42,300.
That’s the number of deer gun licenses made available for fall’s deer gun season in North Dakota, which is 7,800 fewer than last year.
This continues a difficult-to-ignore drift in the wrong direction as licenses have steadily declined since 2021 when more than 72,200 deer tags were allotted to hunters.
The 42,300 number is the lowest we’ve seen since 1978.
As hunters keenly invested in the November season for many reasons, including the draw of uniting families without the lure of a Thanksgiving turkey or Christmas goose, this number should trouble us, especially following back-to-back mild winters we were certain would help reverse the fall.
How did we get here? Is this the new norm? After visiting at length with Casey Anderson, Game and Fish Department wildlife division chief, he could answer the first question but acknowledged the difficulty in predicting the latter.
We got here because the state’s deer population continues its glacier-slow rebound from an unprecedented EHD outbreak in 2021 and the challenges of staying alive during the winter of 2022-23 that arrived early and stayed late.
While we were blessed with back-to-back mild winters, they were followed by drought conditions in summer and fall, which negatively influenced reproduction and recruitment into the population.
However, the biggest limiting factor, and this is not the first time you’ve heard this, is the habitat conditions across the state have been greatly reduced in the last 10 to 15 years.
So, a bounce back, with the absence of quality habitat on the landscape, is slow at best.
The loss of quality habitat for deer and other wildlife continues.
For example, if conservation reserve contracts continue to expire, 85% of the once 3.4 million acres of CRP blanketing rural North Dakota will be lost by 2026.
Without the budget and personnel to put something like a widespread CRP program on the landscape, Game and Fish and partners have been targeting resources on a smaller scale in areas that will provide the biggest bang for the buck to produce more deer, pheasants, grouse, the list goes on.
Game and Fish Department officials have been beating the lack-of-habitat-on-the-landscape drum for years and sometimes you have to question if anyone is listening? Anderson thinks they are starting to, as Department wildlife managers are now hearing the topic raised again and again by sportsmen, women and others at public meetings and elsewhere because the writing on the wall is evident and concerning.
Deer hunters will notice that in some hunting units antlerless licenses aren’t available for the 2025 season.
While this move isn’t unprecedented, it does make you wonder if positive changes aren’t made on the landscape if this is part of the new norm.
While what I write next is unabashedly selfish, I’m guessing I’m not the only deer hunter in North Dakota with family living beyond our borders, nonresidents who will vie, per state law, for just 1% of the licenses made available.
That means my nonresident hunting son will contend with an unknown number of other nonresidents (and outfitters as they are also included in this lot) in our hunting unit for one of just three doe licenses made available.
Unless the stars align, this will be the third or fourth year running that he, like others in the same boat, some resident hunters included, won’t draw a tag.
While he has continued to show up for the opening weekend of deer season because he still wants to be a part of it, that enthusiasm will likely fade or vanish altogether at this rate.
