How Much Should a Deer License Cost?

When I moved from the Midwest to New York in 2014, everything was eye-poppingly expensive. Rent, sales tax, groceries, a six-pack at the corner bodega — you name it, it cost more than should. So when it came time to buy my deer tag, I was prepared for yet another gouging. Instead, I discovered $22 covered not just my deer license, but a black bear tag and small game privileges to boot. In a state where everything cost twice as much as it should, it was a pleasant surprise to finally get a good deal.

New York is one of many, if not most, states that have historically tried to strike a balance between two pillars of deer hunting: deer tags need to generate enough money to fund wildlife conservation, but they also need to be affordable. If deer license fees are set too high, too many hunters won’t buy tags, deer herds won’t be managed properly, and state agencies actually lose revenue.

Plus, if states make deer hunting too expensive for the average person to participate, you could make a strong argument that it violates the “opportunity for all” tenet of the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation.  

So how do state games agencies settle on the cost of a deer license? And how annoyed should we hunters be when it comes to shelling out for our annual deer tags? It turns out, most deer hunters in America are getting a screaming deal on their resident deer tags, while nonresident tag prices continue to increase. Here’s why.

How Do States Calculate the Price of a Deer License?

If there was some magic formula that spat out the price of the very first Indiana deer hunting license, it has been lost to history, says Joe Caudell, the deer program lead for the state’s DNR. When it comes time to set modern deer license fees in states like Indiana, the focus is on raising the existing price and by how much.

Most state agencies seldom have the opportunity to change the cost of a deer license, and must often wait years, if not decades, to adjust those prices for inflation. This is primarily because fee increases involve a mess of red tape, with many states actually requiring approval from their legislatures (where fee increases often become casualties of political maneuvering). Fee hikes also tend to upset a vocal contingency of deer hunters, and routinely pissing off the folks who fund your agency isn’t good business. In fact, the majority of state agencies I called for this story never returned a request for an interview about their deer license fees — presumably because it’s a sore subject.

So when states do manage to renegotiate deer license costs, they usually go up by a large margin. In 2022, Indiana raised the price of a resident deer license from $24 to $39. That’s a 62.5 percent increase, which felt staggering to some customers — particularly everyday deer hunters who just want to shoot a doe or two for the freezer. With any license price increase, says Caudell, you’re going to lose potential customers. 

“We wrestle with that,” says Caudell. “We were constantly looking at how many people were going to be affected [by license fee increases]. That’s part of the reason we backed off on trying to maximize revenue. That was not our goal at all. But we still had to make sure we met our [DNR revenue] needs, and also consider that we don’t get a license increase every year.”

Prior to 2022, the last time the Indiana DNR had raised deer tag prices was in 2006. That context makes it easier to see that the DNR wasn’t trying to gouge deer hunters, but reclaim precious conservation funding whittled away by 16 years of inflation. Put another way: $24 in 2006 is equal to about $38 in 2024. 

“In Indiana’s case, we looked at economic models of what price increase deer licenses could sustain [in 2022] and how many potential hunters it would cause to be left out,” says Caudell. “We had to know what that break point is, where you’re losing hunters and then losing overall revenue. That’s the point no state agency ever wants to go above … In the end, our price increase had only kept up with moderate inflation across time.” 

Those economic models Caudell mentioned were built by agricultural economists at Purdue, who conducted a three-year study. They looked at deer licenses sales and the resulting harvest at different price points, and ultimately found that Indiana deer tags were substantially undervalued.

Most Resident Deer Licenses Are a Bargain

To Kip Adamas, a Pennsylvania deer hunter and the chief conservation officer of the National Deer Association, deer licenses are one of the last true deals out there. In his home state, $20.97 buys him a resident buck tag, two turkey tags, and small game privileges. An extra $6.97 secures an antlerless tag. Throw in online transaction fees and you’re still looking at a nearly year-round hunting season for roughly $30.

​​“In general, hunting licenses are extremely inexpensive relative to what the license holders get for them,” says Adams. “I mean, what can you do for $30 today? You can’t even take your wife to a movie for $30. And I get it — I don’t want to pay more for anything either. But the value resident hunters get for those licenses are far higher than what they’re paying for licenses in the vast majority of states, and possibly all the states.”

There are exceptions, of course, but in general Eastern and Southern states offer cheaper deer tags to its residents. Midwestern states may charge a little more and, the farther West you hunt, the more expensive your general deer tag is likely to be (and the harder it might be to secure one). 

Somewhat unsurprisingly, California charged its deer hunters more than any state we looked at; all others managed to keep resident fees below the $100 mark. What is clear is that state agencies are increasingly opting to charge nonresident deer hunters hundreds of dollars for their deer tags.

Nonresident Deer Tags Are Expensive, and That’s OK

In general, nonresident deer licenses range from roughly five times the cost of a resident license, as in Pennsylvania, to as much as 28 times, as in Montana. All told, charging nonresident hunters half a grand for a deer tag is a smart tradeoff for state agencies. If you’re traveling out of state to hunt, your primary motivation is likely recreation rather than subsistence.

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Nonresident deer hunters are also a minority customer base, so officials are more comfortable subjecting them to extreme price hikes and keeping resident deer hunters happy. (In Indiana, nonresidents make up just 5 percent of all deer hunters.) In states where license fee increases must be approved by the legislature, politicians are more likely to put the squeeze on out-of-staters than their own constituency. 

Throughout much of deer country, you can see a supply and demand curve in regards to nonresident tag prices. In states that have high-quality hunting opportunities and limited-entry units, nonresident tags tend to cost a hell of a lot more. You’ll see this in the Western states in the chart above, but also big whitetail draw states like Iowa, where a nonresident tag costs $644 before fees.

Local hunters tend to support nonresident tag fee increases — particularly in states where nonresidents increasingly snap up OTC tags and swarm draw applications. 

In 2010 for instance, 54 percent of Montana voters passed a fee increase for nonresident big-game combo licenses. And ahead of the 2022 license fee increase in Indiana, deer hunters were “hoping to see some parity between what they pay for licenses, and what nonresidents were paying for licenses,” says Caudell, noting that nonresidents had been receiving the better rate on bundled deer tags. “They were telling us they wanted nonresidents to get at least the same deal that people in Indiana were getting, [not a better deal].” 

For many folks who head out of state to hunt deer, the cost of the license isn’t exactly the heaviest burden on a budget. Deer hunters who can afford to lease land, hire an outfitter, or take a week off work to set up a DIY camp (not to mention buy gear, gas, and groceries) can certainly swing a few hundred bucks for a tag. And if those pricey nonresident fees help keep deer hunting affordable for locals to hunt their home ground, then all is as it should be in deer country.

Deer License Fees Keep State Agencies Afloat

While affordable deer licenses are important, Adams says many state agencies should actually be charging residents more for their deer tags than they are.

“What I do have an issue with is a lot of resident prices,” says Adams. “Many state wildlife agencies are underfunded or poorly funded and the deer license prices are not current with the current state of affairs relative to expenses for them. Hunters don’t want to hear that. But I think many hunters would recognize that they’re getting a lot more value than what that license is actually costing them.”

For its 2021 Deer Report, the National Deer Association surveyed state agencies about the importance of deer hunting to state agency budgets. Of the 44 states that responded, 70 percent ranked it at least eight or higher on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the most important. Many agencies said deer licenses were the most important source of funding.

In Indiana, deer hunting license fees are the biggest single contributor to the agency’s budget, making 45 percent of the Indiana DNR’s Division of Fish and Wildlife’s entire budget; the next closest category is fishing license fees, at 35 percent of the budget. 

“The most important thing deer hunters don’t always understand, and maybe even the general public, is that our revenue doesn’t come from property taxes or sales tax or any of that stuff. Deer hunters buying these licenses support fish and wildlife resources across the entire state,” says Caudell. “They’re buying this license, but that money is going right back into that resource. It’s not going into anything else, and we use that as our match [to receive] Pittman-Robertson dollars.”

While federal funding is critical for agencies, the state-level politics around increasing deer license costs aren’t adaptive enough to meet modern demands.

“I think we need to do something to [change] that funding system,” says Adams. “We either need to broaden how we’re paying for these wildlife management programs or, in many cases, bump some of those license prices up to compensate for the management that’s occurring for all our wildlife species.”

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But states won’t be moving to responsive license pricing anytime soon. If you live in a state with bargain-bin deer tags that haven’t changed in years, Adams suggests opting-in to the donation prompts when you buy your deer license each fall. If you can afford it, check the box for that $1 or $5 habitat donation and help your state agency make up for lost revenue until it can — some day — charge a real-world rate for deer tags.

 

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