New Mexico · Rabbit · 2026 Edition
New Mexico Rabbit Season 2026: Dates & Bag Limits
01 — Seasons
| Season | Zone | Dates |
|---|---|---|
| Cottontail & black-tailed jackrabbit | Statewide | Jan 1 – Dec 31 |
02 — Bag limits
| Daily | No limit |
|---|---|
| Possession | No limit |
| White-sided jackrabbit | Protected — not legal to hunt (mainly Hidalgo County) |
03 — Shooting hours
No shooting-hours restriction — legal at any hour during the open season.
Rule: No shooting-hours restriction on rabbit. NMDGF treats rabbit as a nongame species, and it sits outside every shooting-hours clause in the rules document; the artificial-light rules mention other species only.
04 — License
Rabbit hunters in New Mexico need a New Mexico hunting license — New Mexico residents need no license to hunt rabbit (a nongame species); non-residents need a nongame license or a standard NM hunting license.
New Mexico hunting license cost →
Where to hunt public land in New Mexico — WMAs by county & access rules →
05 — FAQ
When does rabbit season start in New Mexico?
New Mexico runs rabbit season year-round — there's no opening day to wait for.
When does rabbit season end in New Mexico?
It doesn't — New Mexico has no closed season on rabbit, per New Mexico Department of Game and Fish.
Is there a closed season on rabbit in New Mexico?
No — rabbit can be hunted in New Mexico every day of the year, subject to the bag limit and legal shooting hours above.
How many rabbits can you shoot in New Mexico per day?
2026 bag limits: Daily — No limit. Possession — No limit. White-sided jackrabbit — Protected — not legal to hunt (mainly Hidalgo County). Limits are set per zone and per permit — check the agency's own regulations before you hunt.
What time can you start shooting rabbit in New Mexico?
There is no shooting-hours restriction — rabbit may legally be hunted at any hour during the open season in New Mexico. The rule is: No shooting-hours restriction on rabbit. NMDGF treats rabbit as a nongame species, and it sits outside every shooting-hours clause in the rules document; the artificial-light rules mention other species only.
Can I hunt rabbits on my own land in New Mexico without a license?
No — New Mexico requires a license for every game species regardless of land ownership. What's sometimes called a 'landowner' program is a separate elk-tag authorization system granted through the landowner, not a license waiver.
Verified · New Mexico Department of Game and Fish · Last verified 2026-08-14
Publisher's note. Official '2026-2027 New Mexico Hunting Rules and Information' booklet PDF, read directly. Rabbits are classified as Nongame — the booklet states verbatim there is no closed season or bag limit for nongame species. White-sided jackrabbit (found mainly in Hidalgo County) is separately named as protected under the NM Wildlife Conservation Act and may not be hunted; black-tailed jackrabbit and cottontail remain legal by elimination since white-sided is the only jackrabbit species the booklet calls out as protected. New Mexico residents need no license at all to take nongame species; non-residents need either a nongame license or a standard NM hunting license. RECONFIRMED 2026-08-16 against the full 2026-2027 New Mexico Hunting Rules and Info booklet (not just the general-rules excerpt): the half-hour-before-sunrise/after-sunset rule is stated twice, once for 'big game, furbearers, upland game and turkey' and again for furbearers specifically — rabbit belongs to neither category. The booklet's Nongame section states plainly there is no closed season or bag limit for nongame species, and a later Furbearers passage explicitly separates 'nongame species including coyotes and rabbits' from furbearers when discussing artificial-light rules — confirming rabbit sits outside every shooting-hours clause in the document. EXPLICIT shootingHours MARKER (2026-08-27): this file now carries shootingHours.unrestricted = true. Simply omitting the field did NOT work and had been silently wrong on the live page: the season templates read season.shootingHours ?? meta.shootingHours, so an absent block fell through to the state-level default in states.json and the page printed a computed sunrise/sunset window plus a rule the law does not impose - while the licence section right below it said the opposite. The templates now honour the marker and print the no-restriction sentence instead. The original reasoning stands: New Mexico imposes no shooting-hours restriction on nongame species including rabbit, so any offset — including 0/0 — would state a limit the rules do not impose. The absence of the field is the correct answer, not a gap to be filled.