Badlands National Park, South Dakota - Taken June 2022 by Jasveer Sandhu

Committing to applying for game tags for western hunting can be daunting. There are so many things to consider! Cost, odds, opportunity, and location will all need to be considered. If you have been following this blog series, you will know I am applying for South Dakota’s Antelope and Whitetail Doe tags and you have probably decided on what you are looking to apply for. Follow along as I explain what I weighed through the application process as well as some pointers on things to key in on.

Applying for Tags and Permits

I applied for South Dakota’s Antelope tags and Whitetail Doe tags this fall. Running through the process taught me a lot about how the tag systems work and what I need to watch out for. After some reflection I boiled it down to five basic considerations:

· Time Constraints

· Odds and Preference Points

· Opportunity

· Cost

· Access

With these 5 considerations its helpful to know where to go in order to start the application process and locate all the relevant information that you will need. You can locate most information on the Fish and Game Department websites or the websites of the state department of natural resources. These are the same websites that you will use to find application wizards through which you will apply for specific tags. You will need to determine the application deadline windows from their website to know when to apply and you’ll have to decide what tags you want before applying. You will likely notice that there are applications options for “Limited Draw Applications” which is what I am referring to when I say a “lottery tag” and there are also going to be “leftover tags” or “over-the-counter tags”. Lottery tags will be the primary focus of this blog, but the discussed considerations should still be helpful if you are seeking an over-the-counter tag.

Time Constraints:

I will begin with time constraints so that we have a better understanding of how the average tag works. If you are like me, a Midwest born hunter, or are from the East coast or Southeast, you may be all too unaware of how these tag timespans work. Firstly, most tags are only valid between certain windows of time and may close and reopen multiple times within a year. This is similar to how some deer seasons operate in the Midwest and East Coast where you buy a deer “permit” which is valid for the “season”, but your method of take is restricted by certain date ranges or locations. As an example, a deer hunter in Ohio could buy one deer “permit” and hunt the entire state from Sept. 24th to Feb 3rd with a bow but choose to hunt with a gun during gun season or a muzzleloader during that season assuming they didn’t harvest that deer until the last day of deer season. In western states, it appears to be more common for a tag to be issued by hunt unit, species, sex, method of take, and date range. Hunt units are specific areas (generally established by roads, county lines, state boarders, and geographic features) that are demarcated for the purpose of managing species and resources within its boundaries (I’ll explain this a little more when I talk about access and odds). Therefore an “archery antlerless deer tag” would only be valid for a hunter using archery equipment in a certain area, for a deer, female or antlerless, within a certain range of dates. So, why is this elementary detail important to you and me?

For one thing you’ll have to be available during the time the tag is valid. There isn’t much sense in applying for a tag that is only valid between November 23rd-30th if your spouse needs you to be home for Thanksgiving. Some states do allow you to decline a tag or transfer it to another hunter if your circumstances change and are unable to hunt. A less obvious reason for thinking about the timing of a tag is that there are tags that are available during times of the year that you may not realize render the area they are valid for virtually impassable. For example, there are bison tags available in areas that are completely landlocked by private lands or Native reservations that can only be reasonably accessed by rivers during the coldest times of the year. For most hunters that is simply not on the list of possible opportunities. Other factors to consider would be rut timing and breeding cycles for some species which may impact the hunting style you choose. Besides those things, you simply can’t rule out just plain old weather. I am certainly an advocate of hunting through difficult weather but many times, if the weather sucks so does the hunting opportunity. With these things in mind, you will want to select a tag that suits your availability, your weapon proficiency, weather tolerance, and hunting style. You will also want to assess the odds of each hunt unit.

Odds and Preference Points:

To understand odds, you need to understand the concept of a hunt unit. As I explained above, hunt units are specific areas that are generally established by the boarders of roads, county lines, state lines, and geographic features that are marked for the purpose of managing species and resources within its boundaries. Most, if not all, western states are broken into regions and hunt units. An example of a hunt unit map is shown below.

Figure 1: 2022 General-Season Bull Elk Reference Map (Utah DNR)

Each unit has an allocated number of tags for each species, sex, and method of take. Not all hunt units are the same so if you are looking for a specific kind of hunt you may need to consider specific units to make sure that your target species and sex is even open for hunting. The hunt unit that you pick will heavily dictate your draw odds. More highly sought-after hunt units may have multiples more applicants than other units, especially if it is known for producing trophy sized animals, is more readily accessible, or is open to hunting for an exotic species. In general, the more applicants to a unit the lower the odds of you drawing a tag that season. In some cases, you may find that there are units that have excellent odds or even guaranteed draws because the unit has more tags available than applicants each year. All these details will be available from the state fish and game department where you apply for tags. Jump online and find their draw statistics records and compare that against the hunt unit maps to determine where you want to apply.

So, what if you want to do a specific hunt and but the lottery odds aren’t so great? As we know with most things in life, the number of people who desire to have something often outweighs the amount we have to distribute. Supply and demand strikes again. In hunting, this typically plays out in two ways. Either there are too many people trying to hunt the same public land plot or there are more people applying for a tag than there are animals to fill tags. As I previously stated, units have allocations of tags based off maximum or minimum quotas for animal harvests to manage the wild herd in the unit. This prevents us from wiping out a herd due to overharvesting and it also ensures that herds that are growing to quickly can be curbed to prevent overpopulation. If the state wildlife agency determines that the ideal number of mule deer bucks that can be taken from unit “X” is 5 and there are 100 applicants for that tag you will essentially have a 1 in 20 chance to win that tag. If you want to hunt there you will likely have to apply multiple years before you will pull a tag. Preference points were developed to help even the odds for hunters that continually apply for a tag year after year but don’t win it. Each year you apply and don’t win the tag, you will have a preference point added to your record for that draw. In some cases, you can elect to purchase a preference point if you don’t win. For every year that you get a preference point you will earn an advantage that will give you “preference” in the next year’s drawing should you apply. This way hunters that consistently apply for a tag will get progressively more likely to draw the tag. This can work several ways. One way is for your name to be thrown in the hat multiple times based on how many preference points you have while another is to be moved into a new draw stage. In these cases there are multiple draws per year with a certain number of tags allocated for each group or hunters with a specific number of preference points. As an example, there could be 2 tags for 10 hunters with 2 preference points (20% odds), 3 tags for 30 hunters with 1 preference points (10% odds), and 5 tags for 60 hunters with no preference points (8.33% odds). Table 1 lays it out below.

Table 1: Example of Draw Odds based of Preference Point Allocations

Each state has its own way of doling out preference points and methods for determining how they will be applied. Some even have bonus point systems in place that allow you to buy additional points or receive application multipliers. Reading state specific literature will provide greater insight on their process but in general, this is a good way of visualizing it. Beyond odds and preference points you should also consider opportunity.

Opportunity:

Opportunity? Isn’t that the same as odds? Nope, when I say opportunity, I am referring to the chances of you tagging out once you start hunting which is different from the odds there are to win a tag in order to hunt. Basically, will I get to the pull the trigger even if I hunt? This becomes particularly relevant when you are hunting trophy game species, in which case there may be a very limited number of animals that fit that description and they may be in particularly challenging terrain that limits access or even retrieval of the carcass following a harvest. If you are planning on filling the freezer and enjoy most or all forms of hunting, you may want to consider applying for tags in hunt units that have very high harvest opportunity, where most hunters tag out. If you are looking for an animal fit to be hung on the wall, you will probably need to consider a hunt unit that has worse tag application odds and lower certainty in harvest. As far as I am aware, all states track the harvest records for each hunt unit each year and these are recorded in a ledger known as the harvest report. You can usually access this information online or by record request to the Fish and Game Department for the state. Just look for “Harvest Report”, “Harvest Projections”, or “Harvest Map”. Table 2 below is such a harvest projection from the South Dakota Department of Fish and Game.

Table 2:2020 West River Deer Harvest Projections (South Dakota Department of Fish and Game)

Harvest data is used by the state to influence future tag allocations for the area as well as to census the wild game populations for size, age, and general health. Some units or species even have mandatory game checks that you will have to visit after the kill to show evidence of your harvest. If you are going to have limited opportunities to travel west to hunt, something else to consider when you are selecting tags is cost.

Cost:

When considering what specific tags you will apply for, cost will need to be considered. Fortunately, applying for tags is often free and if it isn’t free its generally in the range of $10-$40 to apply for a tag. In many states you only pay for tags that you are pulled for. In other words, it may cost you $120 dollars for a deer tag or $10,000 for a trophy bison but in general you won’t have to pay that unless you win the tag. In cases where the tag is expensive it’s fair to assume that you should be planning far ahead to prepare in the case you win and you can purchase preference points for a nominal sum if you don’t. Another thing to keep in mind is that some tag applications and fees cover multiple animal harvests so if you want to fill the freezer for cheap, you can find tags that offer two or more does in a single hunt unit on a single tag. Another aspect of your hunt that impacts cost is ease of access.

Access:

Accessing your intended hunt unit may seem straight forward and in many cases it is. I would recommend that you are diligent in looking for areas that suit your ability and interests before you apply. For example, many tags are available in the east river region in South Dakota but the vast majority of the public land in the state is in the west river region. If you were to win a tag in the east river region you would likely need to seek out some private permissions to have a wide-ranging hunt. Additionally, when you are e-scouting an area be aware that some public land is landlocked by private lands that may create complicated access issues and, in some cases, legal disputes if you attempt to access them. Other public lands are only accessible during certain times of the year either by law or because of weather conditions. If you desire to “glamp” or stay at a hotel rather than camp out, you may have to say no to more remote hunt units.

In short, there is a lot to think about when selecting and applying for tags but with a little research and some focus you can dial in on what you want to pursue in the present and future. I have included a summary of my applications and my considerations below. Follow along on the next blog post to see what tags I won and how I am planning to hunt them out!