California Landowner Tags
California's Private Lands Management programme has no acreage floor - enrolled properties run from 375 to 270,000 acres - because qualification is a CDFW-approved five-year wildlife and habitat management plan with measurable improvements, where routine maintenance expressly does not count. Tags are valid on the enrolled property only, guaranteed, and come with dramatically extended seasons: a ranch deer season of Jul 11 - Nov 30 against roughly six weeks of public A-zone hunting. The licensee or its agent sells the tags, but no price is published.
Checked against California Department of Fish and Wildlife rules, October 20, 2026. Where the rule is silent or its sources disagree, the line says so.
Private Lands Management
with an exemption
Hunting Your Own Land
none - there is no landowner licence exemption. A licensee's own family needs a California hunting licence plus a PLM tag, and for deer also an exchange tag (source: ca_plm_handbook).
Private Lands Management
Private Lands Management (PLM), FGC 3400-3408 and 14 CCR 601
approved management plan
drawn with everyone else
not addressed in the rule
Who Qualifies
| Species | Deer, Elk, Antelope (Pronghorn), Black Bear, Turkey, Small Game (Wild pig left the tag system on Jul 1, 2024 and is now a validation, so it is not a PLM tag species.) |
|---|---|
| Acreage test | No acreage floor - enrolled properties run from 375 to 270,000 acres and contiguity is not required. Qualification is a CDFW-approved five-year wildlife and habitat management plan with measurable improvements, where routine maintenance expressly does not count, plus annual compliance inspections. The application fee is $2,482-$4,766 by size tier.7 |
| Land test | ✗ Contiguous✗ Agricultural use within the ranch |
| Nonresident owner | Not addressed in the rulesNot addressed in the rule. 14 CCR 601(b)(2) requires only that applicants be individuals or corporate landowners or their designee, and 601(c)(1) requires each hunter to hold a California hunting licence; neither the rule nor the handbook mentions residency. |
| Who may hunt it | Anyone the licensee issues a tag to - in practice paying clients of the ranch or outfitter. There is no public-access requirement, and the licensee has strict boundary-posting duties. |
| When to apply | Initial applications and five-year renewals are due before Feb 1, with Commission action in April or June. Harvest report and all tags returned by Jan 5; annual report by Feb 1; habitat work complete by Jun 30. |
What You Get
| The tag | Tags valid on the enrolled property only, guaranteed, with dramatically extended seasons. Allocation is discretionary rather than formulaic, described as contingent on the overall benefit to wildlife. 2026 examples: 360 Ranch deer Jul 11 - Nov 30 against a public A-zone season of roughly six weeks, and Avenales Ranch bull elk Jul 1 - Dec 31. |
|---|---|
| Transfer or sale | Yes. The licensee or its agent sells the tags, entering the hunter's name and GO ID, and must keep records of all tags sold. A deer PLM tag requires surrendering a valid unused California deer tag or a PLM Exchange Tag; one hunter per tag and no reissue. State tag fees are $98.11 for deer and $841.00 for bull elk. The price to hunters is nowhere published - do not publish a number. The licence itself is not transferable and a change of ownership voids it. |
| Enrolled properties | Agency list |
14 CCR 601 was read in full for this entry: a five-year licence on an approved management plan, annual reports by Feb 1, annual inspections in the first licence period and at least two per five years thereafter, an unfilled deer tag or PLM voucher surrendered for each PLM deer tag, and no acreage floor anywhere in the rule. Two published datasets exist: the 2026 PLM Public List of the 26 ranches offering tags to the public, with acreage, county, zone, species and contact, and the Approved 2026 PLM Hunt Seasons, covering roughly 115-120 licensed areas with season dates and Authorized Harvest, which is the allocation table.
New for 2025–26: The PLM Handbook was rewritten in May 2026, its first revision since 2008.
Also on the Books
- SHARE: SHARE enrols private land for public draw hunts; the agency names the programme without giving an acreage or plan test. Not detailed here.
General Season or Limited Draw?
All California deer tags are quota-limited; the distinction is how they are sold. A, B, C, D-zone and Archery-Only tags are sold over the counter until the zone quota fills (A is 65,000, B1-B6 pooled at 35,000, D3-5 pooled at 33,000, and X-zone quotas as low as 50). Premium tags - X zones and most lettered hunts - plus all elk, pronghorn and bighorn are drawn, with applications Apr 15 - Jun 2. The same products and quotas apply to nonresidents, with no separate nonresident structure found. As of Oct 15, 2026 only Archery-Only tags remained (94,035 left), with no A, B, C or X-zone tags available.
Per-unit classification: Approved 2026 Deer Seasons by Zone for the quotas, the Available Deer Tags list for what is still over the counter right now, and the FGC mammal regulations for the binding text..
Check a parcel on the map →
Click the ground or paste a listing's coordinates: the unit for every species (64 California units mapped), and whether the acreage clears the floor.
California draw odds →
Every species, unit and hunt code, with the odds at each point level, fees and deadlines.
Things That Trip People Up
- PLM tags are bound to a named ranch with its own dates and its own authorized harvest, so a deer-zone answer is wrong on an enrolled property.
- PLM elk tags exist in A and B-1 zones where there is no public elk hunt at all.
- There is no acreage floor, so an acreage-based finder will return false negatives; properties from 375 acres up are enrolled.
- Routine maintenance does not satisfy the habitat-plan requirement, and the application fee alone is $2,482-$4,766.
- A deer PLM tag requires surrendering an unused California deer tag or a PLM Exchange Tag.
- Do not publish a PLM tag price: none was found in any primary or secondary source.
- leginfo.legislature.ca.gov and govt.westlaw.com/calregs hard-403 non-browser clients; 14 CCR 601 reads in full through Cornell LII instead.
Sources
- 1. California Department of Fish and Wildlife · Private Lands Management programme page · retrieved 2026-10-20
- 2. California Department of Fish and Wildlife · PLM Handbook, May 2026 (first rewrite since 2008) · retrieved 2026-10-20
- 3. California Department of Fish and Wildlife · 2026 PLM Public List (26 ranches offering tags to the public) · retrieved 2026-10-20
- 4. California Department of Fish and Wildlife · Approved 2026 PLM Hunt Seasons (every licensed area with season dates and Authorized Harvest) · retrieved 2026-10-20
- 5. California Department of Fish and Wildlife · Approved 2026 Deer Seasons by Zone (quotas) · retrieved 2026-10-20
- 6. California Department of Fish and Wildlife · Available Deer Tags list · retrieved 2026-10-20
- 7. Cornell Legal Information Institute · 14 CCR 601, Enhancement and Management of Fish and Wildlife and their Habitat on Private Lands (full rule text) · retrieved 2026-10-20
- 8. California Fish and Game Commission · Fish and Game Commission mammal regulations (binding text) · retrieved 2026-10-20
This page summarizes agency rules for orientation. The statute, commission rule and the current year's application booklet govern; check them before buying land or applying.