How to Start Hunting in Australia: A Beginner's Guide

Step 1: Work out what you want to hunt

This decides almost everything else — the licence you need, the season you hunt in, and the gear you buy. Broadly, Australian recreational hunting falls into three buckets:

• Deer — sambar, fallow, red, rusa and chital, depending on the state. The most regulated, and for many people the goal.
• Pigs, goats, foxes, rabbits and other introduced species — often classed as pest animals, generally with fewer seasonal restrictions and a genuine welcome from landholders.
• Game birds — duck and quail in some states, with tightly defined seasons and additional testing.

If you're unsure, start with pest species. Access is easier, the pressure is lower, and it's where most Australian hunters cut their teeth.

Step 2: Understand that the rules are state-based

There is no national hunting licence in Australia. Firearms law, hunting seasons, public land access and species rules are all set by each state and territory. What your friend in Victoria does legally may be completely different from what applies in Queensland or NSW.

Practically, that means your first research task is narrow: find your own state's firearms registry and hunting authority and read their beginner pages. Everything else follows from there.

Step 3: Do a safety course before you buy anything

Every state requires a firearms safety course before you can apply for a licence, and it's genuinely useful even if you never end up applying. You'll handle a firearm under supervision, learn the safety rules properly, and get a realistic sense of whether this is for you — all without spending thousands on gear you might not want.

Do not buy a rifle first. You can't legally acquire one without a licence and permit to acquire anyway, and beginners who buy before they've shot tend to buy the wrong thing.

Step 4: Apply for your licence and wait out the cooling-off period

You'll need to nominate a genuine reason (recreational hunting or vermin control, usually with landholder permission), pass a background check, and satisfy safe storage requirements. First-time applicants face a mandatory waiting period — 28 days in most states.

Use that waiting time well: it's the perfect window to get out with experienced hunters as an observer, which needs no licence at all. We cover this in detail in the firearms licence guide.

Step 5: Solve access — the real bottleneck

Licences are procedural. Land is the hard part, and it's where most new hunters give up. Your options:

• Public land — available in some states with the right permits and declared hunting areas. Free, but often crowded and heavily walked.
• Private property permission — the traditional route. Landholders dealing with pigs, goats, deer or foxes are often glad of reliable, respectful help. It takes relationship-building, not cold calls.
• Guided hunts and hunting properties — you pay, but you learn fast and you're not guessing.
• Clubs and community — by far the most reliable path for beginners. Access tends to travel through people, not websites.

Step 6: Buy gear in the right order

Beginners routinely spend money backwards. A sane priority list:

1. Boots that fit — the single best return on money you'll get.
2. Layered clothing you can be still and quiet in, plus wet-weather gear.
3. A knife and a way to get an animal home clean — game bags, an esky, ice.
4. Binoculars — you'll find far more animals with glass than with a scope.
5. A rifle and optic suited to your quarry — last, and ideally after advice from someone who has watched you shoot.

Camouflage is optional. Being warm, dry, quiet and able to walk all day is not.

Step 7: Learn to shoot properly, then learn to hunt

These are separate skills. Shooting is range time and repetition. Hunting is fieldcraft — reading sign, wind, movement, light, and knowing when not to take a shot. The second takes longer and can't be bought.

The ethical floor is simple: only take a shot you're confident is clean, at a distance you've actually practised, at an animal you've positively identified.

A realistic timeline

• Month 1 — read your state's rules, book a safety course, go out as an observer.
• Months 2–4 — complete the course, apply for your licence, wait out cooling-off, build community.
• Months 4–6 — licence granted, buy a firearm, get serious range time.
• Months 6–12 — first hunts, ideally alongside someone experienced.

It's slower than people expect. It's also far more achievable than it looks from the outside — and you don't have to work it out alone.

Where Women Who Hunt fits

Our Foundations course exists because this list is a lot to face on your own. It takes complete beginners — no experience, no firearm, no licence required — and walks them through the fundamentals in a women-only group, with gear provided and no question treated as a silly one.