New Hampshire Deer Season 2026-27: Dates, WMUs & What to Know

New Hampshire's 2026 deer season dates are published. NH Fish and Game's official season table — revised in March 2026 — runs archery September 15 through December 15, muzzleloader October 31 through November 10, and regular firearms November 11 through December 6. The one big asterisk is WMU A in the far north, where archery closes a week early (December 8) and firearms closes November 29.

01New Hampshire deer season dates, 2026

Three structural points that trip up hunters every year:

• WMU A closes early. If you hunt north of Errol, both archery and firearms end a week before the rest of the state. Know which side of the WMU line your stand sits on.
• "Any deer" days are staggered by WMU, and the spread is enormous. In WMU A, the firearms season gives you exactly one any-deer day — November 11 — and is antlered-only from November 12 through the November 29 close. In the southern units L and M, any-deer runs November 11 through November 22, with antlered-only from November 23 to the December 6 close. Muzzleloader splits the same way: antlered-only in A, B, C1, C2 and D1; any deer in L and M. Pull NHFG's season table for your own unit before you shoot a doe — the middle units fall between these two extremes.
• Registration is in-person early. Online deer registration is unavailable for the first two days of muzzleloader season and the first three days of firearms season — you must bring your deer to a physical registration station during those windows.

02Licenses and the basics

A New Hampshire hunting license covers the firearms season; archery and muzzleloader each require their own additional license. Units L and M also offer special antlerless-only permits in most years. Everything is available through NH Fish and Game's licensing system. Nonresident youth can join the Youth Deer Weekend if their home state offers New Hampshire kids the same courtesy.

03Check the official source

NHFG revises this season table between publication and opening day — the current one is itself a revision — and the any-deer allocation by WMU is reset every year, so the unit that let you take a doe last November can be antlered-only this one. Check your WMU's dates and its any-deer days before you hunt; getting either wrong is a citation, not a correctable mistake.

• NHFG 2026 N.H. Deer Season table (PDF) — the one-page season table, unit by unit
• NHFG dates and seasons
• NHFG deer hunting

Verified August 16, 2026 against NHFG's official "2026 N.H. Deer Season" table (revised 03/26). If a date here and a date on that table disagree, the table wins — full stop.

04Plan the season

New Hampshire hands you a three-month archery season and a firearms season that opens mid-rut on Wednesday, November 11. How you spend those days matters more than how many you get:

• New Hampshire Rut Prediction 2026 — when we expect seeking, chasing and lockdown to hit in the Granite State, and what that means for the muzzleloader-to-firearms transition week.
• New Hampshire Solunar Calendar — feeding-window forecasts for any date on the calendar.
• Best Time to Hunt Today in New Hampshire — a free, live conditions read for today's hunt.
• Hunt Forecast — Trail Pro Intel's free Hunt Forecast scores your exact location day by day using wind, pressure trends, temperature and solunar overlap — useful when you're deciding whether to burn a November vacation day in the whites or wait for the cold front.

A Halloween muzzleloader opener and a firearms opener eleven days later bracket the best two weeks of deer movement New Hampshire sees all year. Sort your WMU's any-deer days now, so the only decision left in November is which stand to climb.