Welcome to North Carolina Hunting

What’s New for the 2025–2026 Season

As part of the Commission’s ongoing effort to keep you informed, we reserve this page of the digest each year to identify significant regulatory, legislative, and agency-related changes that you should be aware of each season. Please note that the information found on this page is not a complete list of regulation changes. For your convenience, all regulation changes appear in RED.

Hunting

• For youth turkey season and youth days for deer and waterfowl hunting, the age of youth has been reduced from under 18 years of age to under 16 years of age.
• The length of the youth turkey season has been reduced from a full week (7 days) to a weekend (2 days).
• The length of the statewide youth deer hunting season has been increased from a single day to a weekend (2 days).
• The length of the mountain bear seasons has increased by 11 days, both segments now open on Saturdays, and all hunters may use unprocessed food during the second segment.
• Three additional Designated Bear Management Areas have been opened for hunting by permit only: Panthertown-Bonas Defeat, Pisgah, and Standing Indian.
• The daily limit for pintails has been increased from 1 to 3.
• One of the youth and veteran/military waterfowl days will be in December.

Trapping

• Submersion trapping systems must be checked at least once every 72 hours, instead of daily.