Chasing whitetails or fishing for world-class trout in the state of Wisconsin just got slightly easier as the state’s Department of Natural Resources announced that you will no longer need to carry your license on your person, as previously required in the state.
As part of Wisconsin’s Department of Natural Resources’ (DNR) Go Wild initiative, the department is striving to make it easier for anglers and hunters to get out and enjoy the beautiful outdoors of Wisconsin. The Go Wild program aims to allow access to hunting and fishing licenses 24-hours a day, 7-days a week through its online portal. This portal will allow residents to purchase a variety of fishing licenses, conservation patrol licenses, boat, ATV and UTV registrations and trapping and harvesting licenses.
Through the Go Wild online program, hunters can also acquire licenses for Deer, turkey, duck, pheasant, goose, small game and more.
While hunters and anglers can still opt to print out the receipts for their licenses and carry them with them, all that will be required in most cases, is to carry your driver’s license.
“This direction is based on information that we gathered from stakeholders’ groups that we started five years,” said Mark Rappe with the DNR Bureau of Customer & Outreach Services. “We told people we were going to make a new licensing system and what would you like to see from it. We collected thousands of ideas, but some very common themes started to bubble to the top, and one of them was convenience.
“We saw the trends out there for the ability for us to move to electronic licensing system so your record now is an electronic record and not so much the green piece of paper that you keep in your wallet or that you have hanging from your back tag.”
The DNR does not plan any fee increases with the addition of the program and has stated that the Go Wild system will be available at over 1,000 vendors around the state.
