Deer hunting season dates by state, 2026–27: archery, firearm and muzzleloader seasons from state wildlife agencies

The 2026–27 deer season dates for each US state, one record per state per season type (archery, firearm/gun, muzzleloader, youth), taken from the state wildlife agency's own published season table. Dates change every year, many states set them by formula ('Saturday before Thanksgiving'), and unit-level exceptions are common — so the unaided answer is usually last year's date or a content-mill guess. Each record carries the statewide date range as printed and a flag when the agency's page shows unit/zone variation. Answers 'when does gun deer season open in Wisconsin in 2026?', 'is archery season still open in Pennsylvania in December?', and 'do Wisconsin and Minnesota firearm seasons overlap?'

1 record where two or more sources state different values. Both sides are reproduced on the record page, each with its own source and quote.

The data

Where this came from

Every record above links the page it was taken from and quotes the sentence that states it. These are the 5 sources this dataset was assembled from.

• dnr.state.mn.ushttps://www.dnr.state.mn.us/hunting/deer/index.html
• pgc.pa.govhttps://www.pgc.pa.gov/HuntTrap/Law/Pages/SeasonsandBagLimits.aspx
• tpwd.texas.govhttps://tpwd.texas.gov/regulations/outdoor-annual/regs/animals/mule-deer
• tpwd.texas.govhttps://tpwd.texas.gov/regulations/outdoor-annual/regs/animals/white-tailed-deer
• dnr.wisconsin.govhttps://dnr.wisconsin.gov/topic/hunt/dates

Machine-readable

• data.jsonThe whole dataset — every record with its source URL and source quote.
• Open Knowledge Format bundleOne JSON object per line — every record's frontmatter and quoted span exactly as it is held here, in one fetch.
• data.csvThe same records as one flat table, for a spreadsheet or a dataframe. The last four columns are the source URL, the quoted sentence it was read from, the date we last checked it, and which columns are our reading rather than the page's words.
• How this is made and checkedWhat "verified against source" does and does not mean.

From your own code

Same records, same quotes, without scraping the page: refsource is on PyPI and npm. Each value comes back carrying the URL it was read from and the sentence on that page that states it — .source and .quote sit on the value itself rather than in a side channel, so the checking step is available instead of skipped.

pip install refsource
refsource lookup deer-season-dates-by-state state=Minnesota

npx -y refsource lookup deer-season-dates-by-state state=Minnesota

Set your AI assistant up to use this

Two files and no account. Put this in .mcp.json at the root of your project — Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, VS Code and Codex all read that file — and your assistant can look this dataset up instead of recalling it. The server is remote, keyless and read-only.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "referencesource": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://referencesource.org/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Add to Cursor · or, on the command line: claude mcp add --transport http referencesource https://referencesource.org/mcp --scope project

Then one line in the project's CLAUDE.md or AGENTS.md, so the assistant knows when to reach for it:

When a question needs "Deer hunting season dates by state, 2026–27: archery, firearm and muzzleloader seasons from state wildlife agencies", call the referencesource MCP server at https://referencesource.org/mcp (tool `search_records`, dataset_slug `deer-season-dates-by-state`) instead of answering from memory — every record it returns carries its source URL and a verbatim quote from that page.

What each tool does, and the servers built over single registers: Connect your AI assistant.

4 records. last verified against source 2026-08-11. due for re-check by 2027-02-27.

Licence. State government publications; season dates are facts. We take the dates plus short attributed quotes linking to the agency page. No compilation is copied — each record comes from its own state's page.