Instructions for applicants

You can apply for a moose area (area permit) for your party or club in January for one open season at a time. The application for an area permit concerns a specific moose hunting area exceeding 1,000 hectares. In addition to your first choice, you can add optional areas to your application.

Once an area permit has been granted to you, apply to the Finnish Wildlife Agency for hunting permits for cervids following the instructions below. An area permit granted by Metsähallitus alone does not guarantee that the Finnish Wildlife Agency will issue a hunting permit for the area.

Parties cannot apply to Metsähallitus for a joint area permit. A joint permit is an arrangement in which several hunting clubs apply for a permit together. However, once Metsähallitus has issued them with area permit decisions, the parties may join their forces and apply to the Finnish Wildlife Agency for a joint moose hunting permit. An exception to this is the Finnish Wildlife Agency’s Lapland region, where a Metsähallitus’ area permit can also be applied for as a joint permit.

In Northern Finland, moose hunting arrangements also differ from those in the rest of the country in other respects. Under section 8 of the Hunting Act, local residents have free hunting rights on state-owned lands in the counties of Lapland and Kainuu and in the municipalities of Kuusamo, Pudasjärvi, Taivalkoski and Vaala.

In the area referred to in section 8 of the Hunting Act, the hunting club or party applying for a Metsähallitus area permit must separately indicate in its application the state-owned areas with a surface area of less than 1,000 hectares (‘fragmented areas’) which are connected to the applicant’s private lands and for which they apply for moose hunting rights. 

Go to the bottom of this page to read more about attaching fragmented areas to the application!

1. Get your hunting party together!

You must get the hunting party together before you can apply for an area permit for hunting cervids.

As a rule, a party must have at least ten hunters. When decisions on areas are made, hunters whose shooting test certificates are valid or will expire in the current year are regarded as shooters. If a person does not meet this definition of a shooter, they may be included in the list of shooters attached to the application but they will not be taken into account when comparing parties applying for permits.

Shooters cannot be added to the list attached to the application after the deadline for submitting it. The application can only be supplemented with information that is incomplete or missing or has changed, such as addresses.

2. Find an area!

Metsähallitus controls around 350 moose hunting areas in different parts of Finland. In the area referred to in section 8 of the Hunting Act in Northern Finland, the hunting areas are larger on average, and area permits for them can be granted to several moose hunting parties. Parties only consisting of local hunters who need not apply for an area permit often also hunt in Northern Finland areas. In the south, hunting areas are smaller on average, and a permit for an area is only granted to one party at a time.

To get a better idea of the areas, take a look at the PDF maps attached to the area descriptions.

The moose hunting areas are also shown on Excursionmap.fi. Any changes to the areas are updated to this service with a delay.

3. Apply for an area (area permit)!

Once you have got your party together and located a suitable area, you can submit your application in Metsähallitus’ permit application system or using a printed form between 1 and 31 January 2025. The decisions will be made in March 2025. Applications received after the deadline will not be processed.

Contact our hunting specialist responsible for the area for advice!

Submitting an application in the permit application system

We recommend that you submit your application for an area permit (right to hunt cervids on state-owned lands) online in the electronic permit application system (lupahaku.eraluvat.fi).

In this system, you can use your previous years’ application as a basis for a new one, or start a new application from a scratch. The completed application must be saved in the system by 16:00 on 31 January 2025. You can save your application and continue editing it until the deadline (16:00 on 31 January 2025). The last version saved in the system will be the final application.

Apply for a permit in the permit application system (lupahaku.eraluvat.fi).

Submitting the application by post

Parties with no access to the Internet can send their application forms and shooter lists by post. Written applications must be delivered to Metsähallitus offices no later than at 16:00 on 31 January 2025.

PLEASE NOTE: Links to application forms will be added to the website before the application period begins in 2025:

Printable application form (PDF 725 kB, in Finnish)

Printable shooter list (PDF 725 kB, in Finnish)

See the application forms for the return addresses.

Prices

In the area referred to in section 8 of the Hunting Act (the counties of Lapland and Kainuu as well as Kuusamo, Pudasjärvi, Taivalkoski and Vaala municipalities), only non-resident hunters pay the fee for a seasonal hunting permit. Even if you live in the area entitling you to free hunting rights, you must pay the fee if you go moose hunting in a neighbouring municipality, for example.

Non-resident hunters included in the original area permit application pay Metsähallitus a personal seasonal fee of EUR 55. The fee is paid after a decision to grant an area permit has been issued following the instructions given in the decision. The fee for residents of Kemi and Tornio is EUR 30 per season when their party is granted moose hunting rights for the municipalities of Ranua, Simo, Tervola, Ylitornio or Pello.

Outside the area referred to in section 8 of the Hunting Act, the area permit fee is determined based on the size of the hunting area. The average price is EUR 0.40 per hectare (+ 25.5% VAT).

4. Apply for a hunting permit!

Once Metsähallitus has granted an area permit for state-owned lands to your party, you must apply for an actual hunting permit. If you skip this step, your party will have a moose hunting area but no right to shoot a single moose in it.

To apply for a hunting permit, use the new functionality in the Oma riista service or a printed form. The hunting permit applications must be submitted to the Finnish Wildlife Agency by the end of April. The Finnish Wildlife Agency (riista.fi) will issue instructions and press releases concerning the permit application functionality of Oma riista well before the application period expires. If you submit the application using a printed form, it must also be notified to the game management association whose operating area comprises the largest part of the hunting area referred to in the permit application.

The hunting permit application will be processed by the Finnish Wildlife Agency’s regional office whose region comprises the area for which Metsähallitus has issued a moose area permit to your party. See the description of the permit area to check the Finnish Wildlife Agency’s regional office or the game management association whose operating area comprises your party's hunting area. For the contact details of the associations and the boundaries of operating areas, see the contact information search maintained by the Finnish Wildlife Agency (riista.fi).

5. Including fragmented areas in the application

These instructions only concern applicants who hunt in an area referred to in section 8 of the Hunting Act and wish to attach small state-owned areas of less than 1,000 hectares to their moose hunting permit applications. Other applicants can ignore these instructions.

Under section 27 of the Hunting Act, the Finnish Wildlife Agency must exclude from the moose hunting permit any areas that do not meet the requirements relating to surface area and continuity. Consequently, an applicant for a moose hunting permit must have access to a continuous area suitable for hunting with a land area of at least 1,000 hectares. The hunting permit may only be used in the area specified in the permit.

Consequently, the hunting club or party applying for a Metsähallitus area permit must separately indicate in its application the state-owned areas with a surface area of less than 1,000 hectares (fragmented areas) which are connected to the applicant’s private lands and for which they apply for moose hunting rights.

If you have already applied for the inclusion of fragmented areas in the application in previous years, it is easy to renew the application. Check and update the hunting area which includes both state-owned areas and private lands that you defined the previous year in the Oma riista service. If you are applying for the inclusion of such areas for the first time, you must create a new map definition. To display all state-owned areas managed by Metsähallitus in Oma riista service, activate the level State-owned lands (Valtionmaat). To display pre-defined, named and numbered moose hunting areas managed by Metsähallitus, select the level Metsähallitus moose (Metsähallitus hirvi) (for example, 8135 Koitelainen). Metsähallitus’ moose hunting areas are updated to show the new definitions on Oma riista before the area permit application process opens in January. You can also see the moose hunting areas on Excursionmap.fi.

When you have updated the hunting area for the upcoming hunting season, include the unique ten-character area code generated by Oma riista in the area permit application submitted to Metsähallitus.

Once the area permit decision has been made, Metsähallitus will provide the Finnish Wildlife Agency with electronic map data concerning the permit areas for the processing of the hunting permit application. The applicant can also access this area definition on Oma riista.

If the applicant for an area permit does not have access to private areas, they should apply for an area permit for moose hunting in the permit application system as before. An applicant who does not use Oma riista can include fragmented state-owned areas connected to private lands in their application on a printed map attachment. For more information on moose hunting areas on state-owned lands, contact Metsähallitus’ hunting specialists.

Contact details of hunting specialists

Complete these steps

If your hunting club or party has access to private hunting areas and you are applying for hunting rights for state-owned areas of less than 1,000 hectares connected to them, follow the instructions below:

1. See the definitions of the areas for which Metsähallitus issues area permits and the fragmented areas on Oma riista.
2. Generate or update a map definition showing your club’s or party's moose hunting area on Oma riista for the year in question (such as 2025). Include the state-owned areas for which you are applying for hunting rights for the next open season. You can also copy the areas of the current period to a new period if they have been defined previously. Remember to check for any changes concerning private lands!
3. In the area definition view, select the map layers Metsähallitus moose and State-owned lands (Metsähallitus hirvi and Valtionmaat). The system will display all state-owned moose hunting areas and all state-owned fragmented areas of less than 1,000 hectares.
4. In this view, mark the club’s moose hunting area on the map. Select the moose hunting area on the Metsähallitus tab, for example 8300 Enontekiö. Also define on the map any private lands by parcel or real estate unit, and state-owned parcels that are connected through private lands to the area the application concerns. Only include areas for which you are applying for moose hunting rights for the next season. The area must be continuous.
5. Save the area you defined.
6. The system will generate an ‘Area code’ (Alueen tunnus) with ten characters for the area you created.
7. Include this 10-character area code when you submit your application for an area permit for moose hunting to Metsähallitus. NOTE! Do not use old area codes from previous years when submitting an application for an area permit or applying to the Finnish Wildlife Agency for hunting permits.
8. The area permit decision issued by Metsähallitus will define the moose hunting and fragmented areas included in its decision on hunting rights.
9. When applying for a hunting permit for cervids, the permit holder must provide this information to the Finnish Wildlife Agency.
10. Metsähallitus will forward the definitions of moose hunting and fragmented areas concerning each area permit decision in a digital format to the Finnish Wildlife Agency.