North Dakota’s 2018 Deer Season Set with More Licenses Available

Mule Deer (Photo via Pixabay)

The North Dakota Game & Fish Department has issued notification that the 2018 Deer Gun Season is set with 55,150 licenses available. This number represents 650 more licenses than issued last year.

The 2017 deer season proved to be a continued challenge for hunters. For the ninth straight season, hunter success was below 70%. The North Dakota Game & Fish Department considers a 70% harvest rate to be a good year, but last fall’s deer gun hunters hit a success rate of 63% for bucks and just 60% for does.

For a unit by unit comparison of the 2017 and upcoming 2018 seasons, you can click here and here. These links will show you the number of licenses available in each unit.

To put things into a historical perspective, there were more than 100,000 licenses available each season from 2001 through 2011. Beginning in 2004, there were six seasons of over 145,000 licenses. But after these years of issuing a historic amount of licenses, there was an unwelcomed storm of events that included loss of habitat, some disease, and brutal winter conditions. This resulted in a historic low number of licenses being issued in 2015, with just 43,275.

Although frustration exists among many hunters, because of fewer hunting opportunities, numbers are rebounding. Hopefully they will continue to trend upward. I believe that the more opportunities that exist, the less likely we are to witness the death of North Dakota’s deer hunting tradition.

Applications for the 2018 season can be submitted on the North Dakota Game & Fish website. The deadline is June 6th.

 

Sources:

1. https://gf.nd.gov/news/2394

2. http://kfgo.com/news/articles/2018/apr/30/2017-not-the-best-year-for-nd-deer-hunters/

3. https://gf.nd.gov/licensing/lotteries/summary#deer

4. https://gf.nd.gov/licensing/availability/deer

5. https://gf.nd.gov/magazine/2017/nov/deer-hunting

6. http://www.agweek.com/sports/outdoors/4368053-commentary-nd-deer-hunters-vent-their-frustrations-meeting

7. https://gf.nd.gov

 

 

 

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About T. Arthur Mason 883 Articles
T. Arthur Mason is a native North Dakotan who has spent nearly all of his life in the Peace Garden State. As the third of four children in Western North Dakota, Mason grew to appreciate family and the outdoors. Some of his fondest memories are annual deer hunts with family and friends. In his early teenage years, faith became a central part of T. Arthur Mason's life. He and the majority of his family attend church together on a weekly basis and find this a fulfilling aspect of their lives. Through the influence of his father, T. Arthur Mason became intrigued with politics. As a boy, he attended political events with his father and enjoyed the friendships that resulted as a byproduct of those political associations. As Mason grew older, he became convinced that the quote often attributed to Thomas Jefferson was true, "That government is best which governs least." Today, T. Arthur Mason enjoys time with his wife and children, an occasional hunt, and an increasingly active life on the political scene. This blog is the fulfillment of a dream to design a web site in the realm of politics and to advocate for the principles of Liberty and constitutionally limited government. On behalf of all those that contribute to The Minuteman, we hope you enjoy your time on the site and will share the message with others.