A deer feeding times chart shows the hours each day when whitetail deer are most likely to be up and feeding. Enter your ZIP code below and the table builds the next seven days for your exact location: major and minor lunar feeding periods, the dawn and dusk windows, moon phase and illumination, and a simple rating for the day.
How to Read the Feeding Chart
- Major periods — the moon is directly overhead or directly underfoot. These are roughly two-hour windows and are the strongest lunar feeding pushes.
- Minor periods — approximate moonrise and moonset. Shorter, about an hour, and secondary to the majors.
- Dawn and dusk — the crepuscular windows deer feed in almost every day of the year, regardless of the moon.
- Rating — how well a lunar period lines up with legal shooting light, combined with how dark the nights are. When a major period lands on top of dawn or dusk, that day earns the highest rating.
The Days Worth Taking Off Work
The best days on any feeding chart are the ones where a major period overlaps daylight. A moon overhead at 6:45 AM in late October stacks a lunar feeding push directly on top of the dawn window — that is a far better sit than a day where both majors fall at midnight and noon. Dark-moon stretches also help, because deer that cannot feed comfortably at night feed closer to daylight instead.
What a Feeding Chart Cannot Tell You
The chart above is built from the moon and the sun. That is the same input a printed solunar table uses, and it has a hard ceiling: it does not know the weather. Decades of whitetail collar research show that weather and breeding season override lunar timing.
- A barometric pressure rise behind a cold front will move more deer in daylight than any moon transit.
- A 10–15°F temperature drop below the seasonal norm forces feeding regardless of moon position.
- The first hour after rain stops is one of the strongest feeding windows of the season.
- During the rut, bucks move at all hours and the moon becomes a minor input.
- Wind above about 20 mph holds deer to leeward cover no matter what the chart says.
The full Best Hunting Time forecast scores every one of those factors hour by hour alongside the lunar data on this page, gives you a plain-English reason for every window, and covers deer movement times by ZIP code for the next 14 days.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a deer feeding times chart?
A deer feeding times chart lists the hours each day when whitetail deer are most likely to be up and feeding. It is built from lunar transit times — moon overhead and moon underfoot, called major periods — plus moonrise and moonset, called minor periods, together with the dawn and dusk windows. The chart on this page builds those windows for the next seven days from your ZIP code.
What time do deer feed each day?
Deer feed most reliably in the first hour of daylight and the last hour before dark. Additional feeding pushes happen when the moon is overhead or underfoot — roughly two-hour windows that shift about 50 minutes later each day. Dark nights near a new moon push more feeding into daylight; bright nights near a full moon shift feeding later at night and can soften the dawn window.
Are deer feeding charts accurate?
A feeding chart is a useful baseline because moon position does influence deer activity, but it cannot see weather. Pressure changes, temperature drops, wind, rain and rut timing all override lunar timing. Use the chart to plan the week, then check a multi-factor movement forecast the morning of the hunt.
Do deer feeding times change by location?
Yes. Dawn and dusk shift with latitude and longitude, so the same calendar day produces different feeding windows in Michigan than in Alabama. That is why this chart is generated from your ZIP code rather than published as one national table.
Related Guides
- Deer Movement Times by ZIP Code — the full multi-factor hourly forecast
- Deer Feeding Times — how moon phase and solunar theory work
- Solunar Calendar — major and minor periods explained
- Deer Movement Chart — hourly and monthly activity tables
- Deer Movement Today — today's hourly activity