You’re Hunting The Moon All Wrong [Adam Hays Interview]

Shooting not only mature deer, but giant mature deer, is a task that most hunters never complete. Mature bucks are truly a different animal than a young deer. They are incredibly smart, and seem to have a sixth sense about them. To get one on the ground, you have to do everything right and use anything you can to get the slightest advantage. To do that some hunters pay attention to the moon.

Now I know what you’re thinking, and it is probably the same thing I thought before I wrote this article: “This is ridiculous; the moon doesn’t affect whitetail”. Although after I got the chance to talk with Adam Hays from Team 200, I realized that most of what I had read about the moon in relation to deer hunting was way off the mark. Like so far off the mark that Adam and I were talking about two totally different things. 

Adam has shot 13 Boone & Crockett bucks and 4 of those have scored over 200 inches! He uses the moon in a way that I am betting most hunters don’t fully understand, and he reached out to me to put this awesome information into words. I spent about an hour on the phone with Adam, and I asked him every kind of moon question I could think of. In this article, I extracted his main points into a few sections for the sake of time. 

If you don’t believe in all the extra stuff that the hunting industry usually inflates because they have nothing better to talk about, trust me, that isn’t what this is. After you see the numbers, you’ll be looking up at the moon this season right there with me, at least out of curiosity. 

What Is the Best Time to Hunt Based on the Moon?

Unlike most of what you will read about the moon, Adam couldn’t care less what the phase of the moon is. He says the moon phase has nothing to do with how he uses the moon, and what he looks at is the moon’s position in the sky. 

According to Adam, the best time to hunt based on the moon is when it is directly overhead or directly underfoot, and the industry has coined this position as the “red moon”. However, that doesn’t mean the moon is physically red.

Adam also mentioned that he has never noticed a significant difference between red moon overhead or underfoot days. Alot of people would assume that overhead days would be better because the moon is physically closer to where you are, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

My next question was, obviously, okay, what about an overhead or underfoot moon gets deer moving? Adam’s response was, “It’s the gravitational pull, they can sense it like anything else”. 

We know that the moon has a large effect on fish, and it is obviously strong enough to move the oceans, but why exactly it seems to get deer up and moving isn’t totally clear to me. So I asked Adam why it seems to get deer moving, and his response was that it isn’t just deer.

He said “I’ve used it for deer hunting, elk, and bear hunting, the moon’s effect isn’t unique to deer”.

This actually reminded me of a study I had read when I wrote the article “Is a New Moon Good For Deer Hunting? (3 Studies Compared)”. Out of the three studies I wrote about, one out of Auburn concluded that it was the position of the moon in the sky instead of the phase, which is exactly what Adam was talking about. Although, there are plenty of other conflicting studies.

Long story short, though, according to the guy with 13 Boone & Crockett’s on his wall, “When that moon peaks in the middle of the day, that’s when deer are up feeding”. The more interesting fact about the red moon is that it doesn’t happen all the time.

There are only about two or so windows out of every month where the red moon is present during hunting hours. The time the moon peaks changes by a few minutes every day, and during a five to seven day window, those times coincide with what we would call the red moon. With around two of these windows happening each month, you can usually expect to see at least one weekend with a red moon.

The moon is also highly predictable, and if you download the Adam’s Moon Guide app, you can find all of the red moon days for the foreseeable future. Adam and his team predict red moon days with a proprietary algorithm, so you won’t find this data anywhere else!

For the Hunters That Believe the Moon Doesn’t Affect Deer

If you are as skeptical about following the moon as I am, this is where you might think twice. As an engineer, I love data, studies, and facts. I always look for those in deer hunting topics too, but as I have mentioned already, none of the studies around the moon and whitetail seem to agree with each other. 

Although Adam actually went and got some truly awesome data to back up his claims. Just like how we can predict future red moon days, the moon guide still has the data on past red moon days, too. So Adam started working with Pope & Young and eventually got some data that isn’t available to the public for some reason, the harvest times of all their entries. 

He then compared that data with historical red moon times, and was able to figure out exactly what percentage of Pope & Young bucks were shot during the red moon. Now, Adam hasn’t published this data yet himself, but seeing as this was the most convincing part of the argument for me, he allowed me to use it.

To preface again, there are only two or three red moon windows per month. Looking back at the Moon Guide, I found that the average month throughout the year, and specifically during deer season, both had around 12 red moon days per month. The maximum amount of red moon days in a single month was 14, and the minimum was 10.

Adam Hays found that 44% of all Pope & Young entries had been harvested during red moon hours. If you think about that, it is actually insane. Twelve days of the month are responsible for 44% of the trophy bucks. The other 56% of trophy bucks are harvested during the other 60% of the month. 

I asked how far back this data goes, and Adam said as far back as Pope & Young has been keeping track of it. Pope & Young was established in 1961, and while I don’t have an exact date for this data, even if they didn’t track harvest times for a few decades, this is still a ton of great data that goes back for a long time. 

On the topic of hunters that didn’t believe the moon had anything to do with whitetail, Adam had a bit more to say about how a good hunter should try and be open-minded and try new things every now and then, you never know what might work. He stated, “This is my 43rd season and I am still learning new things every year”.

What Do You Consider to Be More Important Than the Moon Position?

Adam made a fairly convincing argument for paying attention to the moon, but surely it isn’t the most important aspect of deer hunting. Plenty of people kill massive deer without looking at the moon at all. So I asked Adam, “What aspects of deer hunting do you consider to be more important than the red moon?”. 

His response was fairly simple, “For me, it goes wind, moon, weather.” Adam went on to talk about how you need a good wind to hunt large mature deer, and more importantly, you need a wind that is good for the deer, not just good for you. Smart mature deer only travel through certain areas if the wind is right for them, which is usually the worst wind for us as hunters. So figure out what the wind might be and with a good plan of attack, you will not be straight upwind when that buck comes through. 

Adam ranked hunting the moon second compared to the wind, and hunting the moon is kind of his whole schtick, so that shows how important Adam considers the wind to be. Although I was surprised that he ranked the weather as third. Personally, I would rank the weather as number one, but I have yet to kill one, much less ten boonies, so maybe there is something to learn here. 

Adam talked about how the weather is definitely important, but he also said “I have killed plenty of good deer when the weather wasn’t perfect”. He talked about how if the red moon is going strong during hunting hours and the weather is less than ideal, it can still be an awesome time to kill mature deer. The red moon can get deer on their feet, even during times where you would expect them to hunker down.

The Biggest Mistake Hunters Make When Hunting Mature Deer

Even if you have never killed a large mature deer, you can probably imagine that a deer like that isn’t going to give you a ton of opportunities to do so. If you spook him once, he may be gone forever. That is why Adam says that the number one mistake that hunters make when hunting mature deer is not waiting for the best possible chance to kill that buck. 

Adam says that the best morning hunts are when you have a late morning red moon, around 8, 9, or 10 o’clock. A red moon in that case will help you catch a buck on the way back to his bed. Although he says the best days or hunts are when the red moon peaks at prime time in the evening. That can get a mature buck to move a few minutes earlier, which is all you need to get a shot. Then, if you have your wind right and the weather is respectable, you can have a really good chance at killing a mature buck. 

Waiting for the right time to hunt is especially true if you are hunting a specific buck and have a pretty good pattern on him. If you know a buck comes through a certain area routinely, there is no harm in waiting for the perfect day. Although, if the peak rut is close, he could change those patterns so keep that in mind. 

This is good advice from Adam, but it led me to ask him about the vast majority of hunters that don’t have a ton of time to hunt in general, much less time to opt not to hunt when they finally get a chance during their busy lives. His reply was “I would never advocate for someone not to hunt, but if you have the patience and opportunity, you really want to wait for the deck to be stacked in your favor”.

How Can the Weekend Hunter Use the Moon to Their Advantage?

The hunters I was referencing previously are commonly referred to as “Weekend Hunters”. It puts all of us that work a normal 9 to 5 and have families, kids, or other commitments to take care of into a single category. Following the conversation we had about choosing when not to hunt, I asked, “well how can the weekend hunter use the red moon to get a leg up on mature deer?”.

Adam’s response was that even if they can’t choose to wait on red moon days all the time, if hunters go out of state or plan a big hunting trip months in advance, they can look forward to the moon position and plan those hunting trips around the red moon. 

So if you are picking which days to schedule off of work months in advance at work, it sucks that you can’t look at the weather, but you can certainly look at moon position, and try to include a red moon day in your hunt. He also said that if you are an extremely busy person and only hunt a few scattered days throughout the season, you can try to schedule those days during red moon days. 

Should You Pay Attention to the Moon When Scouting Out of Season?

Another interesting bit of information Adam said was that you should pay attention to the moon position just as much during off season scouting as you do during the season. Just like during hunting season, the red moon days will show the most deer movement. So if you want to set up and scout with glass in the summer, a red moon day might be the best time to do that. On the other hand, if you need to get into the woods and do some boots on the ground scouting, you might want to avoid red moon days so you don’t bump as many deer. 

What About the Studies on the Moon and Deer Movement That Are Fairly Inconclusive?

As I mentioned before, the scientific literature around how the moon affects deer movement is pretty foggy. There are plenty of studies, but there is no general consensus on who is right. So the science is fairly inconclusive, and we can’t say for sure that the moon influences deer movement, at least, according to science. 

So I of course brought this up to Adam, and he had an interesting response. He started off by saying “I’ve never seen a study focusing directly on the most mature animals. A five, six, or seven year old buck is a different animal than a younger deer”. That is a valid point, but it would be pretty tough to collar and study truly wild mature bucks. 

Adam also mentioned that “[whitetail] deer movement isn’t a huge migration, we just need a mature buck to move 5 or 10 minutes earlier than normal, which may not show up on a study at all”. Another valid point. In general, studying the moon and its effects on not only deer, but mature deer, is just an incredibly hard thing to do, and it may not be totally possible. Which would explain why scientists can’t seem to agree on an answer.

The Moon Guide App

Adam also owns “The Moon Guide” which is the go to source for red moon hours, and has been around for quite a while. Traditionally, it has been a physical dial that you buy each year that lets you know when the red moon hours are based on the date, much like a calendar. Although in today’s technology age, the guys over at Team 200 put in the effort to turn this idea into an app!

Although you get a lot more than just moon data out of the moon guide app. Adam told me that he “created the app to have everything I wanted as a hunter”. With that in mind, you can be sure that it has plenty of features. There are six tabs in total on the app, the first being the moon guide itself, which tells you when the red moon days are and even gives you a suggestion on what kind of areas to hunt.

The next is the weather tab, which is zip code specific and has everything you need to know about weather, including a radar! Your next tab is called “The Rub” and it is more of a social media / forum for hunters to post pictures or questions, there is plenty of good hunting content there!

Next, you have a tab called the journal, which Adam said was the app’s “best kept secret”. The journal lets you record deer activity, but you can also see historical data about the day you are tracking. It lists the wind speed and direction, what the moon was doing, temperature, pressure, and rainfall. Even if you enter in data about a hunt you did last year, that weather and moon data will populate! 

This can be super powerful if you have a handful of pictures of a nice buck. You can enter each picture or just a sighting into the journal on the day it was taken, and check out what kind of weather leads to that buck getting on its feet. You may see a pattern, but Adam was most interested in seeing the wind direction in this situation. If you remember, getting a good wind for the buck was the number one thing Adam focused on when trying to get a shot at a mature deer, and this is a great tool for figuring out what that wind is. 

The fifth tab is a media tab that will show all sorts of content from Adam and Team 200, namely articles and rut predictions. Lastly, we have a map tab that works pretty much like every other hunting apps map. It isn’t this shining star of this app, but it is nice to have a basic map that works. The main thing I like about this map is that it shows parcel data pretty clearly. 

Will I Be Hunting Based on the Moon This Year?

While I don’t think I will ever be a true believer in the moon’s effect on whitetail, it obviously works for Adam and plenty of other hunters. The data he presented saying that 44% of Pope & Young entries were killed during red moon hours is no doubt impressive. I definitely downloaded the moon guide app, and you can bet that I am at least going to glance at the red moon hours before I head out to the stand.

It also makes me wonder just how many of my bucks were shot during red moon hours, or if bucks are more likely to be shot on red moon days in general. It sounds like a great theme for a study. All you would really need to do is find a way to gather harvest times for buck harvests. In Georgia, we have to report if a buck had at least 4 points on one side or not, so you could also use something like that to distinguish between mature deer and younger deer. Getting that data from the DNR may be tough, but I don’t see a reason why they wouldn’t release it to the public. 

Nonetheless, I will be looking up at the sky with a bit more curiosity this season, and I am sure you will be too!

Thank you for reading my article! I hope you enjoyed it, and if you have any questions or feedback, please send me an email at [email protected]. If you want to learn more about me or Omega Outdoors, visit my About Page. Otherwise, I hope you have a great day, and check out some of my other articles while you’re here!