Deer Hunting Blogs: 44 Sites Ranked by Domain Rating and Last Post

Deer hunting has more writing behind it than almost any outdoor pursuit, and the lists of it are terrible: a Feedspot export, a dozen magazine homepages, and no way to tell a magazine with a staff from a hunter posting from deer camp, or either from a site that quietly stopped in 2019.

This list separates them. On 11 September 2026, two weeks before most whitetail archery seasons open, we loaded every site that came up for deer hunting in the United States, kept the ones that publish about deer, and recorded two things nobody else gives you: an Ahrefs domain rating for the host and the date of the newest item in the site's own feed.

How this list was built

Eleven deer, whitetail and bowhunting searches produced 107 unique domains. Sixty three were not deer hunting sites once we opened them: a state university, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, treestand and blind manufacturers, a New Zealand red stag lodge, two South African safari operators, an electric bike company whose blog happened to contain a hunting listicle, a knife maker and a reloading supplier. Forty four remained.

Each site was loaded once with a normal browser user agent and its own title kept. Each host was looked up against the Ahrefs domain rating API. Each site was then asked for its RSS or Atom feed, and the newest date in that feed is what the table shows. Thirty one sites gave one. Thirteen did not, and the pattern among those thirteen is worth naming: it is almost entirely the big magazines and gear brands, whose sites are built on platforms that do not expose a feed. They are marked No feed found, which means we could not read a date, not that they stopped.

No site in this set blocked the crawler, which is unusual. The hunting web is mostly WordPress and mostly open.

The hunter-written blogs

These are single-author or small-team sites where somebody who hunts is doing the writing. They are the reason to use this list rather than a magazine rack.

Whitetail Habitat Solutions (whitetailhabitatsolutions.com, DR 30) is Jeff Sturgis on herd and habitat strategy, and the most-cited whitetail blog in the set. It publishes without a readable feed. Big Deer (bigdeerblog.com, DR 26) is Mike Hanback's long-running blog, last dated 28 Jan 2026. Dialed In Hunter (dialedinhunter.com, DR 27) posted on 4 Sep 2026.

And A Strong Cup of Coffee (andastrongcupofcoffee.com, DR 6) is Erin Merrill's Maine hunting blog and posted on 7 Sep 2026. WhitetailDNA (whitetaildna.com, DR 6) writes tactics and stories for what it calls hardcore deer hunters, and is the site currently ranking on page one for this search with a five-blog list. Zero to Hunt (zerotohunt.com, DR 21) is written for adults learning to hunt and last posted 13 Aug 2024.

The smallest sites here are the most personal: Zen Bowhunter (zenbowhunter.com, DR 2, 23 Apr 2026), 1st Light Hunting Journal (1stlighthuntingjournal.com, DR 2.8), The Upland Soul (theuplandsoul.com, DR 10, 26 Aug 2026) and Chukar Culture (chukarculture.com, DR 2.9), which is bird hunting rather than deer but turns up in every hunting-blog search and is genuinely good.

Magazines, media brands and the gear companies that publish

The heavyweight end. These have staff, and their ratings reflect it: seven of the 44 sit at DR 60 or above and all seven are here.

Deer & Deer Hunting (deeranddeerhunting.com, DR 57) and North American Whitetail (northamericanwhitetail.com, DR 60) are the two whitetail-specific titles. Bowhunter (bowhunter.com, DR 56), Bowhunting.com (DR 56) and Petersen's Hunting (petersenshunting.com, DR 56) cover archery and general hunting. None of the five exposes a feed, so the table shows a rating and no date for each.

MeatEater (themeateater.com, DR 73), Outdoor Life (outdoorlife.com, DR 76) and Field & Stream (fieldandstream.com, DR 75) all published on the day we checked or the day before. Wide Open Spaces (wideopenspaces.com, DR 69) and HuntingLife (huntinglife.com, DR 51) are the general outdoor sites with a large deer archive.

Realtree (realtree.com, DR 70) is a camouflage brand with a deer hunting editorial section bigger than most magazines. Leica runs a dedicated hunting blog (leica-hunting-blog.com, DR 37, last post 10 Jun 2026). HuntStand (huntstand.com, DR 51) and GOHUNT (gohunt.com, DR 62) are apps that publish, and Okayest Hunter (okayesthunter.com, DR 28) is an apparel brand and podcast whose deer hunting blog currently holds the top organic result for this search.

Regional and state-level sites

Deer hunting is regulated state by state and hunted differently in every one, so the regional sites often answer the question a national magazine cannot.

Georgia Wildlife Blog (georgiawildlife.blog, DR 41) is the state agency's own blog and posted 8 Sep 2026. Iowa Whitetail (iowawhitetail.com, DR 18) covers Iowa deer and land management but last posted 12 Apr 2023. Western Whitetail (westernwhitetail.com, DR 13) and Western Hunter (westernhunter.net, DR 38) cover the west; Coues Whitetail (coueswhitetail.com, DR 20) is the Arizona and Sonora resource, with a forum that is far more active than its feed date of 26 Sep 2019 suggests.

Hunt Alaska Magazine (huntalaskamagazine.com, DR 33), the Northwoods Sporting Journal (sportingjournal.com, DR 26) in New England and The Ohio Outdoors (theohiooutdoors.com, DR 10) round out the regional set, and all three carried an August or September 2026 date.

The two forums, Deer Hunter Forum (deerhunterforum.com) and Coues Whitetail, are included because both rank on page one for this search and both are where the actual conversation is.

What pre-season activity looks like

We checked in the second week of September, when most archery seasons are two to four weeks away, and the timing shows in the data. Nineteen of the 31 dated sites had published in the previous 90 days, and fourteen of those in the previous fortnight. A hunting blog that has not posted by mid-September is unlikely to post at all this year; the sites dated 2023 and earlier (Archery Topic, Iowa Whitetail, Coues Whitetail, Zero to Hunt) should be read as archives.

The rating spread is wide and evenly filled, unlike some trades we have measured: seven sites at DR 60 or above, thirteen at 24 or below, and twenty four in between. There is a real middle here, which means a well-written site can climb.

If you want coverage from one of these

Gear brands, outfitters and land companies pitch hunting sites relentlessly, and the timing of this list matters more than the content of it. September and October are when these editors are busiest and least likely to read an unsolicited email; the window for a pitch that lands is late winter, after the season closes and before the summer gear cycle.

The hunter-written blogs answer to people who hunt. The single most useful thing in a pitch to them is evidence you read the site, which means naming a post, not a category. If you are working a list this long, our blogger outreach tools guide covers how to do that without copying and pasting 44 times, and the templates we use are written to be edited per site. MentionAgent's own outreach agent does the finding and the first draft; the judgement about which outfitter deserves a mention on a DR 6 Maine hunting blog is still yours.

The full table, with domain rating and last post

Ordered by the newest post we could read; the thirteen sites with no readable feed follow, ranked by domain rating. Ratings were pulled on 11 September 2026.

Frequently asked questions

What are the best deer hunting blogs?

For whitetail strategy, North American Whitetail (DR 60) and Deer & Deer Hunting (DR 57) are the reference magazines. For blogs written by hunters rather than staff, Whitetail Habitat Solutions, Big Deer, Dialed In Hunter and And A Strong Cup of Coffee were all current when we checked in September 2026.

Are these deer hunting blogs still active?

All 44 loaded on 11 September 2026. Of the 31 that expose a feed, 19 had posted in the previous 90 days and 14 in the previous two weeks. The big magazines do not expose a feed, so they show a rating and no date; they are live, not dormant.

Why are magazines and gear brands in a list of blogs?

Because they are what ranks for this search and what hunters actually read. Realtree's deer section, Leica's hunting blog and MeatEater's articles are blogs in everything but the name, and leaving them out would make the list less useful, not more pure.

When is the best time to pitch a hunting site?

Late winter. September and October are peak season for both the editors and the hunters writing these blogs. A pitch that arrives in February, after the season and before the summer gear cycle, gets read.

What does the Domain Rating column mean?

Ahrefs' 0 to 100 estimate of how many other sites link to the domain, weighted by their strength. It is included because it separates a magazine with a staff from a hunter posting from camp, and no other deer hunting roundup gives you that. Median here is 32; thirteen sites sit at DR 24 or below.

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