Archery

Digest, printed p. 16

• Longbows, recurves, crossbows and compound bows.
• No minimum draw weight and no minimum arrow length.
• Fixed or mechanical broadheads.
• Archery equipment may be used during the primitive weapons and gun seasons as well.

Primitive weapons

Digest, printed p. 16

• All archery equipment.
• Single- or double-barrelled muzzle-loading rifles of at least .38 calibre.
• Single-shot, breech-loading, metallic-cartridge rifles of .35 calibre or larger, and replicas, reproductions or reintroductions of those types with an exposed hammer.
• Single- or double-barrelled muzzle-loading shotguns firing a single ball or slug.
• After 30 November, any legal weapon of choice — air bows and pre-charged pneumatic air guns included — on private land, for the landowner, the lessee of the hunting rights, a member of a hunting club leasing them, or a guest of one of those.

• Modern smokeless powder in a muzzle-loading primitive firearm: it must be black powder or a black powder substitute, with percussion caps, #209 shotgun primers or flintlock ignition.

Guns

Digest, printed p. 16

• Any firearm: there are no calibre or magazine capacity restrictions.
• Archery equipment and primitive firearms may be used during the gun seasons.

Legal Shooting Hours

Digest, printed p. 30

"Legal shooting hours for resident game are one-half (1/2) hour before sunrise to one-half (1/2) hour after sunset." Wildlife management areas may set their own hours — check the area's own schedule.

Fluorescent Orange

Digest, printed p. 18

At least five hundred square inches of solid unbroken fluorescent orange or pink, worn in full view. "When hunting deer during any firearm season, every hunter, whether hunting with a firearm, bow and arrow, or any weapon, must wear in full view at least five-hundred (500) square inches of solid unbroken fluorescent orange or pink." So an archer in the woods on a gun day wears it too. Mesh and orange or pink camouflage are not solid unbroken colour and do not count towards the five hundred inches. There are two exemptions: hunting from a deer stand twelve feet or more above the ground, and hunting in a fully enclosed blind — which the Commission means as tripod stands, ladder stands, blinds and shooting houses that can be covered so as to hide the hunter from game or from other hunters. All archery and primitive weapons hunters must wear it while a special primitive weapons hunt is in effect.

Sundays

Digest, which prints no Sunday exception for deer

Mississippi sets no Sunday restriction on deer hunting: every season runs on each day it is open, arms and all.

Bag limits

Digest, printed p. 14

• Antlered bucks: one a day and three a season, statewide.
• North Central DMU: one a day and four a season, except on the parts of Holly Springs National Forest inside it, where it is three.
• One of the three bucks may be a deer whose antlers do not meet the unit's criteria — on private land, and on the parts of Holly Springs National Forest in Benton, Marshall and Tippah counties.
• Antlerless on private land: five a season statewide, ten in the North Central, three in the Southeast.
• There is no daily limit on antlerless deer except in the Southeast, where it is one a day.
• U.S. Forest Service land: one antlerless deer a day and five a season, except in the Southeast, where it is three a season.
• Only one antlered buck may be taken in the September velvet season, and it counts against the annual limit.

What a legal buck is

Digest, printed pp. 14 and 15

Antlerless deer are male or female deer without hardened antler above the natural hairline.

North Central

Any hardened antler above the natural hairline.

Hills

Inside spread of 10 inches, or a main beam of 13 inches.

Southeast

Inside spread of 10 inches, or a main beam of 13 inches.

Delta

Inside spread of 12 inches, or a main beam of 15 inches.

Open public land, and what is not

Digest, printed pp. 14 and 16

Open public lands are the National Forests — excluding Holly Springs — along with Corps of Engineers land and the like, that run the statewide seasons without special regulations. Wildlife management areas are not open public land: each sets its own seasons and bag limits, and a WMA User Permit must be bought before any use of one.

• On open public land the gun and late archery and primitive weapon seasons take legal bucks only, whatever the private-land column says.
• The antlerless primitive weapons hunt is on private land only, and is not held on MDWFP wildlife management areas at all.

Supplemental feeding and bait

Digest, printed pp. 18 and 30

• All feed and feeders must be at least 100 yards from the nearest property line.
• Deer hunters may hunt in the proximity of a feeder, with no minimum distance from it.
• Supplemental feeding is banned outright inside every CWD Management Zone — salt licks, mineral licks and feeders alike.

• "It is illegal to hunt any wild animal or wild bird with the aid of live decoys or bait." Liquid scents may be used.

Dogs

Digest, printed pp. 16 and 30

Dogs may be used in the 21 November to 1 December and 24 December to 20 January gun stretches, and not in the 16-23 December one. They are not allowed for deer during archery, primitive weapons or still hunting seasons.

Retrieving a wounded deer after hours

Digest, printed p. 32

It is lawful to track or pursue a deer legally shot and wounded during legal hunting hours into the night after them, and to dispatch it if it is found alive. Lights and blood-trailing or tracking dogs may be used; no more than two dogs. A deer tracked alive but wounded may be dispatched with a handgun of no more than a six-inch barrel and no larger than .45 calibre.

Permission and trespass

Digest, printed p. 30

Landowner permission is required to hunt, fish or trap on private land.

MDWFP, White-Tailed Deer Game Check; Digest, printed pp. 15 and 16

Every deer must be reported by 10 p.m. on the day of the harvest for a velvet-season buck — every other deer is voluntary.

• Report through Game Check, in the MDWFP HuntFish app or online through the MDWFP licensing system
• A confirmation number comes back by email; keep it
• A report saved in the app without a signal is submitted when the phone gets one back
• Deer Game Check is voluntary outside the velvet season, and MDWFP asks for the report anyway — it is what the county-by-county harvest figures are built from
• MDWFP also urges hunters to submit the heads of harvested deer for CWD sampling, at a drop-off freezer or a participating taxidermist

MDWFP, Chronic Wasting Disease and Carcass Transportation; Digest, printed p. 15

Chronic Wasting Disease was found in Mississippi in February 2018 and the state has run surveillance and management for it since. MDWFP asks every hunter to submit the head of a harvested deer for sampling, with at least six inches of neck attached; antlers may be removed first. Results take seven to ten days and a hunter is notified only if the disease is detected.

• Three CWD Management Zones are in force. The North Mississippi zone covers all of Alcorn, Benton, DeSoto, Lafayette, Marshall, Panola, Prentiss, Tate, Tippah, Tishomingo and Union counties, and defined parts of Coahoma, Pontotoc, Quitman and Tunica.
• The Issaquena zone covers all of Warren and Claiborne counties and the part of Issaquena County east of the Mississippi River and south of Highway 14.
• The Harrison zone covers Harrison County west of Highway 49 and the parts of Hancock County east of Highways 53, 603 and 43 and east of Nicholson Avenue.
• No part of a cervid carcass may be transported out of a CWD Management Zone. What may leave is cut and wrapped meat, deboned meat or bone-in quarters with no spinal column or head attached, hides with no head, finished taxidermy, antlers with no tissue attached, and cleaned skull plates or skulls.
• A deer head may leave a zone only to a permitted taxidermist in the CWD collection programme, only with a CWD sample number obtained beforehand and carried with the head, and only within five days of getting that number.
• Supplemental feeding is banned inside every CWD Management Zone — salt licks, mineral licks and feeders.
• No part of a cervid carcass from any other state, territory or country may be brought into Mississippi at all.

• Deer management unit lines are highways, not county lines, and no agency publishes them as polygons — MDWFP's own GIS carries the CWD zones and the wildlife management areas and no DMU layer. The boundary this app draws is built from the Census county polygons and the published centrelines of the five roads the digest names: I-55, I-20, US 61, US 84 and MS 35. It agrees with the shaded map printed beside the description on every county seat checked, but it is a reading of a sentence rather than a file from the department. Check MDWFP's own map on printed p. 14 if a pin lands within sight of one of those roads.
• The description and the printed map disagree about nothing this app can find, but they are drawn to different tolerances: the map is a cartoon at about twenty miles to the inch and the description is the rule. Where they differ, the description wins here, which is what puts north-western Hinds County and western Madison County in the Delta — both are west of I-55 and north of I-20.
• Nearly every row of both season tables runs either-sex on private land and legal bucks only on open public land. The calendar follows the private-land reading, because that is the column the digest prints first, and every block carries the public-land rule in its note. On National Forest ground other than Holly Springs, in the gun seasons and the late archery and primitive weapon season, only a legal buck may be taken.
• Wildlife management areas set their own seasons and bag limits and none of that is in the season table. A WMA User Permit must be bought before any use of one.
• A non-resident deer hunter needs the $100 Deer Permit on top of the All Game Hunting licence. The readiness check in this app follows the resident path — an All Game or Sportsman licence, plus the archery permit where the season needs one — so a non-resident should read the tag list rather than the tick.
• The three CWD Management Zones are drawn on highways inside counties, like the deer management units but on different roads, and this app does not resolve them. The carcass transport ban and the feeding ban inside them are printed on the rules screen instead. Check MDWFP's own CWD zone map before moving a carcass.
• MDWFP's conception-date map spreads five weeks across the state, from 30 November in the north-western corner to 6 February in the south-eastern one, and its contours cut through counties and through every one of the four deer management units — the Hills unit alone spans a month of it. The rut meter therefore carries one date, 5 January, and a pin at either end of the state can be a month from it. Read the department's own map for the ground you hunt.

Buy a licence

1-800-5GO-HUNT (1-800-546-4868), or mdwfp.com

Report a wildlife violation

1-800-BE-SMART (1-800-237-6278)

Report a sick deer

1-800-BE-SMART (1-800-237-6278)

Seasons and bag limits

mdwfp.com/wildlife-hunting/hunting-seasons-and-bag-limits

Chronic wasting disease

mdwfp.com/wildlife-hunting/chronic-wasting-disease