Any hunter can give any-deer permit to any other hunter

If you won an any-deer permit, you may transfer it to any other hunter. In the past, you could transfer that permit to a junior or senior hunter, only.

Residents can only transfer their permits to other residents, and nonresidents to other nonresidents, but that’s the only limitation in the new law.

Representative Mike Shaw, House chair of the legislature’s Inland Fisheries and Wildlife Committee, sponsored a bill that included this change, at my request. An amended version of our bill was enacted as an emergency measure, taking effect immediately.

I proposed this change after being frustrated last year when I could not transfer my any-deer permit to Harry Vanderweide’s daughter, who took up hunting a couple of years ago as a young adult.

This year, Amanda once again failed to win a permit, so I transferred mine to her, thanks to the law change.

The bill included a number of other interesting proposals and law changes, which I will report on soon in this blog.

If you want to transfer your any-deer permit to another hunter, you must do it before November 1. You can make the transfer online on the website of the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.

George Smith

About George Smith

George stepped down at the end of 2010 after 18 years as the executive director of the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine to write full time. He writes a weekly editorial page column in the Kennebec Journal and Waterville Morning Sentinel, a weekly travel column in those same newspapers (with his wife Linda), monthly columns in The Maine Sportsman magazine, two outdoor news blogs (one on his website, georgesmithmaine.com, and one on the website of the Bangor Daily News), and special columns for many publications and newsletters. Islandport Press published a book of George's favorite columns, "A Life Lived Outdoors" in 2014. In 2014, George also won a Maine Press Association award for writing the state's bet sports blog. In 2016, Down East Books published George's book, Maine Sporting Camps, and Islandport Press published George and his wife Linda's travel book, Take It From ME, about their favorite Maine inns and restaurants.