Minnesota Hunters Will See Major Changes to Licensing and Permits

The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources is getting ready to make some major changes to the state's licensing and permitting process.

The move will take the department fully into the digital age, the Minnesota Legislature approved the changes this year, and the DNR is working with a third party vendor to implement the new system which will allow for your hunting and fishing licenses to be handled more like concert tickets and stored on users phones.

According to the Star Tribune, the new system will be active next year and will allow for more than 2 million license transactions and over half a million recreational vehicle titles to be issued. The new system will offer around 400 different licenses, everything from small game to deer and fishing.

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The new digital system will offer some features to make life easier, for instance, deer hunters will no longer need to attach harvest tags, instead they can simply register them through the new app. Even if your deer stand doesn't have cell service, they say the new system will save the information and upload it when back in signal range.

No worries for those who prefer to do it the old school way, printed paper licenses and permits will still be allowed. The DNR will start a marketing campaign and start giving looks at the new system in the coming months.

Work on the new system began in 2021 after a survey revealed that a whopping 80% of respondents wanted to be able to store and buy licenses via an app on smartphones.