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Veterans Alliance — Veterans Alliance
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recreationstate

Free Hunting and Fishing Licences

A service-connected disability of any degree — there is no percentage — makes every licence, stamp and permit you are eligible for free.

Verified August 18, 2026

What this benefit is

A service-connected disability of any degree — there is no percentage — makes every licence, stamp and permit you are eligible for free.

What it's worth: Every licence, stamp and permit you are eligible for, free

  • The saving is whatever you would otherwise buy in a year, so it depends on whether you fish, hunt, or both.

Who is entitled to it

  • You were honorably discharged.
  • The VA has found you to have a service-connected disability.
  • You are a New Jersey resident.

Not sure whether that describes you?

Answer a few questions about this benefit specifically — we only ask what this one actually depends on, and we stop as soon as we know.

How to claim it

  1. 1Get certified first. The certification cannot be done online or at a licence agent, which is the single most common reason a veteran gives up on this one and simply pays.
  2. 2Send proof of the service-connected disability, proof of honourable discharge, and proof of New Jersey residency.
  3. 3Once certified, take the free licences, stamps and permits you are eligible for — including the turkey permits, which are drawn separately.
Form
Disabled Veteran Certification
File with
New Jersey Fish and Wildlife — by post, not online
Documents you will need
va benefit summary letter · dd214
Annual
Claimed once a year.
CorrectionThere is no percentage threshold. A service-connected disability of any degree qualifies — which makes New Jersey the widest recreation entitlement in this corpus. A veteran rated 10% who has read another state’s 100% rule will wrongly assume they are excluded.
Worth knowingCertification is a separate step from getting the licence, and it cannot be done online or at a licence agent. Until it is done the system will simply charge you the ordinary fee.
Known gapWe hold the eligibility test and not the full schedule of which stamps and permits are included. The digest says all licences, stamps and permits for which the veteran is eligible are free; we have not been able to read a per-item list from the agency itself.

Sources

Why only one source type: The NJDEP Fish and Wildlife disabled-veteran page returned an empty body when retrieved on 18 August 2026 and the agency's certification form is a scanned image with no extractable text. The Fish and Wildlife Digest is the agency's own current regulatory publication and states the eligibility test in terms, so we publish on it alone and say so.

This finder provides an informational match, not a government eligibility determination. The responsible agency decides your application.