Hello. The area I hunted last year (and plan to hunt this year) was Hunters Choice last year. This year it has changed to lottery w/ 2,000 permits. Pretty disappointing considering my hunting party and I (4 total) have invested at least 150 hours of labor into the land this year with food plots, brush hogging, building new stands, etc. I have never hunted a deer hunting lottery zone before so I am reading up on it the best I can on the MN DNR website and the hunting regs. There are a few spots in the regs that talked about antlerless deer in regards to the lottery. Are all lottery hunts only for anterless deer? How can I tell if my zone (181) is anterless or either sex lottery?
Also, it looks like I need to buy my tag/declare for the lottery by Thursday. Do I just go to anywhere that sells hunting/fishing licenses and tell them I want a tag for zone 181? Or do I tell them I want to be entered into the lottery for that zone? Do I pay for the tag to enter into the lottery even though I might not get it? How long until you typically find out if you got a tag via the lottery or not? This process is completely new to me, so my apologies for the numerous questions. Based on my math from the DNR’s detailed report on zone 181, there were a little over 5,000 people hunting that zone last year. So with only 2,000 permits given out this year, there’s about a 40% chance of getting a tag which is a lot lower than I’d like it to be considering how much work I’ve put into the hunting land this year.
