Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Does moon phase affect hunting?

When I first started hunting in VA, my buddy and I kept notes of deer observed, and deer taken and missed. We kept records of the wind, rainfall and moonphase. We hunted weekends and two week period that fell at the end of October and early November. After five years I put together a database and did a statistical analysis. There were no correlations for deer sighted or shot at with the moon phases.
When I was looking over the data I noticed some clumping related to the dates. On a lark, I did a correlation analysis. I found there was a strong correlation between dates that include a 9 in the date and both sightings and shooting opportunity.
Just shows what silly results you can get from small samples.
We gave up on that whole approach, and just hunt as much as we can. But we do joke on days that have a 9 in the date, that 'today is the day.'
Bfly

In my 60+ years of hunting experience, I found hunting for any game to be poor during the full moon phase. That said, most of my hunting has been in SC and KY.

I’ve read what appeared to be scholarly articles that say moon phase has no effect on deer movement. My own anecdotal experience, particularly in the South, has been the opposite.

Deer eat when they get hungry, I see them out in pitch black, when it’s s full moon, when it’s raining.

As stated previously, the bulk of our camp's whitetail hunting success has been in the first and second quarters and almost none in the 4th. This about 180 degrees out of phase with the anecdotal views expressed here. The question is why?

Honestly, before I compiled my camp's log, I would be saying the same thing as the rest of y'all. Full Moon? Hang it up!

The problem here is something called confirmation bias. We start with a belief and our minds tend to forget the instances where the evidence contradicts the belief and place a large amount of weight on events that confirm it.

My buddy that used to work in a mental hospital swore that full moons encouraged psychotic behavior. He used to say the lockwards went berzerk during full moons. My buddy who'd been a cop and a fireman said the same thing was true with street rabble. Everyone goes nuts during a full moon. Everyone knows it.

Except they don't. The arrest records, the emergency room admitting records, everything that actually records rational data says the opposite. We've all convinced ourselves that full moons jack up the whole world when it actually is closer to business as usual. The answer is a confirmation bias.

Me? I'm sure that a full moon disrupts my sleep. When I go to the farm, I have a south-facing window by the bed. On nights of a full moon, it's like God's HighBeam coming through most of the middle of the night. Does it really screw up my sleep? It might. However, it is more likely that I wake up just as often when the moon is not out, and I roll over and go back to sleep. When the moon is out, I say to myself, "Oh look! It's the moon!"

My point here is not to thumb my nose at all the full-mooners. My point here is that hunters seem to be especially prone to this confirmation bias. Maybe that statement is in itself a confirmation bias. I just mean that we tend to look for patterns where there are none and get wound up in defending them. We are a bunch that think we're all budding Isaac Newtons of the woods, while we still have a hard time going afield without our lucky caps.

Very good post.

I've found the best hunting of any game,fur or feathers is before a big change of weather. The animals seem to sense it coming and are out and actively feeding.

Have seen that quite a bit--but the best hunting here in Montana is often after the weather has changed, to below zero! They can be found up and feeding any time of day.

I can tell you calling Coyotes at night sucks if there's a lot of moon. Just one example one night out in the Mojave desert here in So Cal I started making stands around 7:30 PM and it seemed like they were coming in on every stand I killed one double and almost scored a second double. There was a low cloud cover by around 10:00 I had killed seven Coyotes light in one hand, rifle in the other been doing this for a long time. The sky's cleared around 10:00 PM and a 3/4 moon appeared and I didn't see another Coyote until after the sun came up and I started making day light stands.

Very true. I believe that barometric pressure change has much more affect on wildlife than moon phases.

+1

Shaman you have hit it again. I like the way you work things out. You like 35 calibers, it shows you have paid attention to what happens when the bullet hits. Keep writing about things of interest to you. I will always be reading them to find out your opinion on the subject. Be Well, Rustyzipper.

My best example of weather change is a stretch of several days of above average temperature followed by a very cold miserable snowy windy stretch. We went in one day of working outside in a T shirt to the next morning about a foot of snow and below zero temperatures. Should have been hunting on that nice day!!!

Shaman,

I like your rationale but for two things. First my uncle who was a smart fella and rose to Chief, Sioux Falls PD told me he didn't know why but criminal activity did indeed rise on full moon nights, cloudy or not. Statistics showed that much. Perhaps it was the cops who were more active - proactive - on full moon nights. I'm skeptical but not dismissive as I once was.

For deer there is a great difference in night vision between deer and the number one predator here, coyote. Dark nights definitely favor the deer. But I cannot say what difference it makes. Where I hunt other variables such as all the sudden pressure of opening day with humans appearing in unexpected places and driving section roads so much more than usual overwhelm and obscure any difference due to moon phase. But it feels like there is some effect, maybe because I want there to be. The human mind loves a mystery.

I used to concern myself with the listed major and minor periods but I quit after one day I hustled around and got into a deer stand about an hour before the 2 hour major period. In an adjoining pasture my cows were laid up resting. The major period came and went and the cows never got up. No deer or squirrels stirred either. I do believe there are major periods, but not necessarily what Garmin or the newspaper says. One year I killed 3 bucks right after the moon went down in mid morning to mid day. Up until that I had been unsuccessful during the 3 hours after daylight or right prior to sunset. Big deer can certainly stir about mid-day.

Thanks, Mister Rusty. I appreciate your appreciation.

I've got one of those fancy hunting watches that show peak hunting times. I've worn it since 2003. It's a Casio. It's basically a Solunar calculator watch, but Casio can't call it that, because "SOLUNAR" is copyrighted. The maximum readings on this watch coincide with the mid-cycle of the Moon. So, in essence, it's telling you to hunt during the full moon, but just a bit more specific.

See: The Magic Watch

If you read through what I wrote, it comes down to the basic notion that deer move in the morning and evening and if one of those times coincides with a large number of hooves showing up on the watch, then the watch must be working. If no deer show up, then it must be something else. The other part of the gag, is that if you actually read the instructions and think it through, there's really no time during legal hunting that isn't covered by a major or minor peak on the watch.

I figured out the gyp way back in 2008, but I keep wearing the watch because it does a really good job of calculating sunrise and sunset. I can't help noticing the number of hooves that show up. The bottom line is that I've never seen a correlation between what the watch is telling me and the actual observed deer activity.

My wife runs the staffing office at our local Hospital here in town...she has said for years, that when the moon is full they have to staff the ER more than other times of the month...so I guess a full moon works on people also...

in Dec Jan and Feb, we get elk feeding in the yard at night.. when its NO moon... we are surrounded by mountains, and live off of what use to be a golf course, so we see the elk on the old golf course in those months....

my yard is full of acorns... and I've had times that I had to learn the hard way... forget something in the car and you go outside to get it, from 10PM on... step out into the dark off the front porch and all of a sudden you are in the middle of galloping animals going in all directions.. which makes me jump 10 feet in the air with surprise...

Finally installed some outdoor motion lighting this past fall.. so when the elk are in the yard.. you can see them without getting ran over...

gotta admit one night this past January, I went to the kitchen sink to rinse off something right around midnight.. the outdoor light went on.. and about 10 ft outside the front window, was a good 1000 to 1100 pound bull elk, grazing on acorns...instantly seeing that 10 feet away was a big surprise... the elk don't seem to react to the motion sensor lights.. step out on the front porch, they take off like a herd of birds...in all directions... this herd that hang around here have about 50 elk in it...

fish > walleyes feed heavy during a full moon,muskies feed heavy in full moon times,whitefish and tullibees in Minnesota spawn in fall with the full moon so walleyes and muskies feed on whitefish and tullibees at nite with the full moon in Minnesota,other fish may feed then too like bass ? i have killed more big Whitetail bucks during the dark of the moon in cold weather over 40 some years bowhunting and rifle hunting in Minnesota. yes moon can make a difference but the cold calm weather helps more > before or after a storm ,just watch your bird feeder . if its warm and full moon i don`t hunt whitetail bucks then i go duck hunting.

If I had my choice...I would like to go to the stand when the barometer is low or falling, with a mist in the air that's just enough to get your eye brows wet. That's the time to stay all day.
powdr

+1!