ND Outdoors: Deer season preview

BISMARCK, N.D. (KFYR) - The deer gun season in North Dakota opens at noon Central Time on Friday, Nov. 6.

Deer hunting in North Dakota is a popular outdoor tradition among family and friends, with thousands of hunters heading into the field this fall in hopes of filling their tag.

“In North Dakota, there’s a lot of traditions of deer hunting. This year, again, we had over 70,000 applicants for our deer lottery. So it’s a tradition that runs deep and people still enjoy deer hunting,” Levi Jacobson said, assistant wildlife division chief.

Whitetail deer numbers are still down across the state.

“Statewide, our whitetail deer population is still lower than we would like it to be. We had an EHD outbreak pretty significant in 2021. Then a tough winter to follow that and it knocked them back and they’re just taking longer to rebound than we would like. And this year, we had another EHD outbreak that sent them back a little bit more. The eastern part of the state, they’re still struggling to come back and we just don’t have the habitat base there to get them to rebound the way we would like them,” Jacobson said.

Mule deer numbers seem to be increasing in North Dakota.

“You get outside the badlands and the rest of the state, they seem to be increasing and kind of spreading out, to be honest with you. People are seeing mule deer in areas that they haven’t really seen mule deer before. Then you get inside the badlands and our population, we survey those every spring and fall, and this past spring indicated that the population was up 31%,” Jacobson said.

What’s it going to take to get North Dakota’s deer numbers heading in the right direction?

“The biggest thing to increase our population is we’re going to need the habitat. We’re lacking good quality deer habitat out there. So if we can build that up, that’ll help them rebound. We’ve had mild winters so that’s helped, but it’s not helping enough. And also, the disease comes into play too. That’s set us back a couple times now in the past 5 or 6 years. So if we can avoid a few years of disease, that would help significantly too,” Jacobson said.

Hunters might have to work a little harder to find deer this fall.

“There’s going to be fewer hunters out there, so if you can find the pockets of habitat, you should be able to find good deer numbers,” Jacobson said.

For more information on the 2026 deer gun season in North Dakota, visit the Game and Fish Department’s website at gf.nd.gov.