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Hunting Licenses / Colorado

Colorado Hunting License: $38.49, $51.25 With a Tag

In Colorado the licence is $38.49 and the first deer costs $51.25

$38.49
Resident licence
Annual small game
$51.25
What the first deer costs on top
$51.25 for the licence and the tag together
a fixed licence year
When it stops working
licence year
7 / 8
Licences and tags read here
each one linked to the fee table it came from
The short answer

What a season in Colorado actually costs to start

Tags on topColorado Parks and Wildlife

A resident hunting licence in Colorado is $38.49, sold as the Annual small game. Hunting a deer on it means buying the Deer as well, at $51.25, so the first day costs $51.25 rather than $38.49. That is 33% more than the licence price a search result would have shown. 39 of the 50 states read here work the same way. The licence itself runs a licence year with its own start and end dates, set by the state rather than by the calendar.

  • Resident licence $38.49, the Annual small game
  • Nonresident licence $104.86
  • First deer on top of it $51.25, the Deer
  • What the first morning costs $51.25
  • The licence runs runs a licence year with its own start and end dates, set by the state rather than by the calendar
  • Hunter education required of anyone born on or after 1949

Colorado Parks and Wildlife sells it through its own licensing system, which is where a fee change appears first.

What the agency sells

Every Colorado hunting licence, at the price Colorado Parks and Wildlife prints

Eight tags and permits were read off Colorado Parks and Wildlife's own fee pages for Colorado, each one priced below with the row it sits in. A tag is a second purchase, and the licence price on its own is the first half of what a season costs.

  • Annual small game$38.49

    small game and migratory birds, and it doubles as the qualifying licence a hunter must hold before applying for any big game draw

    March 1 to March 31 of the following year, 13 months

    Qualifying Licenses ... Resident ... ■ Annual small game (youth: $2.53) $38.49
    Colorado Parks and Wildlife, read 23 September 2026. Read it at the source
  • Annual small game$104.86

    the same small game and qualifying licence privileges at the nonresident rate

    March 1 to March 31 of the following year, 13 months

    Nonresident ... ■ Annual small game (youth: $2.53) $104.86
    Colorado Parks and Wildlife, read 23 September 2026. Read it at the source
  • Annual small game, youth$2.53

    small game for a hunter under 18, resident or nonresident, and it qualifies them for the draws

    March 1 to March 31 of the following year, 13 months

    License Type Annual Youth Small Game License | Hunter Type Resident and Nonresident Youth (under 18 only) | Fee $1.40
    Colorado Parks and Wildlife, read 23 September 2026. Read it at the source
  • Senior small game/fishing combo$38.03

    the same small game and fishing combination for a resident of 64 or over

    March 1 to March 31 of the following year, 13 months

    ■ Senior small game/fishing combo $38.03 (age 64+)
    Colorado Parks and Wildlife, read 23 September 2026. Read it at the source
  • Small game/fishing combo$64.02

    small game hunting and fishing in one resident purchase, and it also qualifies for the big game draws

    March 1 to March 31 of the following year, 13 months

    ■ Small game/fishing combo $64.02
    Colorado Parks and Wildlife, read 23 September 2026. Read it at the source
  • Veteran lifetime combofree

    the resident small game and fishing combination for life for a veteran who is 50 percent disabled or a Purple Heart recipient

    lifetime

    ■ Veteran lifetime combo free (50% disabled or Purple Heart recipient)
    Colorado Parks and Wildlife, read 23 September 2026. Read it at the source
  • Lifetime Habitat Stamp$384.16

    the habitat stamp requirement for life, instead of buying the annual stamp with every licence

    lifetime

    ■ Lifetime Habitat Stamp $384.16
    Colorado Parks and Wildlife, read 23 September 2026. Read it at the source
The second purchase

The tags and permits that sit on top of a Colorado licence

A tag is attached to one animal of one species, and the last column is the part that decides a calendar rather than a budget. Over the counter means it can be bought on the way to the woods. A draw means the application closed months ago.

Colorado allocates moose and other by draw, which means the application closes long before the season and the tag is awarded by lot rather than sold. What is over the counter and what is drawn is set out beside each tag below.

Tags and permits read off Colorado Parks and Wildlife's own fee pages, dearest resident price first.
Tag or permitSpeciesResidentNonresidentHow it is issued
MooseMoose$385.66$2,823.53Draw
ElkElk$70.40$845.16Both
BearBear$64.01$302.56Both
PronghornAntelope$51.25$506.92Both
DeerDeer$51.25$506.92Both
Spring turkeyTurkey$38.49$194.21Both
Habitat StampOther$12.76$12.76Over the counter
Application Processing, per species, per drawOther$8.93$11.49Draw

Colorado Parks and Wildlife, the page this was read from, read 23 September 2026

The clock

When a Colorado hunting license expires Licence year

Colorado runs a licence year with its own start and end dates, set by the state rather than by the calendar. The year turns on a date the state picked, usually in the spring or early autumn, so what a licence is worth depends on where in that year it was bought. The sentence the state uses is quoted below and links to the page it came from.

Colorado's annual licences and the habitat stamp all run from 1 March to 31 March of the next year, a deliberate thirteen months rather than twelve.

▶ Annual licenses are valid March 1–March 31 (13 months)
Colorado Parks and Wildlife, read 23 September 2026. Read it at the source
The requirement people find out about at the counter

Colorado hunter education: born on or after 1949

Colorado hangs hunter education on a birth date rather than on an age: the requirement reaches anybody born after 1949. Every state that publishes a cutoff publishes a different one, and across this reading they run from 1949 to 1986, which is why a national answer to this question is always wrong somewhere.

Colorado wants a hunter education card from anyone born on or after 1 January 1949 before it will sell them a licence, with an apprentice waiver available twice in a lifetime.

Hunter Education (Safety) Requirements 1. Anyone born on or after Jan. 1, 1949, is required to have a hunter education card to hunt in Colorado. 2. A hunter education card is required to apply for or buy a hunting license.
Colorado Parks and Wildlife, read 23 September 2026. Read it at the source
A wide shallow wetland on a clear November morning, ducks scattered across the open water, a cottonwood in yellow leaf on a small island beside a low wooden viewing deck, and a flat brown horizon under a pale blue sky
Waterfowl is the clearest case of what these pages are about. The state licence is the first line on the receipt, and a duck morning adds a state stamp, a federal stamp and a harvest survey registration on top of it, none of which the licence price includes. “Llano Seco Unit (2024)-L1006548”, Frank Schulenburg, CC BY-SA 4.0
Which price applies

Who counts as a Colorado resident

Colorado draws the resident line at 180 days, and the difference between the two sides of it is $38.49 against $104.86. The statutory definition is quoted below.

1. Standard Colorado Resident a. Requirements: You must live in Colorado for at least six consecutive months immediately prior to buying or applying for any resident CPW product, have your primary residence in Colorado, and have not applied for or purchased a resident license or pass outside of Colorado in the last six months.
Colorado Parks and Wildlife, read 23 September 2026. Read it at the source
How Colorado compares

39 of 50 states sell the animal separately from the right to hunt it

Colorado works the way most of the country does. Of the 50 states read here, 39 sell the tag apart from the licence and 11 print it on the licence instead. Where the tag is separate, the middle state adds 95% to the licence price before anybody has left the driveway.

Resident licences across these states run from $10 to $64.54, and nonresident licences from $50 to $410, which is the widest spread on any licence this site has read. 25 states run a licence year of their own, 9 give a full year from the day of sale, and 9 end it on 31 December whatever month it was bought.

The national table puts Colorado beside every other state on licence price, first tag, and the two added together.

Colorado hunting license questions

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Hunting licenses in every state

Colorado Parks and Wildlife read 23 September 2026, with every licence price, tag price, expiry rule and hunter education cutoff above linked to the page it came from. Fees are set by statute or by a commission and change between seasons, so the agency page beside each figure is what governs on the day. Tags on top