Hunt NSW FAQ

The contract for the service provider supporting the hunting regulatory database ended. The NSW Government requires contracts of this type to be tendered. An open procurement process was conducted and a replacement provider was successfully appointed.

The technology behind the hunting regulatory database needed modernising. Updates and additions to the old platform had become costly and led to unexpected outages and problems.

Utilising modern, cloud-based systems that are easily adaptable to changing regulatory requirements is important so we can meet our legislative obligations and regulate safe and ethical hunting in NSW. It also means your information is more secure.

The new platform provides advanced security features like encryption and monitoring which, combined with stringent NSW Government requirements, secures and protects your data.

Identity verification through the secure Document Verification Service and payments through Service NSW mean we don’t need to handle or store your data on our system.

You can read our privacy statement for detailed guidance on how we collect, use and store your personal information.

You should always access Hunt NSW directly through our website.

Please do not use links through Service NSW or bookmark a direct link to the site as you will not see important advisory information when it’s posted.

No. We now issue you a username and a link to set-up your password. We emailed a welcome invitation to all current licence holders. The email has a username and link to set up a password. We’ve also sent the email to former licence holders if their licence expired in the last 2 years.

If your licence expired more than 2 years ago, please email hunting@dpird.nsw.gov.au.

New licence holders will receive a welcome email if their application is approved.

If you should have received the welcome email and can’t locate it, please complete the request access form. We’ll locate your profile and send you another welcome invitation.

If you know your username, you can use the ‘Forgot your password’ link from the login screen to reset your password.

If your licence expired more than 2 years ago, please email hunting@dpird.nsw.gov.au.

Please report the issue to our support team using this form.

Please include details such as:

• device type and software
• screenshots or screen recording (if possible)
• description of issue.

Our team will investigate and respond to you directly.

If your licence expired in the past 2 years, we sent you a welcome invitation. Please check your inbox and junk folders for the email. The email has your username and link to set up a password.

If you can’t locate the email, please complete this form and we’ll send you another welcome invitation.

If your licence expired more than 2 years ago, please email hunting@dpird.nsw.gov.au.

Note: if you didn’t complete the R-Licence additional training before the system transition, you may need to complete the R-Licence Accreditation Course again before we can renew your licence.

We are currently experiencing higher than normal volumes of calls and emails with the launch of our new portal.

Please be patient as we respond to enquiries.

Our Customer Service Staff are able to take details of any issues you may be experiencing, but they are not able to provide estimates as to when the issues will be resolved.

If you are experiencing technical issues with the portal, please complete this form. Our support team will investigate and respond directly to you.

The species harvest report section is still in development. We’ll communicate with licence holders when they are made available.

We temporarily stopped processing applications and renewals to ensure the integrity of data transferred into our new system.

Licence processing has recommenced, please allow 20 business days for your application to be assessed.

All NSW Game Hunting Licence holders are now required to have an email address to access all functionality of our new portal.

Providing an email address also means we are able to stay in contact with you and send important information about your licence and bookings.

A NSW hunting licence grants you the ability to carry out hunting activities on private and some public lands, including to carry hunting equipment. It’s important that we make sure that the individual we’re granting a licence to is who they say they are, and that they have not been the victim of identity crime.

Identity crime is one of the most prevalent crimes in Australia. Approximately 1 in 3 Australians will be a victim of identity crime at some point in their lives. The Identity Verification Services’ design better protects you from identity crime and saves the Australian community a substantial amount of time and money.

Verification remains valid for 5 years.

You don’t need to use the Document Verification Service (DVS) to verify your identity, you can skip the automatic verification sections. You do need to verify your identity in another way though. You’ll be asked to upload your primary and secondary identification documents on the next screen.

DVS checks whether the information on your identity document matches the original record. There are several different identity documents you can use to verify through DVS, including birth certificates, driver licences and Medicare cards.

DVS makes it easier and more convenient for you to access government services and means that more services can be provided online. It helps to verify your identity in a way that is secure, fast and private.

When you use DVS to verify your identity, the department doesn’t need to store this information on our servers. You can read more about the service on the ID Match website.

No, you don’t need to create a Digital ID to apply for a NSW hunting licence.

The document verification service checks your information directly with the source (eg, the Department of Births, Deaths and Marriages) or with the National Exchange of Vehicle and Driver Information System.

Please ensure that your personal information entered on the ‘Your details’ screen exactly matches the details on your identity documents. This includes your middle name.

Once you select a document to verify from the list, make sure you read the instructions that appear.

If the verification doesn’t work, you can skip this section and upload primary and secondary identification attachments on the next screen. Please note that we are required to store your identity information on our system if you skip or cannot complete the automatic verification.

You can read more about how we use and store your information in our privacy statement.

Tips for completing your Medicare card verification

• Only enter the first letter of your card colour. Ie, if your card is green, enter ‘G’.
• Enter the expiry date as YYYY-MM.

After you submit a licence application or renewal, we will review and process your licence.

If we approve your application, we’ll send you an email to pay to your licence fee.

Licence fee payments are made through the Hunt NSW portal. If you haven’t already accessed the portal, we’ll also send you a welcome email that contains your username and a link to set your password.

If you already have access to the portal, you can Log in.

The ‘Make a payment’ link is located in the ‘Licence applications’ menu.

Licence fee payments are now handled through the Service NSW payments portal. We are no longer able to process a payment on your behalf.

Payments are now handled through the secure Service NSW payments portal. The department doesn’t have the ability to manually enter credit card details and process a payment on your behalf.

We can’t process a licence application on someone’s behalf in our new system. This means everyone needs to complete an online application or renewal, which includes an identity verification service and secure payment gateway.

You can watch a short video that guides you through the online licence application.

You can also authorise someone to complete the application on your behalf. They will be required to enter their details on the application form, after they select the option ‘I am authorised to complete this on behalf of the applicant’.

You can ask anyone for assistance to fill out the application.

If you do not have any family members or friends available to assist, we recommend contacting your local council or community centre as they can often provide assistance.

• Log in to the Hunt NSW portal and select the icon in the top-right hand corner.
• Select ‘My profile’.
• From the ‘My licences’ page, select the ‘Renew’ link against your licence.

Renewing this way ensures your personal information is pre-populated and you don’t need to re-enter it.

Some licence holders who completed the R-Licence Accreditation Course in-person before 2022, and who have never booked a public land hunt, may need to redo the training.

This is because these licence holders did not complete the additional training requirements before the system transition.

We advised holders of a NSW Game Hunting Licence of the deadline to complete the additional training via email and on our Facebook page and extended the window several times. With the move to our new portal, the deadline has now closed.

Yes, you will be required to pay the fee to complete the R-Licence Accreditation Course, as it has now been updated with additional training requirements.

We advised holders of a NSW Game Hunting Licence of the deadline to complete the additional training via email and on our Facebook page and extended the window several times. With the move to our new portal, the deadline has now closed.

The firearms R-Licence category now authorises rifles, shotguns and blackpowder firearms.

If the firearms category is on your licence, you are permitted to use blackpowder firearms, except if there is a Total Fire Ban in the area you’re hunting.

Licence applications are generally processed within 20 working days. This may be longer during peak periods.

You’ll receive a digital licence immediately upon payment of the licence fee, if your application is approved.

Interim licences are no longer emailed to you. A digital version of your licence is issued instead.

You’ll receive an email notification if your licence is granted. You can then log in to Hunt NSW, visit the My profile section, and download your licence PDF.

A version of your digital licence will also be available in the Hunt NSW app.

As with digital written permission, you must carry your licence at all times, physically or digitally, and ensure you can produce it when asked by a hunting inspector or other authorised person.

1. Log in to the Hunt NSW portal using your username and password. You will have created your access before making your licence payment.
2. Select the icon in the top right-hand corner of the profile and then ‘My profile’.
3. The next screen will show a list of your licences.
4. Navigate to the right of the screen, to the ‘Download’ column. You’ll find a copy of your payment receipt and digital licence for download.
5. Select ‘Download’. The PDF licence will open. Make sure you save the PDF somewhere you can easily access it.

A version of your digital licence will also be available in the Hunt NSW app.

We understand that not everyone wants to move to digital licensing.

We’ll continue to issue physical licences for now so you can choose whether to carry a physical or digital licence.

Our new system provided the opportunity to reformat hunting licence numbers. Previous licence numbers were in the same format as NSW Firearms Licence numbers, and it was easy to get confused between the two.

The new licence numbers start with ‘GHL’ to make clear that it relates to your hunting licence.

Each digital licence issued has a card number, similar to drivers licences.

Your GHL number will remain the same while you are licensed, but we’ll issue you a new card number each time we issue you a renewed or updated digital licence.

When your licence was approved, a digital licence was made available to you immediately.

We sent your details to our licence card provider within 1 week of your licence issue.

NSW Game Hunting Licence cards are printed by a third-party vendor and can take up 2-3 weeks to be delivered. The licence cards do not have tracking, so we are unable to provide a more specific timeframe.

Each R-Licence holder may book up to 4 written permissions at any time. Each booking can be from 1-4 days in length.

The booking system rules had been in place since 2006 without change.

We've received a lot of feedback over the years and analysed some booking trends. The restriction to 2 concurrent written permissions, each for up to 7 days, no longer reflected how a majority of our licence holders hunt.

The average hunt duration of R-Licence holders is 1.4 - 1.7 days. Less than 2% of hunts are greater than 4 days.

The new booking rules, allowing each R-Licence holder 4 concurrent written permissions, each of up to 4 days benefit a majority of hunters.

With some forests more popular than others and increasingly hard to book, shorter permissions that offer the opportunity to hunt more regularly will help keep the system fair for all hunters.

The 4/4 proposal has been discussed internally and externally with hunters since 2021.

With the introduction of day and night written permissions, it was essential that we change the number of written permissions available for each licence holder to book.

We applied a data driven approach to determine the best settings that would benefit the most licence holders.

No, if you’re booking 2 written permissions in the same forest, you must have 1 day between bookings. This rule hasn’t changed. It helps to keep the booking system fair for all hunters.

You may continue to legally have your hunting equipment in a forest you hold permission to hunt, for one day before and one day after the dates of your hunt.

The one clear day provision is a risk assessment control to assist FCNSW schedule work in areas without hunters.

The one day clear provision only applies to the first written permission issued every day for each State forest that is available for hunting. This means that if you request written permission on Monday and there is already a licence holder in that forest on that day, you may hunt from Monday instead of Wednesday as the one clear day has already been observed by another licence holder.

One full day must pass between the date a written permission is booked and the time when hunting can commence. For example, if you request written permission on Monday, the earliest you may start hunting is Wednesday, if there are no other hunter booked in on Tuesday.

Providing night-time pig dog hunters a separate written permission maximises the hunting time for each forest, without restricting the number of day-time hunters.

It is not possible within the system to allow different numbers of permissions for different types of hunters. The same rules must apply to all licence holders, regardless of how they hunt.

If you hold a day-time written permission, your legal hunting hours are 30 minutes before sunrise through to 30 minutes after sunset.

Written permission condition #12 has been updated to reflect the legal hunting hours for day and night-time permissions.

If you hold a night-time written permission, your legal hunting hours are 30 minutes after sunset through to 30 minutes before sunrise.

Written permission condition #12 has been updated to reflect the legal hunting hours for day and night-time permissions.

Minor changes have also been made to condition #13, covering night-time hunting of pigs using dogs.

You must have the ‘dogs’ category on your R-Licence to qualify for night-time hunting permission. Only licence holders using dogs to hunt pigs may hunt at night. Hunting with firearms and bows is restricted to day-time hunting.

If you’d like to add the dogs category to your R-Licence, please complete the category module of the R-Licence Accreditation Course. Once complete, email your accreditation form to us so we can update your licence.

The booking system will only allow you to select forests that you have the correct R-Licence categories for. For example, if you don’t have the bows category on your licence, you won’t be able to select a bow-only forest.

We’ve aligned the regions with the Bureau of Meteorology weather regions. View a list of all open forests by region.

We’re also working to update the public land hunting Google map to reflect the new regions.

First, pick a region from the filter. The left-hand panel will then display all forests in that region. There is a search bar above this list. Enter the forest name and search to refine the results.

The hunting method filter allows you to refine your search for a forest by which R-Licence categories are permitted in the forest.

If you are targeting a particular species, you can use the species present filter to find forests where that species has been recently harvested.

Please check the expiry date on your licence. You’ll only be able to book up until the day your licence expires.

To renew your licence, log in to Hunt NSW and view your licence in the ‘My profile’ section. You’ll see a link to renew by scrolling right along the table.

You may add 2 vehicles and up to 10 hunting dogs on each written permission. However, limits apply to the number of dogs you may use while actively hunting.

1. After you book hunt and download your maps, open the ‘Public land hunting’.
2. Select ‘View written permissions’.
3. You’ll see a list showing each of your bookings.
4. Navigate to the right-hand side of the booking row and select ‘Download’.

Authorised hunting maps are available to download in .pdf and .kmz formats when a written permission booking is confirmed.

You can also download the hunting maps for any forest by opening the ‘Public land hunting’ menu, selecting ‘Hunting maps’ and locating the forest using the selection fields.

No, all R-Licence holders must use the online booking system to book their own hunts. This is important as there are other requirements, such as mandatory use of a GPS-device, that require technical capability.

You can watch a short video on how to book a hunt through Hunt NSW.

If you’re experiencing technical issues with the booking system, please report it to us using this form.

If a new or updated condition or advisory applies to a forest you’ve booked, you’ll receive an email advising your written permission has been updated. Make sure the email address you enter on your written permission is correct so you receive these alerts.

You should always redownload your written permission before starting a hunt to check the current conditions and advisories that apply.

When our public land hunting team process a change to any forest, as requested by the land manager, our new system will generate an email to you.

The email will let you know that your written permission has been updated. You must log in to the Hunt NSW portal to download your updated written permission.

Yes, you can change the forest you’ve booked and the date of your hunt through Hunt NSW.

• Login with your username and password.
• Open the ‘Public land hunting’ menu
• Select ‘View written permissions’
• Locate the permission you’d like to change in the list
• Navigate to the right-hand side of the row
• Select ‘Edit’
• You’ll be taken back into the booking system to amend your booking.

You’ll need to download a new written permission after amending a booking. If you’ve changed the forest you’ve booked, make sure you download new maps.

The day your written permission starts, your permission list will show the hunt as ‘outstanding’. This means the harvest return option becomes available. The permission is still active until the end date of your hunt, unless you complete your harvest return earlier.

You can only edit or cancel a written permission until the day before it starts. If you’re unable to hunt, and the permission has started, simply submit your harvest return as soon as possible, recording 0 days.

If you have 2 harvest returns that are outstanding for 30 days or more, you’ll be unable to book more hunts until you complete the returns.

1. Log in to Hunt NSW with your username and password.
2. Open the ‘Public land hunting’ menu
3. Select ‘View written permissions’
4. Locate the outstanding permission you need to complete
5. Navigate to the right-hand side of the row
6. Select ‘’Harvest return’
7. If you didn’t hunt, you may enter 0 days and submit the return
8. If you did hunt, enter the number of days you hunted, fields relating to your hunt, and then report the number and species of each animal you harvested.
9. Select ‘Submit’.

Reporting your harvests accurately is important so we can demonstrate the benefits of licensed hunting on public land.

No, all R-Licence holders must use the online harvest return form to complete their hunt. This is important as there are other requirements, such as mandatory use of a GPS-device, that require technical capability.

If you’re experiencing technical issues with the harvest return form, please report it to us using this form.