated for the season, firearm and unit, and proof of firearm accreditation if you are hunting with a gun.
• Check the draw and tag calendar. Most opportunities close months before the season: antlerless deer by June 30, elk draw entry by June 10, controlled deer hunts July 31, moose primary allocation April 30.
• Hunter reporting is mandatory for elk, deer, bear, turkey, wolf and coyote where a tag is required, and for anyone issued a moose licence, even if you did not hunt or did not harvest. From July 1, 2026 a financial surcharge applies to repeat failures to report.
• Confirm dates against the official summary and Ontario's in-season updates, which carry changes made after the summary was printed.

CrownAccess is a planning tool, not a legal document. The Fish and Wildlife Conservation Act, 1997 and its regulations govern; where this guide and the official summary disagree, the summary is right.

Common questions

What is a Wildlife Management Unit in Ontario?

A Wildlife Management Unit (WMU) is a numbered geographic area Ontario uses to manage wildlife. Hunting seasons, tag requirements, firearm restrictions and draws are set per WMU, so the same species can be open in one unit and closed in the unit next door. Ontario has 151 mapped WMUs, identified by numbers and letter suffixes such as 60, 63A or 69A-2.

How do I find out which WMU I am in?

Open the CrownAccess map, turn on the Wildlife Management Units layer under Hunting, and tap where you plan to hunt. The unit number is labelled on the map and the panel lists every season that applies there. You can also search a unit by number in the Find a WMU box.

Do hunting seasons differ between WMUs?

Yes. Seasons are set unit by unit, and they also differ by firearm type and by whether you are a resident or non-resident of Ontario. The 2026 white-tailed deer gun season opens September 19 in WMU 1C but November 2 in WMU 39, and many northern units have no non-resident deer season at all.

Can I hunt anywhere on Crown land?

No. Crown land is generally open to hunting by Ontario residents, but provincial parks, conservation reserves, Crown Game Preserves, safety zones and areas covered by municipal firearm bylaws restrict or prohibit it, and some units are closed to specific species or in certain geographic townships. Always confirm the WMU rules and local signage before you hunt.