California hunting license and stamp sales

This page reproduces the state's own license counts for 2010 through 2025 so you can see how large the community of California bird hunters is. Every figure comes from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) License and Revenue Branch, pulled October 27, 2026.

Sales by license year, 2010-2025

The table lists every license year from 2010 through 2025. A duck validation is the state duck stamp that waterfowl hunters buy each year; an upland game bird validation is the stamp for pheasant, chukar and similar birds. Both are reported by CDFW by license year.

Source: CDFW, "Hunting: Items Reported by License Year." The 2010 to 2019 figures come from the file dated October 31, 2021; the 2020 to 2025 figures come from the file dated August 31, 2026. License year 2026 is still partial and is not shown.

What the numbers show

In license year 2025, California sold about 59,000 annual duck validations and about 127,000 upland game bird validations, plus 3,341 lifetime duck validations and 3,867 lifetime upland validations (CDFW). Upland buyers outnumber duck buyers about 2.1 to 1, which is our own division of the two CDFW totals (127,019 divided by 59,229).

Over the long run, hunting licenses are down 15.5 percent from 2010 to 2025, duck validations are down 12.3 percent and upland validations are down 27.6 percent. Those percentages are our arithmetic on CDFW's counts. Even so, tens of thousands of Californians still buy a duck validation every year and well over a hundred thousand buy an upland one.

Waterfowl reservation applications are a separate count: 972,106 applications for license year 2025, up from 740,522 in 2010 (CDFW).

Reading the data with care

The step from 2019 to 2020 looks like a jump, but the two years come from two different CDFW files and may include reporting changes, so the long trend from 2010 to 2025 is the safer way to read the table. CDFW also notes that a $10 fee increase took effect in 2022 (AB-614).

CDFW publishes sales by license type and year only. Sales by county are available on request from the License and Revenue Branch, and no county table is published, so nothing here says where in California a given buyer lives.

Why a dog trainer cares: every one of these licenses belongs to a person who may hunt behind a dog. The size of that group is the context for how many California owners look for a trainer who understands both waterfowl and upland work. For where those hunters go, see the waterfowl habitat and refuges page, and for this year's dates see the 2026-27 seasons page.