The Maine Agenda › Outdoors in Maine

Hunting Rules by Town in Greater Portland, Maine

Published July 30, 2026 · 12 min read

Maine runs a separate, longer deer season in Greater Portland, and the state says plainly why. On its expanded archery page, the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife explains that the program exists where harvest potential is limited by factors "most commonly discharge ordinances limiting the use of firearms for deer hunting," in areas where "many areas within them cannot be hunted with firearms due to municipal ordinances banning the discharge of firearms."

That inverts how this is usually described. The special season here is not a bonus. It is a workaround. Eleven towns wrote eleven different gun ordinances, and the state built a season around the gap.

The practical consequence is that the most important fact about hunting within 25 minutes of downtown Portland is which side of a town line you are standing on. The setback from a house is 500 feet in one town, 300 feet in three others, 100 yards in one more, and entirely absent in three. Bows are banned outright in one town, restricted to streets and parks in another, and not mentioned at all in five.

The state sets a floor, then hands the pen to the towns

Title 12, section 11209 is the rule everyone half-remembers. It prohibits discharging a firearm, including a muzzleloader, or causing a projectile to pass, within 100 yards of a building or residential dwelling without the owner's permission. One hundred yards is 300 feet, which is why so many town ordinances quote that figure: they are restating the state rule rather than adding to it.

The clause that matters is the first six words. The prohibition applies "unless a relevant municipal ordinance provides otherwise." State law expressly steps aside for town rules on firearms discharge, which is why Greater Portland has eleven answers instead of one.

Archery sits differently in the statute, and the difference is easy to miss. Subsection 1(A-1), added by the 2023 amendment, bars loosing an arrow or bolt within 100 yards of a building or dwelling only "when on land of another person." The firearm rule applies wherever you are standing. The archery rule, as written, reaches you only on someone else's land. Either violation is a Class E crime. The statute also defines "building" broadly enough to include a tractor barn: any residential, commercial, retail, educational, religious or farm structure designed to be occupied by people or animals, or used to shelter machines or harvested crops.

The 2026-27 dates

Hunting is prohibited on Sunday in Maine, every week, all season. Expanded archery, in designated areas only, runs September 12 through December 12, 2026. Regular archery is October 3 to 30, the youth deer hunt October 23 and 24, and the resident-only day October 31. Firearms season is November 2 to 28, followed by statewide muzzleloader November 30 to December 5 and a second muzzleloader week December 7 to 12 in the districts covering this region. Fall turkey, by archery or shotgun, runs September 14 to November 7.

Expanded archery needs its own permits on top of an archery license: $12 per antlerless permit, of which you may buy several, and $32 for a single either-sex permit. A Super Pack includes one either-sex and three antlerless.

Portland: the town in the zone that you cannot hunt

The expanded archery boundary description names portions of Cumberland, Falmouth, North Yarmouth, Portland, Scarborough, South Portland, Westbrook, Windham and Yarmouth. Portland is in the zone. Portland is also, by the state's own note on that same page, unhuntable: "The discharge of firearms and archery hunting equipment is prohibited by ordinance in the entire City of Portland. This eliminates the possibility of hunting deer anywhere in Portland at this time."

There is a wrinkle worth flagging, because two pages of the same state source do not say the same thing. The expanded archery index page carries that sentence with a parenthetical the detail page omits: "anywhere in Portland (including coastal islands)." The islands are precisely where the city's own code carves out exceptions. Portland's Chapter 17, section 17-41 bans shooting a bow and arrow, BB gun, air gun, slingshot or firearm anywhere in the city, then authorizes City Clerk permits for shotgun deer reduction on Great Diamond, Little Diamond and Cushing Islands, for rifles or bows on Peaks Island, and for department-approved firearms on Cliff Island. Permits go only to holders of valid state hunting licenses, and shotguns may not be fired within 200 feet of any structure or on land posted against hunting.

Treat the islands as closed unless the City Clerk says a permit round is open, and understand this as a disagreement between two documents rather than a settled fact. One honest caveat on top of it: Portland's website is serving empty pages where its code should be, a defect this site has now documented across three separate articles. The Chapter 17 text available is a 2022 capture whose amendment trail ends in 2003, and Portland publishes on neither commercial code platform its neighbors use. Anyone writing about Portland's gun ordinance with confidence right now is guessing.

What each town actually says

Falmouth is the strictest and the only town here that regulates bows by ordinance. Firearms discharge is prohibited town-wide, with shotgun hunting allowed by carve-out in mapped areas generally west of Middle Road. Shotgun and archery only, with muzzle-loading shotguns and crossbows permitted in shotgun areas and modern in-line or rifled muzzleloaders excluded. Hunting is banned within 300 feet of any playing field or parking area on town property, and within 500 feet of a dwelling you need written permission from an adult who lives there, for a bow as much as for a gun. The Town Forest is closed to firearms but open to archery. Note that the town's hunting brochure and its codified ordinance disagree on the coastal boundary and on which sanctuary statute applies, and the brochure says on its face that it is not a legal document.

Cumberland permits shotgun, muzzleloader and pistol and nothing else, with a 300-foot setback from any dwelling other than your own or any commercial, industrial, governmental or institutional building including schools. Five named municipal properties are closed to firearms: the Town Forest, Twin Brook, Broad Cove Reserve except for lawful waterfowl hunting, the West Cumberland Athletic Complex and Val Halla. The ordinance defines "firearms" by propellant, so bows fall outside it entirely, including on those five properties.

Yarmouth is shotgun only, plus a .22 handgun for night raccoon hunting. Setbacks are 300 feet from a dwelling or commercial, industrial or institutional building, and 500 feet from any school property. Closed: the landfill, Royal River Park, the town landing, Sandy Point Beach, Camp Soci, the Tinker property and Riverfront Woods Preserve, plus Cousins and Littlejohn Islands except for steel or bird shot in waterfowl season.

North Yarmouth has the region's thinnest ordinance. Adopted March 9, 1991 and never amended since, it permits shotguns and black powder guns, contains no setback of any kind, and defines "firearm" by cross-reference to two statutes Maine repealed in 2003. State law governs the setback by default. Park rules are published separately: hunting is allowed at Baston Park, Chandler Brook, Hayes Forest, Knight's Pond, Memak and the Sam Ristich Trail, by permission only at Old Town House Park, and prohibited at Veterans Memorial Park, the Village Green and Wescustogo Park.

Scarborough allows only shotguns, muzzleloaders, revolvers and pistols, which bans rifles in practice, and states its setback in yards: 100 yards from a dwelling or occupied building or structure without prior consent. All town-owned land is closed. The ordinance says nothing about archery.

Gorham is the only town that zones by map rather than by town line. Inside the Handgun, Shotgun and Muzzle Loading Restricted Zone on the map dated May 17, 2021, only those three weapon classes are permitted. Setbacks are 300 feet from a building or dwelling and 500 feet from school property, with fourteen named municipal sites closed outright including Fort Hill Park, Shaw Park, Robie Park and the Lavoie Pumptrack. The Narragansett Game Sanctuary, roughly 3,600 acres, sits inside the town.

Westbrook bans hunting with a firearm city-wide and requires a police permit for any other discharge, but the prohibition is written as "hunt with the use of a firearm." Bows appear nowhere in the chapter, and Westbrook is inside the expanded archery zone.

South Portland requires a police chief's permit to discharge a firearm anywhere in the city. Its bow provision reaches only streets, sidewalks, parks and other public places, so archery on private land is not covered by that section. The chapter contains no setback figure at all.

Cape Elizabeth prohibits discharge of firearms, air rifles and pistols everywhere in town except the salt marshes, Spurwink Rod and Gun Club property and land under federal jurisdiction, with rifles barred everywhere but police-authorized ranges. Archery is not mentioned in the firearms chapter or the miscellaneous offenses chapter. Be careful here: the police department's summary page lists a different set of exempt areas than the ordinance does, adding Great Pond and the area below the tidal high water mark, narrowing the marshes to those bordering Scarborough, and dropping the federal-land exception. The ordinance governs.

Windham has no standalone firearms chapter. Its only rule lives in the parks ordinance, which bans firearms, air rifles, gas weapons, slingshots and bows and arrows in town parks, with hunting allowed at Lowell Preserve and East Windham Conservation Area. There is a live inconsistency inside that chapter: section 150-2E exempts both preserves, while section 150-3C, amended by the same order on the same day in November 2024, permits hunting only at Lowell Preserve and states that hunting is not permitted in any town park. Ask Windham Parks and Recreation before relying on East Windham.

Freeport has no firearms discharge ordinance at all, and that absence is neither an oversight nor settled. A town manager's memo to the Town Council, prepared after the police department logged 93 firearms noise and nuisance complaints between August 2018 and August 2024, surveyed eighteen nearby communities and found thirteen regulating discharge and five not. Freeport was in the second group as of that memo. State law's 100 yards is the only setback in force there.

Two layers above the town rules

State wildlife sanctuaries close land regardless of what a town ordinance says, and four of them sit in this region: the Back Bay Sanctuary in Portland, the Cape Elizabeth Sanctuary, the Narragansett Game Sanctuary in Gorham, and Prout's Neck and Richmond's Island in Scarborough, plus the Sebago Lake Basin area in Standish and Windham. The Cape Elizabeth Sanctuary carries a footnote that opens it to bow and arrow only, during firearms season and any season allowing archery.

State parks are the other layer. General hunting on state park land is allowed from the day after Labor Day through May 31 except where specifically prohibited, and the state names the exceptions. Locally that means no hunting at Crescent Beach, Kettle Cove, Two Lights, Mackworth Island, Wolfe's Neck Woods or Sebago Lake State Park. On park land generally, no firearm, archery equipment or weapon may be discharged within 300 feet of a picnic area, campsite, parking area, building, shelter, boat launch, posted trail or other developed area. One more rule people trip over every fall: it is unlawful to hunt gray squirrels on any land dedicated as a public or private park, or within the compact or built-up portion of any city or town.

Land trusts run their own systems and they are not interchangeable. Falmouth Land Trust requires a written permit application every season and limits hunting to five named preserves and to deer, turkey and small game, two of the five bow only. Scarborough Land Trust requires a notification form that goes live April 1 and allows no rifle hunting, in deference to the town ordinance. Royal River Conservation Trust asks rather than requires that hunters register annually, and closes Thayer Brook and Littlejohn Island entirely. Presumpscot Regional Land Trust publishes no permit requirement and sets rules preserve by preserve, three limited to bow and five closed. Chebeague and Cumberland Land Trust and Freeport Conservation Trust publish no hunting policy at all, which means calling them rather than assuming either answer.

What we could not confirm

Three things stayed open, each the sort a town clerk resolves in one phone call. Whether Portland's section 17-41 has been amended since 2022 cannot be checked while the city's site is down. Whether Freeport adopted an ordinance after that 2024 council discussion is documented nowhere we could find. And North Yarmouth's Old Town House Park permission rules exist only as a scanned PDF with no text layer, so those terms are unknown to anyone who has not called the town office.

If you are heading into the woods this fall for other reasons, the same dates apply to you. Blaze orange from mid-September through December is the cheapest insurance available, and the trails with ocean views and foliage routes that get busy in October cover the same ground as the expanded archery zone.

FAQ

Can you hunt in Portland, Maine?

No. Portland's ordinance prohibits shooting a bow and arrow, BB gun, air gun, slingshot or firearm anywhere in the city, and the state's own expanded archery page confirms that this eliminates deer hunting in Portland. The city code does authorize City Clerk permits for island deer reduction on Great Diamond, Little Diamond, Cushing, Peaks and Cliff Islands, but the state's index page describes even the coastal islands as closed, so the two documents disagree.

How far from a house can you legally hunt in Maine?

State law sets 100 yards, which is 300 feet, from any building or residential dwelling, without the owner's permission. Towns may set a different distance, and Falmouth does, requiring written permission from a resident within 500 feet. North Yarmouth, Windham and Freeport set no distance of their own, so the state's 100 yards governs there.

Which Greater Portland towns regulate bowhunting?

Two. Falmouth bans hunting with bow and arrow in its designated parks and applies its 500-foot written-permission rule to bows, and Windham bans bows and arrows in town parks. Cumberland, Yarmouth, North Yarmouth, Scarborough, Gorham and Westbrook define their ordinances around firearms only, and Cape Elizabeth does not mention archery. Portland bans bows outright.

When does expanded archery season open in 2026?

September 12, 2026, running through December 12. The Portland-area zone covers portions of Cumberland, Falmouth, North Yarmouth, Portland, Scarborough, South Portland, Westbrook, Windham and Yarmouth, and the exact boundary is a road-by-road perimeter published by the state, not a set of town lines.

Is Sunday hunting legal in Maine?

No. The state's season table states that all dates are inclusive except that hunting is prohibited on Sunday. This applies to every season, including expanded archery, and it is one of the few rules in this article that does not change at a town line.

Do I need a separate license for expanded archery?

Yes, permits on top of an archery license. Antlerless permits are $12 each and you may buy more than one, and a single either-sex permit is $32. Junior, resident over-70 lifetime, complimentary disabled veteran and Native American licenses include one of each, and a Super Pack includes one either-sex and three antlerless.

Where can I hunt on conservation land near Portland?

Falmouth Land Trust, Scarborough Land Trust, Royal River Conservation Trust and Presumpscot Regional Land Trust all allow hunting on some preserves, each under its own rules. Falmouth requires a written permit each season, Scarborough requires a notification form, Royal River asks for annual registration, and Presumpscot requires nothing but limits several preserves to bow only. Trust rules sit on top of town ordinances, not instead of them, the same way town clam licenses and state fishing licenses stack.