Kentucky allows off-season wildlife control and requires extra deer hunting

Landowners and eligible tenants may kill or trap damaging wildlife outside the species' hunting season without hunting or trapping licenses. Permission covers landowners, tenants who live and work on the land, and their spouses or dependent children. Wildlife must be taken on that land. Landowners may act against damage to their land, buildings, or belongings. Tenants may act against damage to the land or belongings there. They must report kills to the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources within 24 hours and request a tag before taking the dead animal off the property. They may dispose of the dead animal on site. Inedible parts cannot be used and must be destroyed or left on the property. Kills must be reported within 24 hours. The Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources must issue implementing rules within 120 days of the law becoming law.

People chosen by landowners may obtain permission to kill damaging wildlife outside hunting season. Helpers act on the landowner's property against wildlife damaging the land, buildings, or belongings. The two-year deer tags cover deer without antlers. Helpers need department approval, a hunting license or trapping permit matching their method, and a destruction tag, which authorizes killing damaging wildlife. The department must inspect and confirm damage within 15 days of a request. Confirmed damage requires at least five antlerless deer tags each year for two years. The department must renew a tag immediately when a time- and date-stamped electronic image or current crop report verifies continued damage. Approved helpers issued tags during the three-year period before the law's effective date may request renewal with that proof. Helpers must report kills within 24 hours and request a tag before transporting the dead animal. The deer tags authorize hunting outside the established season for two years from confirmation of damage.

Kentucky's fish and wildlife commission must set an extra seven- to ten-day hunting season for deer without antlers. Hunters may take deer without antlers during this season in designated areas. The Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources must designate the areas as overpopulated. The department must set rules defining when deer numbers meet or fall below its population goal. The extra season applies until the deer population is sufficiently reduced.

The Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources must allow eligible hunters to enter its special fundraising permit drawing. Eligibility depends on meeting all harvest, reporting, photograph, and request requirements. Hunters must legally take and report at least four female deer without antlers from a designated overpopulated area. They must submit a time-stamped photograph of each deer through the department's hunting-report system and request entry under the same person's name. This entry provision excludes permits for taking wild elk. Entry does not guarantee a permit. The four deer must have been taken during the previous hunting season.