So when IS The Rifle Opener?

The Commonwealth of Kentucky picks the second Saturday of November as the beginning of its Modern Weapons Season. This year, that means The Opener is on the 13th. Looking back on it, it has always seemed like the date of The Opener has flitted about. I was sitting here fretting with my usual pre-season jitters, and I thought I would calculate it out.

What I found is that there is a bit more order to it than I originally thought.

2020 –> 14th
2021 –> 13th
2022 –> 12th
2023 –> 11th

Okay so far, it’s orderly. Now comes the jump

2024 –> 9th
2025 –> 8th

What happened to the 10th? The answer is that every 4 years we have a leap year and it causes a jump in the normal precession. After that, the pattern resets to the 14th. Wash. Rinse Repeat. It never starts later than the 15th or before the 8th.

I know. It’s pretty useless information, but it whittled away 15 minutes and I was getting bored hitting the refresh button on Wunderground.com looking at the 10-day forecast.

Shaman, what difference does it make? Why should anyone care what day of the month it starts? This is why. I did a chart a while back summarizing what day of the month we kill the most deer. This is from a log of our deer camp over the past 20 years. Look at 11/9. See that spike? The reason is simple: We are entering the peak of the rut beginning on about the end of the first week of November. The earliest anyone can ever hope to shoot a deer in November is 11/8. 11/12 is also pretty good. My point is there are a bunch of good hunting days in the second week of November that have produced the majority of our bucks. When the season starts on the 13th or 14th, we’re missing them. It isn’t a big thing, but it is significant.