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Hunting Licenses / Delaware

Delaware Hunting License: $39.50, $59.50 With a Tag

In Delaware the licence is $39.50 and the first deer costs $59.50

$39.50
Resident licence
Resident Hunting License (Ages 16 to 64)
$20.00
What the first deer costs on top
$59.50 for the licence and the tag together
a fixed licence year
When it stops working
licence year
5 / 7
Licences and tags read here
each one linked to the fee table it came from
The short answer

What a season in Delaware actually costs to start

Tags on topDNREC Division of Fish and Wildlife

A resident hunting licence in Delaware is $39.50, sold as the Resident Hunting License (Ages 16 to 64). Hunting a deer on it means buying the Resident Hunters Choice/Quality Buck Tag Combo as well, at $20.00, so the first day costs $59.50 rather than $39.50. That is 51% 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 $39.50, the Resident Hunting License (Ages 16 to 64)
  • Nonresident licence $199.50
  • First deer on top of it $20.00, the Resident Hunters Choice/Quality Buck Tag Combo
  • What the first morning costs $59.50
  • 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 1967

DNREC Division of Fish and Wildlife sells it through its own licensing system, which is where a fee change appears first.

What the agency sells

Every Delaware hunting licence, at the price DNREC Division of Fish and Wildlife prints

Seven tags and permits were read off DNREC Division of Fish and Wildlife's own fee pages for Delaware, 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.

  • Resident Hunting License (Ages 16 to 64)$39.50

    general hunting, and it comes with a Deer Harvest Report Card carrying four antlerless deer tags

    one license year

    Resident Hunting License (Ages 16 to 64) | $39.50 | N/A | $2.50
    DNREC Division of Fish and Wildlife, read 23 September 2026. Read it at the source
  • Non-Resident Adult Hunting License (Age 16 and Over)$199.50

    general hunting, and it comes with a Deer Harvest Report Card carrying four antlerless deer tags

    one license year

    Non-Resident Resident Hunting License (Age 16 and Over) | N/A | $199.50 | $2.50
    DNREC Division of Fish and Wildlife, read 23 September 2026. Read it at the source
  • Non-Resident 3-Day Hunting License (Small Game) (Age 16 and Over)$75.00

    small game and waterfowl over three consecutive days, and not deer or turkey

    3 day

    Non-Resident 3-Day Hunting License (Age 16+): Three (3) consecutive day small game and waterfowl license (not valid for deer or turkey).
    DNREC Division of Fish and Wildlife, read 23 September 2026. Read it at the source
  • Junior Hunting License (Age 13-15)$5.00

    general hunting for a resident aged 13 to 15, on the same Deer Harvest Report Card as an adult licence

    one license year

    Junior Hunting License (Age 13-15) | $5.00 | $50.00 | $2.50
    DNREC Division of Fish and Wildlife, read 23 September 2026. Read it at the source
  • Junior Hunting License (Age 13-15), non-resident rate$50.00

    general hunting for a non-resident aged 13 to 15

    one license year

    Junior Hunting License (Age 13-15) | $5.00 | $50.00 | $2.50
    DNREC Division of Fish and Wildlife, read 23 September 2026. Read it at the source
The second purchase

The tags and permits that sit on top of a Delaware 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.

Delaware allocates 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 DNREC Division of Fish and Wildlife's own fee pages, dearest resident price first.
Tag or permitSpeciesResidentNonresidentHow it is issued
Resident Hunters Choice/Quality Buck Tag ComboDeer$20.00None printedOver the counter
Additional Antlerless Deer TagDeer$20.00$20.00Over the counter
Wildlife Area Deer Stand/Waterfowl Blind Lottery PermitOther$20.00$20.00Draw
Waterfowl StampWaterfowl$15.00$15.00Over the counter
Trapping LicenseFurbearer$10.00$75.00Over the counter
Non-Resident Antlered Deer TagDeerNone printed$50.00Over the counter
Non-Resident Quality Buck TagDeerNone printed$50.00Over the counter

DNREC Division of Fish and Wildlife, the page this was read from, read 23 September 2026

The clock

When a Delaware hunting license expires Licence year

Delaware 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.

A Delaware hunting licence runs to 30 June whatever month it was bought in, so one bought in spring has only a few months left on it.

Delaware’s hunting and trapping license year covers the period of July 1 through June 30.
DNREC Division of Fish and Wildlife, read 23 September 2026. Read it at the source
The requirement people find out about at the counter

Delaware hunter education: born on or after 1967

Delaware hangs hunter education on a birth date rather than on an age: the requirement reaches anybody born after 1967. 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.

Delaware ties the course to a birth date rather than to being new to hunting, so anyone born after 1 January 1967 completes it before a licence is issued.

Anyone born after January 1, 1967, must satisfactorily complete a basic hunter education course before obtaining a Delaware Hunting license.
DNREC Division of Fish 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 Delaware resident

Delaware defines a resident in its own words rather than by a count of days, and the definition is quoted below because the price on one side of it is rarely close to the price on the other.

Each applicant for a resident’s license shall present reasonable proof to the Department or its duly authorized agent that the applicant is a bona fide resident of this State.
DNREC Division of Fish and Wildlife, read 23 September 2026. Read it at the source
How Delaware compares

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

Delaware 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 Delaware beside every other state on licence price, first tag, and the two added together.

Delaware hunting license questions

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Hunting licenses in every state

DNREC Division of Fish 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