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Hunting Licenses / Ohio

Ohio Hunting License: $19.00, $50.20 With a Tag

In Ohio the licence is $19.00 and the first deer costs $50.20

$19.00
Resident licence
Resident 1-Year Hunting License
$31.20
What the first deer costs on top
$50.20 for the licence and the tag together
a fixed licence year
When it stops working
licence year
7 / 7
Licences and tags read here
each one linked to the fee table it came from
The short answer

What a season in Ohio actually costs to start

Tags on topOhio Department of Natural Resources, Division of Wildlife

A resident hunting licence in Ohio is $19.00, sold as the Resident 1-Year Hunting License. Hunting a deer on it means buying the Either-Sex Deer Permit as well, at $31.20, so the first day costs $50.20 rather than $19.00. That is 164% 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 $19.00, the Resident 1-Year Hunting License
  • Nonresident licence $180.96
  • First deer on top of it $31.20, the Either-Sex Deer Permit
  • What the first morning costs $50.20
  • The licence runs runs a licence year with its own start and end dates, set by the state rather than by the calendar

Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Division of Wildlife sells it through its own licensing system, which is where a fee change appears first.

What the agency sells

Every Ohio hunting licence, at the price Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Division of Wildlife prints

Seven tags and permits were read off Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Division of Wildlife's own fee pages for Ohio, 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 1-Year Hunting License$19.00

    general hunting and trapping, with deer, turkey, waterfowl and furbearers each needing a further permit

    1-Year

    Resident 1-Year Hunting License....$19.00
    Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Division of Wildlife, read 23 September 2026. Read it at the source
  • Nonresident 1-Year Hunting License$180.96

    general hunting and trapping, with deer, turkey, waterfowl and furbearers each needing a further permit

    1-Year

    Nonresident 1-Year Hunting License....$180.96
    Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Division of Wildlife, read 23 September 2026. Read it at the source
  • Nonresident (Tourist) 3-Day Hunting License$40.56

    three days of hunting, but not deer, turkey or furbearers

    3-Day

    Nonresident (Tourist) 3-Day Hunting License*....$40.56 *Nonresident 3-day license not valid for deer, turkey, or furbearers
    Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Division of Wildlife, read 23 September 2026. Read it at the source
  • Resident & Nonresident Youth 1-Year Hunting License$10.00

    general hunting for anyone 17 and younger, with species permits bought separately

    1-Year

    Resident & Nonresident Youth 1-Year Hunting License....$10.00
    Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Division of Wildlife, read 23 September 2026. Read it at the source
  • Resident Senior 1-Year Hunting License$10.00

    general hunting at a reduced rate for older Ohio residents, with species permits bought separately

    1-Year

    Resident Senior 1-Year Hunting License....$10.00
    Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Division of Wildlife, read 23 September 2026. Read it at the source
  • Resident 1-Year Apprentice License$19.00

    hunting while accompanied by a licensed hunter 21 or older, without having taken hunter education

    1-Year

    Ohio residents and nonresidents may purchase an apprentice hunting license or apprentice fur taker permit without having taken a hunter or fur taker education course.
    Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Division of Wildlife, read 23 September 2026. Read it at the source
  • Resident Lifetime Hunting License$449.28

    general hunting for life for an Ohio resident, with permits and stamps still bought annually

    Lifetime

    Resident Lifetime Hunting License....$449.28
    Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Division of Wildlife, read 23 September 2026. Read it at the source
The second purchase

The tags and permits that sit on top of an Ohio 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.

Nothing in the Ohio fee pages read here is allocated by a draw, so the tags below are bought rather than applied for. 35 of the 50 states run a draw for at least one species, which puts the decision months ahead of the hunt.

Tags and permits read off Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Division of Wildlife's own fee pages, dearest resident price first.
Tag or permitSpeciesResidentNonresidentHow it is issued
Either-Sex Deer PermitDeer$31.20$218.40Over the counter
Spring Turkey PermitTurkey$31.20$38.48Over the counter
Fall Turkey PermitTurkey$31.20$38.48Over the counter
Federal Migratory Bird Hunting StampWaterfowl$25.00$25.00Over the counter
Deer Management PermitDeer$15.00$15.00Over the counter
Fur Taker PermitFurbearer$15.00$15.00Over the counter
Ohio Wetlands Habitat StampWaterfowl$15.00$15.00Over the counter

Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Division of Wildlife, the page this was read from, read 23 September 2026

The clock

When a Ohio hunting license expires Licence year

Ohio 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.

Whatever day it is bought, an Ohio hunting licence runs only to the last day of February, so a licence bought in January is good for about a month.

Ohio's license year begins March 1 and ends the last day of February.
Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Division of Wildlife, read 23 September 2026. Read it at the source
The requirement people find out about at the counter

Hunter education in Ohio

Ohio requires hunter education, and it sets the requirement without a birth year cutoff, so the test is what the applicant has done rather than when they were born. 29 of the 50 states read here use a birth year instead, and those years run from 1949 to 1986.

Ohio requires a hunter education course of everyone buying a hunting licence other than an apprentice licence, with no birth year cutoff published.

Anyone applying for a hunting license, except an apprentice license, is required to successfully complete a hunter education course.
Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Division of 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 Ohio resident

Ohio 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.

An Ohio resident is a person who has resided in the state of Ohio for the past six consecutive months or is a full-time student enrolled in an Ohio college or university who lives in Ohio at the time of purchase.
Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Division of Wildlife, read 23 September 2026. Read it at the source
How Ohio compares

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

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

Ohio hunting license questions

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Hunting licenses in every state

Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Division of 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