Deer Movement Forecast by ZIP: Best Hunting Times

Where and when whitetails actually move — built on GPS-collar research and your state wildlife agency’s published breeding dates, not on the moon. Enter a ZIP code and a date. The tool computes real sunrise, sunset, civil twilight, moonrise, moonset and moon transit times for your exact coordinates, works out where you sit in your state’s published rut chronology, and scores every hour of the day. The number worth quoting: GPS collars measured the difference between a full moon and a new moon at under 20 feet per hour — about two deer body lengths — while the rut raises buck movement by 140 yards per hour. The rut is roughly twenty times the moon.

What a deer movement forecast can actually predict

Strip away the folklore and the published research leaves two signals that beat noise: time of day and where you are in your herd’s breeding chronology. Everything else that gets sold as a forecast — moon phase, moon position, barometric pressure, cold fronts — either failed when it was tested against GPS collars or was never tested at all.

Two measured numbers set the scale. Mississippi State’s Deer Lab put 48 GPS collars on bucks at fifteen-minute intervals for two years: at the peak of the rut, daytime bedding dropped from 34% to 22% and movement rose from 269 to 409 yards per hour. Penn State’s Deer-Forest Study collared adult does at hourly intervals across three state forests and compared new moon to full moon: the difference was under 20 feet per hour. Dr. Duane Diefenbach’s summary was blunt — “basically no difference. Just a couple of body lengths.” Meanwhile 83% of 1,439 hunters surveyed by Mississippi State believed the moon drives deer movement, and expected 50 to 200 extra yards per hour from it.

So this tool computes the moon precisely — because you will want to see it — and then tells you honestly what the research says it is worth. The score is built from time of day and rut position only.

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Peak breeding dates by state, with sources

These are the dates the agencies and the peer-reviewed literature actually publish. Peak conception is not peak movement. Alabama’s Wildlife and Freshwater Fisheries division puts peak buck movement 7 to 10 days ahead of peak conception; Mississippi’s agency instructs hunters to subtract about two weeks. The two rules disagree, so this tool centers its rut curve 8 days ahead of the published conception date and displays the whole 7-to-14-day window rather than pretending to a single day.

Texas, by ecoregion (Texas Parks and Wildlife, 2,436 does)

Georgia, by county band (GA DNR rut map)

Georgia’s map is built from deer-vehicle collisions, which the underlying study found to line up closely with both peak conception and peak GPS-collar movement — so unlike the conception-based states, Georgia’s published dates are already movement dates and this tool does not shift them. The spread inside one state is more than ten weeks.

Counties the source PDF marked with fewer than 100 collisions carry low accuracy in the agency’s own words. Check the full 159-county map before you plan a trip around a band.

The states that publish nothing

This is the part nobody else will tell you. We went looking for agency-published breeding chronology in every state and could not find any for Michigan, Minnesota, Iowa, New York, Ohio, Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia, Tennessee, Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri, the Dakotas or the Mountain West. Every “rut date” circulating for those states traces back to a magazine, an outfitter or a prediction site, not to a wildlife agency.

Two near-misses worth knowing. Arkansas Game and Fish publishes lactation rates by management unit but no conception dates. North Carolina’s published “2024 Deer Rut Dates Map” is, as issued, only a table of reproductive sample counts by county, with the agency’s own note that “additional samples are needed in some counties to increase precision/accuracy of estimated peak rut dates.” North Carolina’s dates are still being compiled.

For those states this tool gives you the time-of-day forecast and says so. We do not interpolate a rut date from a neighbouring state, because breeding chronology is not a smooth function of geography — Alabama and Mississippi vary by five to eight weeks inside a single state at nearly constant latitude, a difference their agencies attribute to mid-century restocking genetics from seven different source states.

Georgia peak rut dates by county

Georgia is the one state that publishes a peak-movement week for every county, so the tool offers all 159 by name rather than asking you which band you are in. The whole table is printed here as well, because a reader with JavaScript switched off and an AI assistant reading this page should both get the data.

What GPS collars measured

The most actionable line in that table is the cover one. During daylight, bucks moved five times faster in hardwood drains and thick cover than in food plots, while does used food plots more than bucks did in daylight. If you are hunting a plot in the morning you are sitting where the daytime buck data is not.

Does the moon matter? What the tests found

Solunar theory, honestly

Solunar tables were put together by John Alden Knight in 1926 and first published as tables in 1936. They were a synthesis of fishing folklore and sun and moon positions — not a finding derived from animal-movement data, and not originally about deer at all.

They have been tested on GPS-collared deer twice, and the two studies disagree. Sullivan, Ditchkoff, Collier, Ruth and Raglin (2016), publishing in the Journal of the Southeastern Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies, tracked 38 adult male deer at 30-minute fixes and found that activity around moonrise, moonset, overhead and underfoot did shift — but that the shift reversed sign depending on moon phase. Their own conclusion: “Our data suggest events identified by solunar charts have some association with deer activity. But the relationships between lunar events and lunar phase expressed in solunar charts may be misleading.” A larger, finer-grained study — MSU’s 48 bucks at 15-minute fixes — tested both solunar propositions and rejected both. Mississippi’s own agency describes the differences found as not enough to plan hunts around.

That is why this tool computes your major and minor solunar periods precisely and then leaves them out of the score. They are displayed in their own panel, with this paragraph attached. If a forecast sells you moon-based predictions without telling you this, it is selling you 1926.

Weather: the two effects with actual support

This is why the tool does not ask for a weather forecast and then dress it up as a prediction. Rain suppresses; wind runs the way hunters do not expect; nothing else survived testing.

How this deer movement forecast is calculated

Transparent on purpose. Two published quantities do the work; the curve shapes are ours and are labeled as such.

STEP 1 - time of day (t = minutes after local midnight)
  dawn_peak(t) = 100 * exp( -(t - sunrise)^2 / (2 * 70^2) )
  dusk_peak(t) = 100 * exp( -(t - sunset)^2  / (2 * 80^2) )
  baseline(t)  = 36 when t is before civil dawn or after civil dusk
               = 30 in daylight
      (the 36:30 ratio is Penn State's measured 200 vs under-165 feet per hour,
       night vs daylight; the 70 and 80 minute widths are our modeling choice)
  base(t) = max( dawn_peak, dusk_peak, baseline )

STEP 2 - rut position (d = days from the published peak-movement date)
  rut(d) = 1 + 0.52 * exp( -d^2 / (2 * 10.5^2) )
      (0.52 is MSU's measured 269 -> 409 yards per hour, a 52% rise.
       10.5 days makes one standard deviation match the 21-day core
       breeding window MSU reports. Where a state publishes conception
       rather than movement, peak movement = conception date - 8 days,
       the midpoint of Alabama WFF's published 7-to-10-day lead.)
  rut(d) = 1.00 for states with no published breeding chronology

STEP 3 - index
  index(t) = 100 * base(t) * rut(d) / 152
      (152 = 100 * 1.52, so 100 on this scale is a peak-rut dawn.
       A dawn outside the rut scores about 66.)

NOT IN THE SCORE, and shown separately with the evidence:
  moon phase, moon position, solunar major and minor periods,
  temperature, barometric pressure, cold fronts.

Worked example, done by hand

ZIP 53703 (Madison, Wisconsin; 43.07°N, 89.38°W), November 4, 2026, Central Standard Time. Sunrise is 6:36 a.m. and sunset is 4:45 p.m. Wisconsin’s published peak buck movement is November 1–7, measured on 188 to 319 GPS-collared males, so the tool centers the curve on November 4 and d = 0. That makes rut(d) = 1.52, the maximum. At sunrise, base(t) = 100, so the index is 100 × 100 × 1.52 / 152 = 100. At noon, base(t) is the daylight baseline of 30 and the index is 30 × 1.52 / 152 = 30. Move the same location to December 20, which is 46 days past the peak: rut(d) drops to 1.00 and the dawn index falls to 66. The tool is telling you that a mid-December dawn in Wisconsin is worth about two thirds of a November 4 dawn — and that a November 4 noon is still worth less than a December 20 dawn.

Frequently asked questions

Is a deer movement forecast the same as deer feeding times?

They are sold as the same thing and they are not. Published deer feeding times come from solunar tables, which are built on moon position alone. This deer movement forecast scores time of day and your state’s published rut chronology, because those are the two factors GPS-collar studies actually found. We compute the solunar periods and show them further down the page, but they are deliberately left out of the score.

What is the best time of day to hunt deer?

Dawn and dusk, in every published data set, and the rut does not change that — it raises the whole curve rather than moving the peaks. Georgia’s collision data puts at least 40% of struck deer at dawn or dusk. Penn State measured does moving about 200 feet per hour at night against under 165 in daylight, which is why the hours right at the light transitions are where the night-time movement overlaps with legal shooting light.

When is the rut in my state?

If your state agency publishes breeding chronology, the date is in the table above with its method and data years, and this tool will use it. If it does not — and most states do not — the tool will tell you that plainly rather than making one up. Peak conception and peak movement are different things: buck movement runs 7 to 14 days ahead of conception depending on which agency’s rule you follow.

Does the moon phase affect deer movement?

Not measurably. Penn State’s GPS-collared does moved less than 20 feet per hour differently between new and full moon — about two body lengths. Mississippi State’s 48 collared bucks showed no effect from phase, no effect from moon position, no effect from the combination, and about a seven-minute shift in bedding time. Two studies from the 1990s did find a full-moon effect, so the older literature is actually split, but nothing modern supports planning around it.

Does the moon change when the rut happens?

No. The Pennsylvania Game Commission tested the “rutting moon” idea against eight years of conception data: the median conception date sat at November 13 every year while the moon’s phase drifted about eleven days annually. A nine-year New Brunswick study of 1,600 does and a University of Georgia study of 2,500 does found the same non-result. Photoperiod — day length, working through melatonin — sets the timing.

Are solunar tables worth anything for deer?

They were assembled in 1926 from fishing folklore, and they have been tested on collared deer twice with opposite results. The one study that found an association (Sullivan et al. 2016, 38 bucks) also found the effect flips direction depending on moon phase, which is exactly the interaction commercial charts do not model — so the charts can be pointing the wrong way about half the time. This tool computes your major and minor periods accurately and keeps them out of the score.

Do cold fronts make deer move?

Penn State found no overall difference in movement speed or distance before, during or after a front. Mississippi State’s collared bucks peaked with the local rut rather than with November fronts, and put it starkly: the lowest daily movement during peak rut still exceeded the highest before the rut. Rain is the weather variable with real support, and it points down — up to half the movement lost on a rainy day. Wind is the surprise: least movement in calm air, more as the wind picks up.

What is the “second rut” and is it real?

Real, and much smaller. A doe that is not bred cycles back into estrus in 21 to 30 days — Mississippi State says 21 to 30, Maryland DNR says about 28, Florida FWC says 26 to 28. That produces a secondary peak three to four weeks after the main one, made up of recycling adults plus doe fawns reaching breeding weight. It is a far bigger factor in Midwest agricultural country than in the Deep South: Pennsylvania records nearly half of all fawn breeding from December to February, while Mississippi breeds only about 10% of its fawns. This tool marks the window rather than scoring it, because no agency publishes a magnitude for it.

Is “lockdown” a real phase?

Not in the GPS data. Bucks wearing collars show no lockdown — they hold their highest movement rates of the year straight through and beyond peak breeding. What changes is your ability to see it: more than half of tending happens in darkness in November, and a tending pair moves into thick cover away from other deer while most hunters are watching food. The seven-phase model you see everywhere — pre-rut, seeking, chasing, peak, lockdown, post-rut, second rut — has no agency or peer-reviewed definition behind it. Only “tending” and the second rut survive contact with the literature.

Sources

• Download the underlying data: deer-breeding-and-movement-research-2026-08.csv — every breeding date, movement figure and study on this page with its source, method, sample size and data years. CC BY 4.0.
• Pennsylvania Game Commission, When is the rut — median conception November 13, the rutting-moon test, fawn breeding.
• Green, Kelly, Satterthwaite-Phillips, Manjerovic, Shelton, Novakofski, Mateus-Pinilla, Reproductive characteristics of female white-tailed deer in the Midwestern USA, Theriogenology (2017).
• Wisconsin DNR, Field Notes, December 2023, and USGS / Ecology and Evolution (2025), breeding season and movement ecology in southwest Wisconsin.
• Texas Parks and Wildlife, The Rut in White-tailed Deer — the ecoregion table.
• Georgia DNR Wildlife Resources, Georgia rut map, and Stickles et al., Using deer-vehicle collisions to map breeding activity in Georgia, J. SEAFWA (2015).
• Alabama WFF, The Alabama Rut and white-tailed deer — the 7-to-10-day movement lead and the restocking-genetics explanation.
• MSU Deer Lab, Ecology of the rut and Biology of the rut; MDWFP, deer breeding date map and moon myths vs deer reality.
• MSU Extension publication P4068, Lunar legends and deer activity — 48 collared bucks, the 269-to-409 yards-per-hour rut figure, the 83% hunter-belief survey.
• Penn State Deer-Forest Study, Wandering in the moonlight, The rut is half over, and its weather archive.
• Sullivan, Ditchkoff, Collier, Ruth and Raglin, Movement with the moon: white-tailed deer activity and solunar events, J. SEAFWA (2016).
• SCDNR, Deer Harvest Report; Maryland DNR, deer biology; MassWildlife, a closer look at deer breeding season; Indiana DNR, deer biology; Florida FWC, white-tailed deer; Louisiana LDWF, estimated deer breeding periods.
• National Deer Association: what deer research really says about the rut, hunting cold fronts, does weather impact deer movement, GPS-collar research on daylight movement, why bucks vanish when tending does.
• Location data: US Census Bureau 2024 ZCTA Gazetteer (coordinates) and the 2020 ZCTA-to-county relationship file (state assignment), aggregated by us to three-digit ZIP prefix.

Related on Popular Outdoorsman

This page is authoritative on when deer are likely to be on their feet. The three things it openly cannot see are food, pressure and the deer on your own property. For food, see what to plant in July for fall. For the deer themselves, see patterning summer bucks on trail camera, and the 2026 trail camera rankings if you still need one in the woods.