A Look Back

Let’s start in 1954.

While North Dakota held its first “official” deer season, where a specific license was needed to hunt, 20-plus years earlier, 1954 was the beginning of when things got rolling.

Prior to 1954, hunters could count on a season about every other year. Starting in 1954, the state’s touted and celebrated season has run uninterrupted for more than 60 years.

1954 marked just the second year the Game and Fish Department made available more than 40,000 licenses to hunters. The first was 1952.

Yet, that 40,000 mark was difficult to reach for a time. From 1955 to 1964, it was met just twice in 1961-62.

Note: While the following is not “looking back” very far, it bears mentioning that for the last three deer seasons, 2014-16, the number of deer licenses made available to hunters has not hit 50,000. The last time was 59,500 in 2013.)

The number of licenses aside, for many years the state’s deer hunters were limited to some pretty short seasons. For a number of years, the season lasted less than a week.

Today’s 16 ½-day season, the season length we’re all so accustomed to, didn’t get instituted on a statewide basis until 1983. The only changes were in 1986-87.

In 1986, the season started at 23 ½ days on a trial basis, and then was extended two weeks due to an opening weekend snowstorm in parts of the state that forced many hunters to stay home. In 1987, the season was again at 23 ½ days.

“This year, again, the spotlight has to be on deer numbers, primarily whitetails, over a large part of the state. Rapidly increasing populations dictated the record number of 88,935 permits last year, which was an increase of 18,310 from 1985. In addition to the 23 ½-day season in 1986, a special ‘reduction season’ was proclaimed for the first part of December in an effort to bring herds under control in many central and eastern hunting units,” from the 1987 September-October issue of North Dakota OUTDOORS.

When you take A Look Back, a record number of nearly 89,000 deer licenses sounds like a bunch. Today, with a continued loss of wildlife habitat, mixed with other uncertainties of living on the Northern Plains, it’s only a guess when we’ll hit those numbers again.