Drawing permit hunts

As I mentioned last week, the general trapping season opens today. Our freshly fallen snow should help trappers to better understand what animals are in the trappers’ respective areas and how they are moving in those areas. When I was actively trapping, I always enjoyed working with some snow on the ground. Following the various animal trails and identifying the species by their sign was instructive for me since I was a self-taught trapper.

But enough of trapping for the time being. The 2024-2025 Alaska Drawing Permit Supplement is out and available and the application period is open from now until Dec. 15th at 5:00 pm. Applications will only be accepted online, and you use your credit card to pay. You must have an Alaskan big game hunting license in your possession before applying for any permit hunt. You can apply for up to six permit hunts for any one species, e.g., moose, and those six hunts can all be different or all the same – your call.

You can apply as an individual for a hunt, or you can apply with a partner as a party of two on the same application. If this application is drawn, both hunters will receive permits. My hunting partner and I used the party application to apply for the Talkeetna caribou hunt back about 2019. We were drawn, and both received permits. My partner successfully harvested a small bull. My mobility was somewhat compromised because of a bad ankle and a recently replaced knee, so I couldn’t get out as much as my partner.

Applicants can’t win a permit for the same hunt two years in a row and the permits aren’t transferable. Hunt maps are available online on the ADF&G website. You must have the proper hunter education certification for the hunt you are applying for before you apply. Not all hunts in all areas require a hunter education certification, but you need to check the supplement and the regulation booklet to determine what requirements need to be met.

Pick up a copy of the permit supplement and read both the front and back pages before applying. The front page tells you the “do’s and don’ts” in more detail than I’ve outlined here. The back page lists all the hunts from the previous year, the number of applicants for each hunt, the number of permits awarded, and the percentage chance you would have drawn that permit that year. Some popular hunts, for example, the Delta Junction bison hunts, have exceptionally low odds of winning. For bison hunt DI403, 33,306 hunters applied for a total of sixty permits – extremely poor odds of drawing that permit.

On the other hand, moose hunt DM845 in GMU 22 on the Seward Peninsula only had three applicants for the eight permits available, guaranteeing each applicant a permit. The moral of this story is to study where each hunt for the species of interest is located. If you can access the hunt area, your odds of drawing a permit increase, but some of these hunts are exceedingly difficult and/or expensive to access, requiring either a boat or airplane, and the weather at the time of the hunt can have a bearing.

If you submit applications and receive notice that they have been rejected, what are some possible reasons for the rejection? Three common faults are that you applied for the same hunt you drew a permit for the previous year; you applied for more than six hunts (a combination of individual and party applications) for a species; and that you are ineligible because you are listed on the Failure to Report list for the previous year.

If this is the first year your kids are hunting big game, check out the youth hunt section on page 3 of the supplement for requirements and then look up what youth hunts might be available for the species of interest and where the hunt is located.

The department advises you to apply early in the application period. The longer you wait, the more likely you’ll get caught up in the overwhelming number of last-minute applicants jamming the website. I usually try to apply sometime during November to avoid the rush.

Things have started happening in my repair/replace efforts from last winter’s snowfall. The new storage building has about 85% of the siding up and the metal roof is finished. The building is usable for storing stuff. The riverboat is in the shed. I need to replace another broken antenna. No word about the small motorhome.