Other State's Rifle Season Questions

84jeep

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Joined
Feb 26, 2015
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43
Location
South Louisiana
Hey all, I went to Missouri for thanksgiving to visit the girlfriend's sister and since I normally hunt the weekend of thanksgiving I halfheartedly looked up the season and license prices just to see. I was surprised to see that there is only a 2 day rifle season in Missouri. How common is this? Do a lot of states have no gun season or super short ones? Is there a good reason for this? I always thought the deer populations up there were pretty strong? I guess I am a little spoiled here in Louisiana where our rifle season starts the weekend before thanksgiving and goes to the third week of January. Any insight greatly appreciated. Thanks.
 
Rifle season in Missouri is two weekends I know for sure. Nov 12-22nd for 2016. They'll also have an late doe season and an alternative weapons season. The two day hunt Thanksgiving weekend was extended youth season

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NY is divided into two zones: southern and northern (Adirondacks essentially). The southern zone is from the third Saturday in November for 23 days and the northern zone is 44 days from the third Saturday in October. Thanksgiving day is a traditional family deer hunting day here. Hunt the morning, do a drive or two, have appetizers, watch some football, and eat dinner sometime after 3.

There's been talk to shorten the firearm deer seasons to increase the trophy potential, but that will mostly get a lot of people angry.
 
Colorado has a first season that a draw only ten day season, then a second rifle season that's five days, a third season that's five days and a late draw season. You can also get private land tags that run until mid January.
 
PA is 12 days from the Monday after Thanksgiving, we cannot hunt Sundays. First day of buck is a big tradition here and has long been a school holiday for most of the state. At one time upwards of 1.2 million people hunted that day although now it is almost half that. As rifle pressure and harvest have decreased, archery participation and harvest have sharply increased. Doe season in most areas comes in the first Saturday and lasts a week. A vast majority of the deer are shot the first day and first Saturday. Those two days of rifle season are a zoo here. Unless you are hunting a very large tract of private ground you are hunting pressured deer not their natural movements. I love the tradition of rifle season, going to camp every year and all that, but loathe the actual hunting in comparison to archery season.
 
Kansas usually starts the last Wednesday of November and runs until the second Sunday of December.
 
So I have lived in quite a few places and I have hunted a lot of deer in different states. Grew up hunting Georgia where the season is like it is in Louisiana, very long. Now I am in Nebraska where the rifle season is a week long. I will say that in my opinion it is because it is a lot easier to kill a deer in these midwestern states, like really easy. Where hunting in the south is difficult in that it is so thick but there is a lot more deer so they can allow you to shoot a lot more deer.
 
In Indiana you can use rifles for 16 days then followed by another 16 day muzzy season so 32 days of gun season on the same tag for antlered.... We also have a 7 day late antlerless which about 1 in 5 shot is a shed buck. To top it off the Rifle opener is the 2nd weekend in Nov catching the peak chase periods here which severaly impacts the amount of mature deer throughout the state in heavily hunted areas. Opening weekend is a zoo public land will see more than 1 hunter per 20 acres and a lot of private land gets hammered as well esp the small tracts. Dads neighbor heard over 100 shots one day 2 openers ago and saw about 20 deer running through open fields for there lives. Some guys have decent to good tracts and kill good bucks most years but 85%+ hunters don't and those other areas are tough to take a 3.5yr+.
 
Colorado has a first season that a draw only ten day season, then a second rifle season that's five days, a third season that's five days and a late draw season. You can also get private land tags that run until mid January.

1st and 4th are 5 days, 2nd and 3rd are 9 days.
 
Colorado has a first season that a draw only 5 day season elk only, then a second rifle season that's 9 days, a third season that's 9 days and a 5 day 4th season draw only. You can also get private land and/or public land late season cow elk tags that run until mid January.

I had to fix that... Not to mention the front range (where most of the whitetail hunting take place) seasons that can be longer and later but lack public land.
 
Wisconsin is 9 day rifle during Thanksgiving week. Then 9 or ten day muzzleloader for tags not filled during rifle. Have a youth hunt weekend in October and a doe season (maybe 4 days) in December with rifle.
 
An insane 28 days, about 6-10 of which is during peak rut in NY southern zone . In the northern zone it's about 35-38 days all during the peak rut.
Thats all you need to know about why NY deer hunting is the bottom of the barrel.
 
Here in NC our rifle season ranges from 3 weeks to 2.5 months depending on what part of the state you live in! In Eastern NC rifle season kicks off on Oct 15 and goes to Jan. 1. Way too long IMO. Where I live we used to have a 3 week gun season that started Thanksgiving week and ended second Saturday in December. Now, it runs until Jan.1 and they have tripled the number of doe days. People wonder why deer numbers have dropped.
 
South Carolina has likely the longest rifle deer season in the country. In the low country of SC the season starts on August 15th and runs through January 1. I have never and probably never will hunt in August down there as it is ridiculously hot. In the game zone I hunt (Zone 2) the rifle season on private land runs from October 11th through Jan 1. Still quite a lengthy season but not the marathon our low country folks experience.
 
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