Mississippi's seven rut bands
MDWFP publishes its breeding-date map as a single raster image (Feb 2016), built from more than 20 years of herd-health check data. It's an interpolated continuous surface, not measured county values.
| Region | Peak breeding | Peak movement (hunt this) | Confidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Northwest hills (DeSoto / Marshall / Panola) | Nov 30 – Dec 12 | Nov 16 – Dec 5 | C |
| Delta | Dec 12 – Dec 22 | Nov 28 – Dec 15 | C |
| Central hills / northeast prairie | Dec 22 – Dec 31 | Dec 8 – Dec 24 | C |
| Central / southwest loess | Dec 31 – Jan 8 | Dec 17 – Jan 1 | C |
| East-central / far northeast | Jan 8 – Jan 17 | Dec 25 – Jan 10 | C |
| Southeast piney woods | Jan 17 – Jan 24 | Jan 3 – Jan 17 | C |
| Gulf coast counties | Jan 24 – Feb 6 | Jan 10 – Jan 30 | C |
Correction: the Delta breeds early, not late
A common claim online puts the Mississippi Delta among the latest-breeding regions in the state. Our reading of MDWFP's map shows the opposite: the Delta is among the earliest, peaking Dec 12 – 22. That's independently confirmed 37 years apart — Jacobson et al. 1979 separately found the Delta had Mississippi's earliest median breeding date (Dec 27), using a completely different dataset.
Counties → band lookup
| Band | Counties |
|---|---|
| Northwest hills (DeSoto / Marshall / Panola) | Benton, DeSoto, Marshall, Panola, Tate, Tunica |
| Delta | Bolivar, Coahoma, Humphreys, Lafayette, Leflore, Quitman, Sunflower, Tallahatchie, Washington |
| Central hills / northeast prairie | Alcorn, Carroll, Clay, Holmes, Issaquena, Lowndes, Madison, Monroe, Montgomery, Noxubee, Oktibbeha, Sharkey, Tippah, Union, Yazoo |
| Central / southwest loess | Adams, Amite, Attala, Claiborne, Copiah, Franklin, Hinds, Jefferson, Leake, Lincoln, Neshoba, Pike, Pontotoc, Rankin, Scott, Simpson, Smith, Warren, Winston |
| East-central / far northeast | Calhoun, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Clarke, Covington, Grenada, Hancock, Jasper, Jefferson Davis, Kemper, Lauderdale, Lawrence, Lee, Marion, Newton, Prentiss, Tishomingo, Walthall, Webster, Wilkinson, Yalobusha |
| Southeast piney woods | Forrest, Harrison, Itawamba, Jones, Lamar, Pearl River, Wayne |
| Gulf coast counties | George, Greene, Jackson, Perry, Stone |
We deliberately do not repeat the Deer Lab's uncited claims of 30- and 45-day rut shifts from sex-ratio or habitat management — no primary source exists, and MDWFP (the state agency for the same herd) states the opposite.
Methodology and confidence
Confidence C for every county assignment on this page. Mississippi does not publish a county-level table — MDWFP publishes a single interpolated raster surface with a legend. Every county-to-band assignment above is our own reading of that image, not a number MDWFP states directly for your county.
FAQ
When is the rut in Mississippi?
Depends on the county — Mississippi runs from Nov 30 in the northwest hills to Feb 6 on the Gulf Coast. Look up your county in the table above.
Does the Mississippi Delta have a late rut?
No — this is a common misconception. The Delta is among Mississippi's EARLIEST-breeding regions (Dec 12–22), confirmed independently 37 years apart by MDWFP's map and by Jacobson et al. 1979, which separately found the Delta's earliest median breeding date at Dec 27.
Is Mississippi's rut map an official county table?
No. MDWFP publishes a single interpolated raster image, not a machine-readable county table. Every county assignment on this page is our own reading of that image — confidence C.