Your Trail Calendar for Deer Season, From Muddy Branch to Schaeffer Farm

Montgomery Parks' managed deer hunts run from now through January, and none of North Potomac's three home parks closes for them. Muddy Branch, Blockhouse Point and Watts Branch are archery-only parks, and the county keeps them open as usual. The closures fall on parks a 15- or 20-minute drive away. They follow a fixed calendar, and the first one this season that touches a trail that ends at Seneca Creek State Park lands on Halloween.

So this season, picking a trail is mostly about the date. Below is that calendar, built from the Montgomery Parks 2026–27 schedule, Maryland DNR's season dates for Seneca Creek State Park, and the current notices for the C&O Canal end of the Muddy Branch trail.

Your Three Parks Are on the Open List

The Montgomery Parks 2026–27 schedule sorts every park in the program into archery hunting or firearms hunting. North Potomac's parks are all in the archery group, and that group carries the label "No Park Closure":

• Muddy Branch Stream Valley Park, Units 1, 2 and 3, listed as Darnestown/North Potomac
• Blockhouse Point Conservation Park, listed as Darnestown
• Watts Branch Stream Valley Park, Units 1, 2, 3 and 4, listed as Potomac/Travilah

These parks stay open, but hunting can still happen in them. Under the schedule, permitted archers may hunt Monday through Saturday, September through January, from a half hour before sunrise to a half hour after sunset. Those are the hours of an early run or an after-work dog walk, especially once the clocks change. Maryland DNR's hiking guidance strongly recommends "high visibility blaze orange or pink clothing" during hunting season. A bright vest is a cheap fix for a trail you may use six days a week.

The full program, which includes winter sharpshooting, runs from September 2026 to March 2027, and it has been going for a long time. Montgomery Parks says it started 30 years ago in response to deer overpopulation and the vehicle accidents, property and ecological damage, and disease concerns that came with it. Since it began, 26,330 deer have been removed, and Park Police sharpshooting has donated more than 428,000 pounds of venison since 1999.

The Closures Start Where the Hoyles Mill Trail Starts

Firearms parks work differently. On each scheduled date, the park is closed to the public for 24 hours. The two closest to North Potomac sit at either end of a single trail. Montgomery Parks describes the Hoyles Mill Trail as running south from Black Hill Regional Park, through Boyds Local Park, Hoyles Mill Conservation Park and South Germantown Recreation Park, and ending at Schaeffer Farm in Seneca Creek State Park.

The firearms list includes both Hoyles Mill Conservation Park and Black Hill's 10 Mile Creek segment. Black Hill's day-use area east of Route 121 is in the archery group and stays open. Here are the remaining dates from next week through January:

The Hoyles Mill dates switch between Thursdays and Saturdays, and four of them are Saturdays. If your long weekend ride or hike uses that corridor, those four Saturdays are the ones to mark: Halloween, Nov. 21, Dec. 19 and Jan. 23. The schedule also closes Rachel Carson Conservation Park in Olney, Bennett Creek in Damascus, Woodstock Equestrian Park in Beallsville and, on five December days, Little Bennett Regional Park.

Schaeffer Farm Runs on the State's Calendar

Where the Hoyles Mill Trail ends, the county schedule stops applying. Schaeffer Farm belongs to Seneca Creek State Park, and Maryland DNR sets its deer seasons on the Schaeffer Farm Tract hunting page. The tract sits between Schaeffer Road, Black Rock Road, Little Seneca Creek and Seneca Creek, and it is open for white-tailed deer hunting only, on these dates:

• Archery: Oct. 26 to Nov. 27, 2026; Dec. 14 to 18; Jan. 3 to 7, 2027; Jan. 11 to 31
• Firearms: Nov. 28 to Dec. 12, 2026; Jan. 8 to 10, 2027
• Muzzleloader: Dec. 19, 2026 to Jan. 2, 2027
• Primitive: Feb. 1 to 3, 2027

Taken together, Schaeffer Farm has some kind of deer season running from Monday, Oct. 26, through early February, with only a few short gaps. Hunters there need a Free Public Hunting Permit, and opening day of firearms season, Saturday, Nov. 28, is assigned by lottery.

The open question for non-hunters is trail access. DNR's Seneca Creek trails page still shows last season's notice, which closed Schaeffer from Nov. 29, 2025 to Jan. 11, 2026, then allowed bow and primitive hunting from Jan. 12 to Feb. 4, 2026. No 2026–27 version of that notice is posted yet. Last year's window lined up closely with the firearms and muzzleloader stretch, but it was last year's. Before you load the bike for a late-November or December ride, check that page or call the Gwynnbrook Wildlife Office at 410-356-9272. That office manages the tract. The same trail system links out through the White Loop spur to Black Rock Mill and the Seneca Ridge and Seneca Greenway trails.

Sunday Is the One Day Every Calendar Agrees On

The county archery schedule stops at Saturday. The state's rules fill in the rest. Maryland's 2026–27 Sunday deer hunting chart lists Montgomery County's open lands as "Private Only." Public parkland in the county is not part of Sunday deer hunting this season.

That makes Sunday the easiest day to plan. Muddy Branch, Blockhouse Point and Watts Branch have no archery hunting on Sundays. No Hoyles Mill or Black Hill closure dates in the table fall on a Sunday. If you want a sunrise hike or a dusk run with no hunting nearby, Sunday is the day to save it for.

The Canal End Has Its Own Detours

Montgomery Parks describes the Muddy Branch Greenway Trail as a nine-mile natural-surface route from Darnestown Road toward Blockhouse Point and the C&O Canal. Our summer guide to that corridor covers it end to end. This fall, the closures at the canal end have nothing to do with deer.

The National Park Service's C&O Canal conditions page, last updated Oct. 14, 2026, has two notices worth knowing. The Swains Lock parking lot closed Oct. 13 for several weeks, though the hiker-biker campground next to it is still open. DC Water work is also causing delays on Pennyfield Lock Road. Neither notice mentions a towpath closure for deer management, and the Seneca Aqueduct and Riley's Lock area, parking lot included, shows as open.

The canal's dark rule also matters more as the days get shorter. Between Georgetown and Seneca, the C&O Canal superintendent's compendium closes the park at dark, which it defines as a half hour after sunset to a half hour before sunrise. If you walk down from Blockhouse Point toward the towpath late on a November afternoon, you have less time than it feels like.

A Week on the Trails in Mid-November

Here is how the calendars combine during one real week, Sunday, Nov. 8 through Saturday, Nov. 14:

1. Sunday, Nov. 8: The open day. No public-land deer hunting anywhere in the county, so it's a good day for a dawn or dusk outing on Muddy Branch or Watts Branch.
2. Monday through Wednesday, Nov. 9 to 11: Your home parks are open, with possible archery hunting from a half hour before sunrise to a half hour after sunset. Wear orange. Schaeffer Farm is in archery season.
3. Thursday, Nov. 12: Hoyles Mill Conservation Park closes for 24 hours. Stay off the middle section of the Hoyles Mill Trail.
4. Friday, Nov. 13: Everything is open, and archery continues at the home parks and at Schaeffer.
5. Saturday, Nov. 14: Black Hill's 10 Mile Creek segment and Bucklodge Forest close. Black Hill's day-use area east of Route 121 stays open.

Montgomery Parks posts signs ahead of closures at park entrances, parking lots, trails and in nearby communities. You can also get the schedule by email. Write to [email protected] with "ATTN: Deer Management Email List" in the message, and the Montgomery Parks deer management page says list members receive the annual schedules and information on proposed programs. In winter, Park Police sharpshooting runs weeknights from Jan. 15 to March 31, 2027, sunset to sunrise. Its active list doesn't include Muddy Branch, Blockhouse Point or Watts Branch.

Once DNR posts its 2026–27 Schaeffer Farm trail notice, the last open date on this calendar will be settled.

Knowing which Saturday a trailhead closes is the kind of local detail I love trading with neighbors. If you're planning your next move in this area, or just want to compare notes on a favorite Sunday route, Valerie D Harnois is a message away. Let's connect.