Alaska has three rules every nonresident needs to understand before booking a flight: when you must hire a guide, how locking tags work, and which harvest ticket or permit you need for your hunt. Get any of them wrong and you can lose your animal, or worse. Here is how they work for the 2026–2027 regulatory year.

The nonresident guide requirement

If you are a U.S. citizen who doesn’t live in Alaska, you must be accompanied in the field by an Alaska-licensed guide to hunt:

• Brown/grizzly bear
• Dall sheep
• Mountain goat

The guide must stay within 100 yards of you during the attempt to take the animal.

Nonresident aliens (hunters who are not U.S. citizens) must hunt every big game species with an Alaska-licensed guide, including moose, caribou, black bear and deer.

You do not need a guide as a U.S. citizen nonresident to hunt moose, caribou, black bear, Sitka black-tailed deer, wolf or wolverine. That’s why so many nonresidents do drop-off moose and caribou hunts on their own.

The resident relative exception

Instead of a guide, a nonresident can hunt guide-required species with an Alaska resident relative who is 19 or older, holds a current Alaska hunting license, and is within the second degree of kindred. That includes parents, children, siblings, spouses, grandparents, grandchildren, in-laws, and step-parents, step-siblings and step-children. Uncles, aunts and cousins don’t qualify. The relative must stay within 100 yards when you take the animal.

Some drawing hunts limit how many permits go to nonresidents hunting with a relative, so check the supplement before you apply.

Hiring a guide

Alaska guides are licensed by the Big Game Commercial Services Board, which is part of the state’s Division of Corporations, Business and Professional Licensing. You can look up a guide’s license online. For guided drawing hunts, you sign a guide-client contract before applying and your guide gives you a verification code for the application.

Big game locking tags

Nonresidents must buy a locking tag for each species before hunting it. After you kill an animal, you lock the tag onto a part you’re required to salvage, such as the skull, hide or meat, before you leave the kill site. It stays on until the animal is processed, eaten or exported.

Locking tag (2026)	Nonresident	Nonresident alien
Brown/grizzly bear	$1,000	$1,300
Moose	$800	$1,000
Dall sheep	$850	$1,100
Caribou	$650	$850
Mountain goat	$600	$800
Black bear	$450	$600
Sitka black-tailed deer	$300	$400
Wolf	$60	$100
Wolverine	$350	$500

Residents don’t need locking tags for most species. A $25 resident brown bear tag is required in some areas.

The “equal or lesser value” rule. You can use a tag on a different species of equal or lesser value, as long as you already have the harvest ticket or permit for that species. For example, a $1,000 brown bear tag can be used on an $800 moose. You can’t combine two tags to cover a pricier animal, and a tag can only be used once. Many nonresidents carry a bear tag on a moose hunt for this reason.

Licenses and tags are valid for the calendar year printed on them. New ones go on sale in January.

Harvest tickets

Harvest tickets are free. You get them online, from license vendors, or at ADF&G offices. You need one for general season hunts for:

• Moose, caribou, Dall sheep and Sitka black-tailed deer in every unit
• Black bear in Units 1–7, 11–16 and 20

Cut out the month and day as soon as you take an animal. Deer tickets must be used in order. Your harvest report is due within 15 days of filling your bag limit or the end of the season, even if you didn’t hunt. Harvest tickets aren’t used on permit hunts.

Registration permits

Registration permits are their own kind of hunt. Most are unlimited, but you have to pick them up during a set window, sometimes in person in a specific village. Hunts can close by emergency order when a quota is met. In some units, including 1, 7, 15, 17, 19A, 19E, 20E, 22 and 23, you can only hold one big game registration permit at a time.

Other rules nonresidents miss

• Nonresident moose orientation. In several western units, including 9, 17 and 19, nonresident moose hunters must complete an online orientation course and carry proof.
• Sheep: one ram every four years. In many areas, nonresidents may take one full-curl ram every four regulatory years.
• Sheep hunter orientation. For general season (harvest ticket) full-curl sheep hunts, August 10 – September 20, you must complete ADF&G’s sheep hunter orientation course before hunting.
• Brown bear sealing. Brown bear hides and skulls must be sealed by ADF&G, and guided hunters complete a transfer of possession form with their guide.
• Same-day airborne. Don’t hunt big game until 3:00 a.m. the day after you’ve flown, except on scheduled commercial flights.

Related: How Alaska draw points work · Draw odds by unit · Alaska Hunting Guide · How to apply for drawing permits · Cost of an Alaska hunt

Rules and fees are from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game for the 2026–2027 regulatory year. Always check the current Alaska Hunting Regulations before you buy tags or book a hunt.