By Nick Simonson

Despite some progress in the mule deer populations in North Dakota, the state’s whitetail herd has struggled to recruit new animals into the herd over the past four years. As a result, hunters noticed yet another drop to modern lows for firearm deer tags this fall, with a reduction of 3,200 licenses statewide including a few units not offering antlerless tags at all for the annual lottery which closed June 3. While a tough winter in 2022-23 and outbreaks of Epizootic Hemorrhagic Disease (EHD) in the warm summers before it hit the animals hard, the lack of habitat – especially in the eastern portion of the state – has stalled recovery for whitetail deer, according to Levi Jacobson, Assistant Chief for the North Dakota Game & Fish Department’s Wildlife Division.

“The whitetail herd in areas it’s starting to improve a little bit especially when you get to the central part of the state and the western, we’re seeing numbers come up.  The eastern part of the state is pretty tough yet, just due to the lack of habitat, so it’s definitely noticeable there,” Jacobson states, “our mule deer numbers trended up a little bit this last fall, the spring counts were up about 30 percent compared to last year, so that’s good. That’s largely due just to good recruitment. So, we did not increase the tags a whole heck of a lot there just because we want to let that population build a little bit before we do start issuing tags,” he concludes.

In total, only 39,100 firearms deer licenses are available to hunters for the 16.5-day season in November 2026.  By comparison, 42,300 were available in 2025; however, 11,542 of those were awarded as gratis tags to landowners in the state, dropping the number available in the lottery by more than a quarter.  As a result, 11 units in the state saw less than 25 tags available by unit-gender categories in the 2025 lottery, with even some gratis applicants being denied a tag based on land ownership, as there were too few available to satisfy all requests ahead of the general lottery.  Presuming a similar application rate, about 30 percent of tags available to the public will be issued as gratis licenses, and limited numbers of antlerless deer tags will be noticeable throughout the state.  However, the step back in tags issued, especially those for antlerless deer, is an important management tool, according to Jacobson.

“The big thing is trying to protect and conserve those does, because they’re driving the population. So that’s why we dropped those numbers, to hopefully keep more does on the landscape and they keep having fawns and hopefully the population will rebound, but again, it comes down to habitat.  We’ve got to have the habitat to keep the deer on the landscape,” Jacobson explains.

It’s further suggested that hunters looking for whitetail deer will notice fewer animals on the landscape, and will likely find less deer-holding habitat this fall as conservation program participation has bottomed out over the past several years.  Due in part to the truncation of the U.S. Farm Bill and its Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) which supported the federally funded idling of marginal acres in North Dakota from 1997 to its peak in 2007, wildlife populations have struggled recently to hit the high numbers seen in that era.  Jacobson is hopeful, however, that this deer hunting season and the lessened opportunities it presents will help spur demand for habitat programs that will not only boost deer and other huntable game populations, but help with the bottom line for farmers and operators struggling with increased costs resulting from overseas conflicts and input scarcity affecting their livelihoods.

“Those fawns rely on that habitat so much right now for concealment, especially when they’re first born. It’s important to have good habitat, especially for fawning,” Jacobson relates, adding that new options may help fill the void left by lower CRP acres, advising,  “there’s a number of different programs, contact our PLI [Private Lands Initiative] biologists, we’ve got them spread across the state, there’s 10 of them.  Right now, we just started the Governor’s Legacy Soil Health and Habitat Program, that’s a new program that’s in conjunction with us and the SCD [Soil Conservation Districts], and the SCD is running it.  It’s looking at putting marginal cropland acres into grassland habitat to improve soil health and provide wildlife habitat. Those are five-year contracts, it pays pretty well, it pays for the grass seeding, we had a lot of interest this year,” Jacobson concludes.

The North Dakota firearms deer season is slated to begin at noon on Fri. Nov. 6, closing on Sun. Nov. 22.  Hunters, landowners and operators seeking habitat options on their acres to help deer and other wildlife can contact the North Dakota Private Lands Initiative group and learn more about available programs at gf.nd.gov/private-lands.

Simonson is the lead writer and editor of Dakota Edge Outdoors.

Featured Photo: Peeking Through.  Recruitment of whitetail deer in North Dakota comes down to having habitat to sustain fawns.  While some areas of the state have improved deer numbers, eastern North Dakota deer populations are struggling due to a lack of habitat. Simonson Photo.