Kentucky’s elk hunt drawing deadline is April 30. Options for adults and youth ages 15 and younger are available.
The official elk draw will be May 13 at KYGUNCO in Bardstown. Tickets for a chance to hunt are limited. There are 594 permits available. Those permits include 150 for bull firearm; 244 for cow firearm; 175 for cow or bull archery/crossbow; and 25 for youth. Go to the Kentucky Fish and Wildlife website and search “Elk Hunt” for more information on how to apply.
Each application costs $10, and each entry someone submit increases their odds of being drawn. This year, there is a new loyalty draw, a secondary drawing to award unclaimed permits as a loyalty reward to long-time resident applicants.
Dates for the hunts for each permit type are Sept. 30-Oct 4, and Oct. 7-11 bull (antlered) firearm; Nov. 25-29 and Dec. 30-Jan. 3, 2024 cow (antlerless) firearm; Sept. 9-22 and Dec. 2-8 either sex archery/crossbow; and all seasons noted for youth. All rules must be followed.
Although someone may apply for more than one elk permit type, they can only be selected for one permit per year. The computer program that performs the drawing first randomly selects applicants for a particular hunt type, then it proceeds to the next hunt type; as people are drawn, their names are removed from the drawing for the other hunt types.
For example, an applicant who applied for all three permit types is kept in the drawing unless picked for a particular permit type, at which time he/she is removed from the drawing for the other permit types. The drawing begins with the youth-only permits, then proceeds to the largest applicant group (bull-firearms), then successively to the remainder of the drawings in order of volume of applications. Thus, those who applied for, but were not drawn for a bull-firearm permit remain in the drawing for other permit types they applied for, along with everyone else who applied for each of the other permit types. Because the drawing is random, everyone in the drawing for a particular permit type has the same odds of being drawn in a given year. Applicants drawn for a permit cannot apply again for three years.
