• Universal antlerless deer licence use limits have been implemented — by DMU in the Upper Peninsula and by county in the Lower Peninsula.
• The limited firearms deer zone has been eliminated: from 12 September 2026 all legal firearms may be used across the Lower Peninsula.
• The Upper Peninsula muzzleloader season and the Lower Peninsula December firearm season are both cut to three days, beginning the first Friday in December.
• The early antlerless firearm season now falls on the second weekend in September, and the late antlerless firearm season begins the Monday after the December firearm season and runs to 1 January.
• The extended late antlerless deer season and the January archery season have been eliminated.
• DMUs 351 and 352 have been rescinded and the Upper Peninsula antlerless access permit drawing has been eliminated.
• From 12 September 2026 a resident senior with a senior deer, senior deer combination or senior universal antlerless licence may use a crossbow during the late archery season in the Upper Peninsula.

Bow and crossbow

Summary pp. 49-51

• Bows and crossbows throughout both archery segments in the Lower Peninsula.
• Crossbows during the early archery segment anywhere, and during the regular firearm season in the Upper Peninsula.
• Crossbow arrows, bolts and quarrels of at least 14 inches, tipped with a broadhead at least 7/8 inch wide.

• Crossbows and modified bows during the late archery segment and the muzzleloader season in the Upper Peninsula — unless you hold a disabled hunter's crossbow or modified bow permit, or, from 12 September 2026, are a resident senior with a senior deer, senior deer combination or senior universal antlerless licence.
• Carrying a pistol, revolver or other firearm afield while bow hunting deer, except where a firearm deer season is open in that area and you are licensed for it, or under a concealed pistol licence.

Firearms

Summary pp. 47 and 51-52

• A shotgun.
• A rifle of any calibre larger than .22 rimfire.
• A handgun of any calibre larger than .22 rimfire, carried in plain view, by a hunter at least 18 years old.
• A muzzle-loading firearm, black powder handguns included, loaded with black powder or a commercial substitute.
• A pneumatic gun meeting the season's firearm requirements.

• A semi-automatic shotgun or rifle holding more than six shells in barrel and magazine combined.
• Snares, traps, cages, nets, pitfalls, deadfalls, spears, slingshots, fully automatic firearms, airbows, tracer or explosive bullets, drugs, poisons, smoke, gas and explosives.

Muzzleloader

Summary p. 52

• A muzzle-loading rifle, muzzle-loading shotgun or black-powder pistol, loaded with black powder or a commercially manufactured black-powder substitute.

• Anything else during the Upper Peninsula muzzleloader season — a crossbow or modified bow only with a disabled hunter's permit, or, from 12 September 2026, as a resident senior on a senior licence.

Legal Shooting Hours

Summary pp. 35-37

Half an hour before sunrise to half an hour after sunset. The Summary prints this as a Zone A table with a correction in minutes for every other zone on the map, and warns that Gogebic, Iron, Dickinson and Menominee counties are on Central time and need an hour taken off the printed figure. This app computes from the sun at your pin in your own zone instead, which needs neither correction.

Fluorescent Orange

Summary p. 47

A cap, hat, vest, jacket or rain gear of hunter orange, worn as the outermost layer and visible from all sides. Camouflage counts if it is at least 50 per cent hunter orange. Required of anyone hunting deer with a firearm, and of an archery hunter out on a day a firearm deer season is open. An archer hunting an archery deer season is exempt.

Sundays

Summary p. 44, which prints township restrictions and no Sunday exception

Michigan sets no Sunday restriction on deer hunting: every season runs each day it is open. Some townships in twenty-four named counties are closed to hunting or restricted in the discharge of firearms, and those restrictions are posted on the ground — they are not a Sunday rule, but they are the closest thing Michigan has to one.

Bag limits

Summary p. 17

• Two antlered deer statewide for the licence year — one in DMU 117, Drummond Island.
• A combo licence carries two kill tags, a regular and a restricted; a single deer licence carries one.
• Antlerless deer are limited by how many universal antlerless licences may be used in the county or DMU, which this year runs from one to ten.
• During the Liberty Hunt: one antlered deer and multiple antlerless deer, one per valid kill tag.
• During the Independence Hunt: one deer, antlered or antlerless.
• Deer with ear tags, and albino and piebald deer, may be taken under the ordinary regulations.

Antler point restrictions

Summary pp. 13 and 15

APRs are set by DMU and by which tag is being filled, not by the season. A legal antlered deer is one with an antler three inches or longer; where a three-point restriction applies it is three or more points on one side, and a combo licence's restricted tag needs four or more points on one side everywhere in the state. A legal point is at least one inch long, measured from its tip to the nearest edge of the antler beam.

Youth hunters 16 and younger, hunters licensed under the Mentored Hunting Program and apprentice licence holders are exempt from every APR, in all seasons, in all DMUs and under all licences — the restricted tag's four-point rule included. A youth with a regular base licence who turns 17 during or before the season must follow them.

The equipment does not change the restriction: a crossbow hunter out during the Upper Peninsula firearm or muzzleloader season follows that season's rules.

Baiting

Summary pp. 56-57

• Baiting is legal in the Upper Peninsula from 15 September to 1 January.
• No more than two gallons of bait at a hunting site, scattered directly on the ground over an area of at least ten feet by ten feet.
• For the Liberty and Independence hunts only, hunters with disabilities who meet the requirements may bait 7-13 September where baiting is otherwise banned, and must clear the site by the final day of the season.
• In the Upper Peninsula, youth hunters in the Liberty Hunt may bait 7-13 September.
• Bait may not be left on Commercial Forest land without the landowner's permission.

• Baiting is banned in the entire Lower Peninsula, on public and private land alike.
• In the Lower Peninsula a youth hunter may not bait during the Liberty Hunt.

The quiet period

Summary p. 51

From 10 to 14 November you cannot carry afield or transport any rifle — rimfire included — or any shotgun if you have buckshot, slug, ball loads or cut shells with you. You may still transport a properly cased firearm to deer camp or to a range, and you may target shoot on your own property so long as there is no attempt to take game.

Elevated platforms and ground blinds

Summary pp. 47 and 49

• Elevated platforms may go up on public land from 1 September and must come down by 1 March.
• On public land the platform must be portable, and nothing may penetrate the bark of a tree — no nails, screws, bolts or screw-in steps. A manufacturer's T-bolt is allowed.
• A platform or a constructed ground blind on public land must carry your name and address, driver's licence number or DNR Sportcard number, permanently affixed and legible.
• Permanent ground blinds are not allowed on Commercial Forest land.

Trespass and rights of way

Summary p. 46

Written or verbal permission is required from the landowner or leaseholder before hunting any farmland, connected woodlot, private land, or land that is fenced or enclosed, and hunters must produce their licence for the landowner on request. A wounded deer that crosses onto private land may not be followed without permission.

Road rights of way may be hunted only where the adjoining property is publicly owned. Railroad and utility rights of way are private property and need written permission from the company.

Summary pp. 65-66

Every deer must be reported within 72 hours of the harvest, or before you transfer possession, whichever comes first.

• Report at Michigan.gov/DNRHarvestReport, or through eLicense at Michigan.gov/DNRLicenses
• Or in the Michigan DNR Hunt Fish app
• Use the underlined licence number from the paper kill tag or eHarvest tag you actually filled
• A paper kill tag must still be attached to the deer, and stays with the head if head and body are separated

Summary, disease pages and pp. 65-66

Michigan carries two deer diseases at once. Bovine tuberculosis is endemic among deer in the north-eastern Lower Peninsula and has been detected every year; chronic wasting disease is present in parts of the Lower Peninsula. Focused surveillance runs in twelve counties for TB and five for CWD in 2026, and heads are accepted for testing statewide.

• Report your harvest before submitting a head: heads are not accepted for TB or CWD testing without a harvest report.
• A roadkill deer needs a salvage permit, and its carcass may not leave the county of the collision except as deboned meat, quarters, antlers, a cleaned skull cap, hide, upper canine teeth or a finished mount.
• Only hides, deboned meat or quarters with no spinal column or head attached, finished taxidermy, and cleaned teeth or antlers on a cleaned skull cap may be brought into Michigan from an out-of-state hunt. Bringing in a whole head or carcass carries fines, jail and licence revocation.
• If another state or province tells you a cervid you brought into Michigan tested positive for CWD, contact the DNR Wildlife Health Section at 517-336-5030 within two business days.
• Check station and drop-box locations are at Michigan.gov/DeerCheck; results at Michigan.gov/DNRLab.

• Deer management units are not counties. Michigan numbers a DMU for most counties, but it also draws islands (145 North Manitou, 245 South Fox, 115 the Beaver Island group, 117 Drummond, 149 Bois Blanc) and multi-county units (487 in the north-east, 452, 332, 273, 311, 312) that a county pin cannot separate. This app resolves to the county and carries the peninsula's seasons; check the DNR's interactive DMU map at Michigan.gov/Deer before you hunt an island or a special unit.
• The early and late antlerless firearm seasons exclude DMUs 145 and 245 — North Manitou Island and South Fox Island, both inside Leelanau County. Leelanau shows those seasons open here because the rest of the county is open.
• South Fox Island (DMU 245) runs its own calendar entirely: archery 1-28 October and firearm 29 October to 26 November, with a three-inch antler minimum. It is not in the season table here.
• Antler point restrictions are carried as notes, not as a rule the app enforces. They depend on the DMU and on which of a combo licence's two tags is being filled, and no app can count points on a deer for you.
• Universal antlerless licence use limits are carried per county for the Lower Peninsula, where the Summary prints them by county. The Upper Peninsula's limits are printed by DMU — one in DMU 022, two in 121, 122, 155 and 255, five in 055 — and those DMUs are smaller than counties, so they are not attached to a pin here.
• The bag limit shown is two antlered deer. DMU 117, Drummond Island in Chippewa County, allows one, and a pin in Chippewa County will not know which side of that line it is on.
• Michigan's peak breeding date is an estimate. The DNR gives the breeding season as October and November and publishes no peak; the rut meter uses 15 November, and unlike every date in the season table that one is not transcribed from anything.
• The Summary's printed Zone A hunting hours table and the half-hour-either-side rule it says it renders do not quite agree in the afternoon. Zone A's morning column matches sunrise at Detroit to the minute — 6:59 on 1 October, 6:53 on 15 November, 7:15 on 4 December — but its evening column runs two to nine minutes later than sunset there plus half an hour, and the gap widens through the season. This app computes from the sun at your pin, so it closes at or before the printed table every time, never after it. If you are relying on the printed table for the last minutes of shooting light, read it, not this.
• Michigan publishes no open statewide parcel service, so there are no property lines on the map here.
• Townships or parts of townships in twenty-four counties — Alcona, Arenac, Barry, Berrien, Crawford, Dickinson, Eaton, Emmet, Genesee, Iosco, Jackson, Kalamazoo, Livingston, Mackinac, Macomb, Manistee, Oakland, Otsego, Ottawa, Presque Isle, Saginaw, St. Clair, Washtenaw and Wayne — are closed to hunting or restrict the discharge of firearms. The restrictions are posted on the ground and are not carried here.

Harvest reporting help

517-284-9453, or Michigan.gov/DNRHarvestReport

Report All Poaching (RAP)

Call or text 800-292-7800

DNR Wildlife Health Section

517-336-5030

Escaped cervids

517-284-9453