Alaska · Deadlines
Alaska application deadlines
Alaska applies in November and December for hunts the following year, which puts its deadline months out of step with every other western state. Every date below was read off a Department of Fish and Game document on the verification date, and each row says which one.
The window now approaching
One date here carries a year in a department document, and it is the one that matters most. The rest is the department's standing practice, printed without a year, and is marked as such rather than dressed up.
| Step | What the department states | Year stamped? |
|---|---|---|
| Drawing and Subsistence supplements published regulations booklet, page 4 | November month only — the regulations booklet gives no day | No |
| Applications open draw hunting overview | November 1, 8 a.m. no year and no time zone on the opening time | No |
| Applications close regulations booklet, page 4 | December 15, 2026, 5 p.m. AKST drawing and subsistence alike | Yes |
| Permits awarded regulations booklet, page 4 | February month only in the booklet; the rule elsewhere is the third Friday | No |
| Undersubscribed permits announced regulations booklet, page 4 | March month only in the booklet; the rule elsewhere is the first Friday | No |
Regulations booklet, general information section · draw hunting overview.
What the department has not published for this window.
- A supplementAs of 27 August 2026 the supplement index listed the 2026–2027 edition only. Until the next one appears there is no published hunt list, no permit numbers and no hunt-specific conditions for the coming draw.
- A dated openingThe regulations calendar puts the supplements in “November” with no day. November 1 at 8 a.m. is what the drawing hunt page states, but it states it without a year.
- A results dateThe department's rule is that results come “the third Friday in February each year”, which for 2027 falls on 19 February. That is arithmetic on the department's own rule, not a date the department has published. The regulations calendar itself says only “February”.
The cycle on the record
What the current supplement actually describes. Every date below has passed; they are here because the hunts they lead to are the ones running now, and because knowing which cycle the supplement belongs to is the whole trick with Alaska.
- Applications opened
- Deadline to arrange a non-online application
- Applications closed
- Results announced
- Undersubscribed permits posted
2026–2027 drawing supplement, page 1 · results rule from the drawing hunt FAQs. The two February and March dates are arithmetic on the department's stated rules, applied to a cycle the supplement pins to a year.
Alaska runs four permit systems, and only one has a statewide date
This is where Alaska differs most from the states below it. “The deadline” is a question with four answers depending on which kind of permit you are after.
| Permit type | Who may apply | Deadline |
|---|---|---|
| Drawing permits | Residents and nonresidents | One statewide window, November 1 to December 15 Online only — the department no longer accepts paper draw applications. Up to six applications per species. |
| Tier II subsistence permits | Alaska residents only | Same window online; paper postmarked by November 30 Scored on five questions, not drawn at random. Paper applications must be postmarked between November 1 and November 30 and received by December 15, and are not accepted over the counter. |
| Community Subsistence Harvest | Alaska residents only | Group coordinators from October 1; households from November 1 The coordinator window opens a month before everything else on this page — the earliest date in Alaska’s cycle. |
| Registration permits | Mostly residents and nonresidents | No common deadline Available year-round, each hunt with its own period — “anywhere from a week to a few months before the season begins”. The hunt number and its window come from the regulations, not from a supplement. |
| General season hunts | Residents and nonresidents | No application at all A harvest ticket and the right licence and locking-tag. New harvest tickets for the regulatory year become available in July. |
Draw hunting overview · Tier I/II overview · subsistence supplement · registration hunts · regulations booklet.
Settle the guide question before you look at a hunt number
For a nonresident this is the first fact, not a detail, and it is worth several thousand dollars either way. A nonresident who is a United States citizen must be personally accompanied in the field by an Alaska-licensed guide — or by an Alaska resident aged 19 or over within the second degree of kindred — when hunting brown/grizzly bear, Dall sheep or mountain goat. No other big game species carries that requirement.
Second degree of kindred, as the department lists it: father, mother, brother, sister, son, daughter, spouse, grandparent, grandchild, brother- or sister-in-law, son- or daughter-in-law, father- or mother-in-law, stepfather, stepmother, stepsister, stepbrother, stepson, stepdaughter.
A nonresident alien gets no relative exception. The department's wording is that a nonresident alien must be guided “to hunt ANY big game animal”, and it lists them: black bear, brown/grizzly bear, bison, caribou, Dall sheep, deer, elk, moose, mountain goat, muskox, wolf and wolverine.
Where a guide is required on a drawing hunt, the supplement marks the hunt with a handshake symbol and a signed guide-client contract must be in place before or at the time of application — not after the draw. Drawing a permit does not secure a guide; the department says so plainly.
What it costs
A nonresident pays three separate things: the application fee, the hunting licence, and a locking-tag for each animal. The tag is the large number and it is species-specific.
| Species | Guide required — nonresident | Nonresident tag | Nonresident alien tag |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brown/grizzly bear | Required | $1,000 | $1,300 |
| Dall sheep | Required | $850 | $1,100 |
| Mountain goat | Required | $600 | $800 |
| Moose | Not required | $800 | $1,000 |
| Caribou | Not required | $650 | $850 |
| Bison | Not required | $900 | $1,300 |
| Muskox — bull | Not required | $2,200 | $3,000 |
| Elk | Not required | $600 | $800 |
| Black bear | Not required | $450 | $600 |
| Deer | Not required | $300 | $400 |
| Wolverine | Not required | $350 | $500 |
| Wolf | Not required | $60 | $100 |
Licence, stamp and tag prices · guide column from the guide requirements page and the drawing supplement, which agree. “Not required” describes United States citizens only; a nonresident alien must be guided for every species in this table.
Hunting licences. A big game hunting licence must be held, or applied for, before you apply for a draw hunt — Alaska residents aged 17 and under excepted.
| Licence | Price |
|---|---|
| Resident annual hunting | $45 |
| Resident annual sport fishing and hunting | $60 |
| Nonresident annual hunting | $160 |
| Nonresident annual hunting and sport fishing | $260 |
| Nonresident annual hunting — small game only | $60 |
| Nonresident alien annual hunting | $630 |
Alaska publishes its draw statistics. Most states publishing less say more about them.
The back page of the drawing supplement is a full table headed Results of the 2025 Permit Hunt Drawing — every hunt number with applications received, permits available and the percentage drawn. The same page states that roughly 364,911 applications were received for drawing permit hunts, about 1.6% of them rejected. The subsistence supplement carries the equivalent table for Tier II hunts.
Two things follow, and they cut in opposite directions. Alaska has no point system — the draw is a lottery, and applicants may submit up to six applications per species, which raises your chance in a given year but carries nothing forward. So a per-hunt applicants-to-permits figure is not the misleading pooled number it would be in a points state; in a pure lottery it is close to the whole answer. Against that, the published table is not split by residency, and it covers one year.
That table is one year of a dataset, published once a year on the last page of a 17 MB PDF. Whether it becomes a set of pages here depends on whether more than one year of it can be assembled and checked — which is a different question from whether the number exists, and this page will not pretend the two are the same.
What the Alaska Department of Fish and Game does not state
Named here rather than filled in. Every item below is a gap in the department's own publications as of 27 August 2026, not a gap in our reading of them.
- A time zone on the opening time. The drawing hunt page gives “November 1, 8am – December 15, 5pm (AKST)”. The zone is attached to the closing time only.
- Any year on the drawing hunt page. The window appears there as a month and day. The only year-stamped statement of the coming deadline is in the regulations booklet, which is not where a hunter looking for a deadline would think to look.
- A results date for the coming cycle. The rule is the third Friday in February. The department nowhere combines that rule with a year.
- The current results. The department's draw results page was still headed “Results of the Nov–Dec 2022 Application Period” on the verification date — four cycles behind. Results are reachable through the online lookup it links to; the page around that link has not been updated.
- A year on the price list. The licence and tag price page carries no edition, date or effective period. Everything else in this section of the department's site is stamped with a regulatory year; the prices are not.
- Registration hunt deadlines in any one place. The department says each hunt has its own period, “anywhere from a week to a few months before the season begins”, and refers hunters to the regulations for the hunt they want. There is no registration calendar.
- Whether two subsistence hunts return. The subsistence supplement states that Unit 13 Tier I Nelchina caribou hunts RC561 and RC562, and the Copper Basin Community Subsistence Harvest caribou hunt CC001, will not be held in regulatory year 2026–2027. It does not say anything about the year after.
Every source read for this page
- 2026–2027 Alaska Hunting Regulations — General Information — pages 1–23 of the current regulations booklet, “effective July 1, 2026 through June 30, 2027”, and the only document that stamps a year on the window now approaching, fetched 27 August 2026
- Alaska Hunting Regulations — the department’s regulations index, where the current edition is identified, fetched 27 August 2026
- Draw Hunting Overview — the drawing hunt landing page, which gives the application window without a year, fetched 27 August 2026
- 2026–2027 Alaska Drawing Permit Hunt Supplement — the current drawing supplement, 20 pages, describing hunts that take place in 2026 and 2027, fetched 27 August 2026
- Alaska Drawing Hunt Supplements — the supplement index, which listed one edition on the verification date, fetched 27 August 2026
- Drawing Hunts Frequently Asked Questions — where the results rule and the application-change rule are stated, fetched 27 August 2026
- Alaska Drawing Hunt Results — the department’s results page, fetched 27 August 2026
- Alaska Tier I/II Hunting Information — the subsistence permit overview, carrying the paper-application postmark rule, fetched 27 August 2026
- 2026–2027 Alaska Subsistence Permit Hunt Supplement — the Tier I, Tier II and Community Subsistence Harvest supplement, fetched 27 August 2026
- Registration Hunts — where the department explains that registration hunts have no common deadline, fetched 27 August 2026
- License, Stamp, and Tag Prices — the department’s price list, which carries no year stamp of its own, fetched 27 August 2026
- Guide Requirements — the guiding rules for nonresidents and nonresident aliens, fetched 27 August 2026
Alaska data on this site
Alaska's value here is not draw odds. It is the department's harvest record — success rates, hunter numbers and harvest by game management unit and species, over decades — which is queryable on the department's own site and which no free tool has made browsable. Those pages are in verification and are not published yet. A state goes live here only once its numbers have been checked against the agency's own documents, and until then the coverage page says plainly where Alaska sits.