Lotteries Help

Before applying for a lottery, consider reviewing our lottery guide for information on the lottery process and tips on unit selection.

To apply for a lottery, first create or access your NDGF account.

On your My Account page, click on "Apply for a Lottery/Gratis".

Select the customer for whom you wish to apply.

Note: You may apply for family or friends if you have their account information. Learn more.

If you are applying for a party, select the 'party leader' here. Other party members will be added later in the process.

Confirm your residency and address information.

If you are not a US citizen, you will be asked for your passport number.

If you are not a North Dakota resident, you will be asked a couple of questions to determine if you qualify to apply for resident licenses. If you do not qualify, you can still purchase nonresident licenses. Note that some lotteries are resident only.

Select the lottery for which you'd like to apply. Only currently available lotteries will be listed here.

Select the unit and species/type. To increase your odds of being drawn, make a second unit choice in addition to your primary choice.

PLOTS Donation - If you are unsuccessful in the lottery drawing, you can choose to have your application fee refunded to you or you can choose to donate it to the Department's Private Land Open to Sportsmen program.

If the applicant's data is not complete in the system, you will be prompted to add any necessary information.

Party Applications: If this is a party application, you add members on this page. Be aware that the lowest bonus points for any member will be the bonus points used for all members in a party application. So if, for example, 3 of your members have 4 bonus points and one has 1 bonus point, 1 bonus point will be used for the entire party for the application.

An applicant unsuccessful in drawing his or her first choice permit in the first lottery this year receives a bonus point for next year's lottery.

If you would like to skip hunting this year but want to increase your bonus points, you can purchase a bonus point without entering the lottery by checking the "Bonus Point Purchase" box on the Lottery Details page during the lottery application process.

If you do not purchase a bonus point or apply for the lottery, you will not lose your existing bonus points, but you will also not add a point for the year.

Note: You can view your existing bonus points by going to your "My Account" page and scrolling down to the Current Lottery Bonus Points section. To see your bonus points history, click on the View Bonus Point Details. This will popup a list of your bonus points by year.

Verify that your unit choices and other information is correct.

At this point, you will be asked if you'd like to donate to our Private Lands Open To Sportsmen program.

PLOTS Program Information.

Enter your payment information and click "Submit".

You can view, print and download your application receipt by clicking on the "View" link.

You can also access this information from your My Account page at any time.

After a lottery has been run, you will be able to view the results from your My Account page. Note: applications will remain in a pending status until after the lottery has been run.

After a lottery has been run there may be remaining licenses available for purchase (i.e. when there were more licenses in a hunting unit than there were applicants). To see if there are licenses left over after a lottery has been run, go to the species' hunting information page and find the "License Availability" section at the bottom.

You can apply for a leftover license by clicking on the "Purchase FCFS Licenses" link on your My Account page.