Minnesota’s archery deer season opens Saturday, September 19, and runs through Wednesday, December 31, with hunters entering the first full season under a new statewide electronic licensing system.
The 2025 archery season set a state record with 30,043 deer harvested, roughly split between crossbows and vertical bows, and antlerless animals accounted for 55 percent of that take. Archery hunters accounted for one-fifth of all antlerless deer harvested in Minnesota last year, and in permit areas with abundant deer, hunters remain allowed to harvest multiple antlerless animals.
The state Department of Natural Resources launched a new electronic licensing platform in June that now applies to all hunters across every season. Licenses may be purchased through the department’s mobile app, online, or in person from a license agent, and they may be carried as paper, as a PDF, or stored inside the mobile app. Agents are shown on a locator map on the department’s website.
When buying a license, hunters choose whether to validate a future harvest through the mobile app or with a paper tag. Deer harvests can then be registered in person, online, or through the app. Instructions for both validation and registration appear on pages 28 and 29 of the printed regulations booklet. Hunters using the app to validate a harvest must be logged in before leaving for the woods so that a validation can be completed while out of cell service; the harvest data uploads when service returns.
Chronic wasting disease requirements vary by deer permit area and include new carcass disposal rules that hunters are asked to check before the season. Self-service CWD sampling stations inside the 2026 CWD surveillance block are open to archery hunters only across the firearms deer opener weekend, and within that same block, testing is mandatory for archery hunters over the firearms opener.
Fluorescent-orange or fluorescent-pink clothing is required during the October 15 through 18 youth and early antlerless seasons, and the same requirement applies during any other firearms deer season on the calendar. On public land the state advises archery hunters to wear an article of blaze clothing while the archery season overlaps small-game firearms.
The state is also asking archery hunters to file entries in the online hunter field log, a community-science tool now in its sixth year that lets hunters record observations of deer, turkey, bear, fisher and other wildlife from a mobile device or a desktop computer. Managers use the entries to supplement model-generated population estimates and calculate deer observed per hour of field time. The log remains open through the end of 2026, and the department encourages a submission after every hunt regardless of whether a deer was seen.
