News Release Archives - June 2009
June 22, 2009
Online Licensing a Convenient Process
North Dakota hunters and anglers who are looking for a more convenient way to purchase licenses and apply for lotteries need look no further than the North Dakota Game and Fish Department’s website, gf.nd.gov. This online service allows people to purchase licenses and apply for lotteries, with some additional benefits.
“There are some real advantages to using it,” said Paul Schadewald, the Game and Fish Department’s administrative services division chief. “If they ever lose a license they can just go back online and for no cost, print it, and they can get multiple copies.”
No additional costs or fees are added if a license is purchased online, and the process is easy to follow. Also, some license vendors around the state are starting to use the electronic system rather than the old paper books of licenses, Schadewald said. That way, “if you don’t have web access at home you can go to a vendor that has electronic licensing.”
The transition is also more convenient for the Game and Fish Department and vendors. Online licensing eliminates excess paper work and the system helps catch mistakes. “The system is smart and it helps collect accurate data and that’s very beneficial,” Schadewald said.
The service is currently most popular with those who are applying for lotteries. For the upcoming deer lottery, more than 60 percent of the applications came in online. Overall use of the online licensing system has grown about 10 percent every year. When the number of online applications reaches around 80 percent, Schadewald said the Game and Fish would like to consider switching to an entirely electronic licensing system, “but it’s going to be several years before we eliminate the paper all together,” he said.
Some licenses are already exclusively online, including all small game and waterfowl licenses for nonresidents. All resident licenses are still available in the paper version, but the department would like to see an increase in online numbers. “The licenses that we sell a lot of, like resident fishing licenses and resident small game licenses, those are the ones we’d like to see more electronic licenses,” Schadewald said.
The convenience of online licensing is its accessibility anytime, day or night, with internet access. It eliminates lost license problems with a few clicks of a mouse, and Schadewald said it only takes one experience of taking the time to make a special trip to a license vendor to realize that there is a quicker way to do it. “Once they try it then they’re hooked,” he said.
A direct link to the Game and Fish Department’s licensing page is gf.nd.gov/licenses.
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