Mississippi Deer Season 2026-27: Zone Dates & What to Know

Mississippi's 2026-27 deer season dates are published. MDWFP's "2026–2027 Hunting Seasons — White-tailed Deer" is live, and every date below comes straight from it.

The velvet season opens first: September 11–13, 2026. Permits went on sale August 1, and this year it is private land only — no Wildlife Management Areas or open public lands participate.

01Mississippi's four Deer Management Units

• Delta: west of I-55 and north of I-20, plus areas south of I-20 and west of US 61
• North Central: Alcorn, Benton, DeSoto, Marshall, Tate, and Tippah counties
• Southeast: south of US 84 and east of MS 35
• Hills: everything else

Your unit determines your dates, your legal-buck criteria, and your antlerless limit. Confirm it first.

022026-27 season dates by unit

Delta, North Central, and Hills

Southeast unit

The Southeast opens archery two weeks later than the rest of the state, has no antlerless primitive weapon season, and gets a February bucks-only archery and primitive segment — the latest deer hunting in Mississippi.

03The velvet season

Three days, September 11–13, bucks only. Permits went on sale August 1, 2026 — $10 for residents, and included in the $100 deer permit for nonresidents. Every harvested buck must be submitted for CWD sampling at an MDWFP drop-off freezer or a participating taxidermist within five days, and the harvest reported through Deer Game Check by 10 p.m. the day of kill.

One change worth knowing: as of the 2026 velvet season, no Wildlife Management Areas or open public lands participate. A public-land velvet hunt is no longer an option.

04Bag limits and legal bucks

• Bucks: 1 per day, 3 per season statewide (4 in North Central, which carries no antler restrictions). One of those three may have hardened antlers that do not meet your unit's legal-antler requirement, on private land and Holly Springs National Forest.
• Legal buck criteria: Delta — 12-inch inside spread or 15-inch main beam; Hills and Southeast — 10-inch spread or 13-inch main beam; North Central — any hardened antler.
• Antlerless, private land: 5 per season statewide (10 in North Central, 3 in Southeast).
• Antlerless, national forests: 1 per day, not to exceed 5 per season — 3 per season in the Southeast unit.
• Deer Game Check is voluntary except during the velvet season, when harvests must be reported by 10 p.m. the day of kill.

05License basics

Residents need an all-game hunting license or Sportsman's License. To hunt the primitive-weapon seasons — or use "weapon of choice" on private land in the later segments — you need a primitive weapon license, an all-game license plus primitive weapon add-on, or a Sportsman's / Lifetime Sportsman's License.

06Check the official source

Mississippi's framework can shift inside a season year: MDWFP adjusts CWD management zones and the carcass, feeding and sampling rules that come with them as new detections turn up, and which lands participate in the velvet season is decided year to year. Confirm your unit's dates and rules before you hunt, straight from MDWFP:

• 2026-2027 Hunting Seasons — MDWFP (PDF) — the document of record
• MDWFP hunting seasons and bag limits — the HTML version, headed "2026-2027 Seasons"
• MDWFP velvet season page — permits, CWD sampling, and which lands participate

That first document governs. Where it and this page disagree, MDWFP is right and this page is wrong — and a deer taken a day early is a ticket, not a technicality.

Verified August 16, 2026 against MDWFP's 2026-2027 Hunting Seasons PDF and MDWFP's hunting seasons page, which carry identical dates.

07Plan the season

Mississippi's season runs nearly five months, and the rut slides from mid-December in the north to late January in the south — pick your weeks accordingly:

• Mississippi Rut Prediction 2026 — rut timing by region
• Mississippi Solunar Calendar — daily feeding windows
• Best Time to Hunt Today in Mississippi — today's hourly outlook
• Trail Pro Intel's free Hunt Forecast combines weather, wind, and solunar peaks into one huntability score — handy for a January rut that always seems to peak midweek.

Find your unit, then write down three dates: your archery opener, your first gun segment, and — if you want it — the velvet season on September 11.