By Doug Leier
North Dakota’s 2026 deer season began Friday Nov. 6 at noon. From a management perspective, the season is a continuation of the Game and Fish Departments goal of herd recovery with conservative management.
39,100 licenses were made available to hunters this year, down 3,200 from last year, marking it the lowest allocation total in over half a century.
These conservative license allocations are designed to balance hunting opportunities with essential population growth. The statewide deer herd is still actively recovering from the severe impacts of winter 2022-23, and epizootic hemorrhagic disease outbreaks. Compounding these weather and disease issues is an increasingly limited amount of habitat across the state landscape.
Bill Haase, Department wildlife division chief, noted that the agency will continue to engage stakeholders on additional herd-growth measures, including discussions around limiting future adult archery tags to antlered only deer.
Antlerless deer gun licenses were completely unavailable in several management units.
Nonresidents were only allowed to hunt on private land during the first 9 ½ days of the deer bow season.
Those are changes with goals to grow the population and give residents more management priority. Here’s also a couple of significant deer hunting season regulation reminders.
Transportation and Tagging Rules
License holders must personally accompany their game animal or its parts (excluding the hide) during transit. Out-of-state shipping of big game by residents requires a specific Department permit, though common carriers can ship game with a proper bill of lading.
A deer carcass or boned-out meat must be accompanied by the head to its final place of storage. However, hunters can utilize a digital exception:
● Tag the deer as normally required by law.
● Take two cell phone photos with location, date, with time stamps turned on.
● Capture the first photo of the entire animal at the kill site with the tag attached.
● Capture the second photo as a clear closeup showing all readable tag information. Following the photos, you can drop the head off at a chronic wasting disease collection site. If you leave the head at the kill site, you must cut off the ear or antler with the tag attached so it accompanies the meat during transport. You must show these digital photographs to any game warden or law enforcement officer upon request.
Gifting Meat and Preventing Waste
Possessing or transporting another hunter’s game is illegal unless the license holder accompanies the animal. Legally harvested meat can be gifted, but it can never be sold, traded, or bartered.
Processed, packaged meat can be gifted freely. Unprocessed, unpackaged meat can only be gifted under two conditions:
1. Before reaching your permanent residence, a formal transportation permit must accompany the meat.
2. After reaching your permanent residence, the carcass tag of the person who harvested the deer must accompany the meat.
Commercial processors and common carriers may legally possess a hunter’s limit, but the individual’s carcass tag must stay with the edible flesh through processing.
Stay safe, obey the rules and enjoy North Dakota’s outdoors.
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