https://www.outdoorlife.com/conserv...J9K_bjfz5lUy6_aem_3cHw21NX0ynrcn5nW-zJKw

Signed by Gov. Kevin Stitt into law on Wednesday, Senate Bill 448 creates a lottery-style permit system for nonresident hunters who want to hunt Oklahoma's Wildlife Management Areas, or WMAs, and National Wildlife Refuges in the state. Nonresident hunters will have to obtain written authorization from the Oklahoma Wildlife Conservation Commission.

If demand outpaces the number of hunters these areas can support, a lottery will determine access. On top of regular license costs, successful applicants will also pay a permit fee of up to $100. It's not clear how many nonresidents will be allowed to hunt a given property before the lottery kicks in.

From my understanding this effects all non residents hunting all game species.

Anyone have anymore info on this?

I used to hunt BC Wetlands with Ol Kenny and we’d hunt Sawyer unit as well by Hugo Lake walking in. Oklahoma has went up on nonresident especially deer hunting licenses whew! I got the waterfowl hunts in Missouri on draw blind draw blind hunts and shoot Canadas on farm lakes by Lodge. My guys just need non resident waterfowl license it’s $120 annual

I hope that department goes bankrupt. Screw em.

Yep. Really crappy of them to do that. Gonna be interesting to see how quickly they decide to pull out that lottery crapola. And how that is gonna work.

I wish Texas Legislators would grow a set and SCREW NR as bad as we get screwed every year

Sounds like OK isn't OK anymore.

Well not many residents hunt public land in Texas. However we could blame them for the skyrocketing cost of leases.

Not to get all political, but the current administration is looking to drastically cut federal funding for our public lands. This will just put more pressure on the states to come up with the funding. This will drive up license cost for residents and non residents, with non residents taking the brunt of it.

Those are administrative cuts, Trump upped the budgets in his first term including making the Land and Water Conservation Fund permanent, along with increasing the funding walk for hunting access. The issue lies with how inefficiently they spent the money. There will be no additional funds needs by the states to manage NPS, NF or BLM, B/C they don’t nor will ever manage those lands. It’s a red herring argument at its finest. How many federal managed parks had less then 15 visitors a day but had a full time staff of 30 plus… the media is not talking about how the are supplementing full time with part time in peak seasons.

But back to thread, I’ll spend 2k in licenses alone this year for me and my girls to hunt my own land in Okla. That’s just licensing… I also pay a large state income tax to Okla.

Do we get a lot NR WMA hunters in Tx?

Yes, We get a lot of NR’s in draws, WMA ‘s (including Federal WMA’s). I wouldn’t say we get a bunch on the waterfowl side because of the coast, coast is also why Texas has a high usage in Okla. KS, Arkansas etc because those areas are closer than coast. With that said people forget we have over 700k acres of WMA’s in Texas

There is zero additional barriers to entry for NR vs Res in Texas on state or federal land use.

As an Oklahoma land owner I have heard wealthy Texans complain to no end...."That just stops me cold from buying land in Oklahoma! What do they think their going to accomplish?"

The reason Oklahoma raised license rates and brought in the lottery system is simple..... The people who live in Oklahoma and VOTE are simply tired of their state being overrun by out of state hunters, some of the public hunting areas looked like the casino parking lots with 90%+ Texas plates.

Not to mention the skyrocketing cost of land and leases in Oklahoma from people leasing and buying land from out of state that do not pay Oklahoma state income taxes and thus the economy sees very little benefit from non resident land owners; while at the same time every politician is constantly being flooded with complaints about the situation. This was made even worse after several youtube hunting shows advertised how great the public land hunting was in Oklahoma and thus started a flood from not only Texas but other states as well.

As a NR land owner that pays a substantial amount of income taxes in Oklahoma, I think it’s complete BS. I was real close to putting several more sections in to OLAP, I have officially withdrawn and will never put any thing back in. You know how much in “fees” I’d have to pay just so my family could hunt our land after opening it up to public… over a $1000 in OLAP access fees. That’s not licensing that access fees, that is in addition to the $2500plus in licensing a year

It cost NR for Texas hunts $3 for a pp/a application in draws, it’s now over $200 to enter in draw for NR in Okla. on top of that they added a pp buy system to increase Res PP numbers vs NR

Well you poor thing. I bought land to hunt in Oklahoma and now I have to pay more than what a NR mule deer tag costs in Wyoming to hunt my own land.

I don’t own land or hunt there, but I do own recreational properties in texas and out of state. Both sides of the argument are understandable. I can’t remember off hand which states(I think some with substantial Amish/Mennonite populations), but there are some that don’t require landowners or their immediate families to have a license. I can’t recall exactly how they define immmediate family bobo I think your situation would pass. I don’t think they fully understand what the ability to hunt on a piece of otherwise useless land does to its value. OK has quite a bit of that also. As far as the public areas, do whatever, but the sticking it in NRs on their own private land is ridiculous.

OK probably only has about 100 game wardens, pretty slim chance of getting checked if you buy ice on the way to camp....just saying

During pronghorn season they have 5 in one county it’s unreal, you can tell when something gets called in also

Unfortunately hunters are huntings biggest enemy. Used to be the anti s, now it’s us. Hunters are stopping more hunting than anti s ever dreamed of

That sounds like TERRIBLE planning on your part.

Again! Poor planning!

I hate you and your lifetime

I was looking at the Oklahoma Wildlife Commission meeting minutes to see what they are saying about this. Unfortunately the May 5th meeting was cancelled. But I then looked at the minutes for the last four meetings and noticed something. The year over year license sales for each of the last four months was down considerably every month. 46% down for February 2025 over 2024. Non resident sales were up over those months so it was residents that dragged those numbers down. I predict this senate bill as a non resident money grab to make up the shortfall in revenue will be a fail and the nail in the coffin for non resident license sales numbers.

Don't know all the specifics, i think first quarter of 2024 they saw a 200% increase in resident lifetime license sales.

True but there are several changing dynamics that you have to account for......

1. In serval areas of Oklahoma the wardens who had been there for decades became rather lazy at enforcing laws and the "we can get away with it" attitude flourished; I recently asked a OK game warden what his biggest issue was and I found his response entertaining.... "The old game wardens seemed to have been rather lax in their enforcement, so people are not used to getting their asses busted.... but their LEARNING NOW!"

2. Many of these new wardens have drones, and gone are the days of chasing people down county roads like Starsky and Hutch; now they get HD video of deer in the back of your truck and get the tag number and come to your house and search EVERYTHING.

3. If you are taking game illegally(without a license) and taking it back to your home state you have opened yourself up to the Lacey wildlife act which ups it to federal.

4. There is a big issue with NR hunters coming into Oklahoma and hunting at night with thermals, ANY hunting at night during an open deer season results in a $4K fine for anyone involved - so if 4 guys go out with 1 thermal scope and get caught = EVERY PERSON in the truck gets a $4K fine...... even if you were just pig hunting.


As for the increased cost to NR hunters having to get NR hunting licenses to hunt property they own in Oklahoma...... How much would the property taxes cost you if you owned the same value of land in Texas? - There are tradeoffs for everything.