Draw odds / Idaho

How the Idaho draw works

The draw is how Idaho Department of Fish and Game hands out its limited deer, elk, pronghorn, black bear, moose, bighorn sheep, mountain goat and turkey tags: you apply by the deadline, and the system below decides who is drawn. Everything here — the rules, the dates and the odds for every hunt — comes from the agency's own published material.

Rules from Idaho Department of Fish and Game’s published materials — verified against the cited sources on 2026-08-13.

Idaho hunting units — public land, access and harvest for every unit →

The system

Deer, Elk, Pronghorn — All applicants

Pure random draw: tags ÷ applicants, points play no part.

Applications May 1 – June 5; results in early July. One first choice and an optional second choice, drawn in that order. Parties up to four. Nonresidents are capped at 10% of each hunt's tags, and at one tag in hunts with ten or fewer permits — so in a small hunt a nonresident is competing for a single tag no matter how many residents apply. Second drawings for leftover tags run June 15-25 and August 5-15.

Black bear — All applicants

Pure random draw: tags ÷ applicants, points play no part.

Two application windows, because Idaho runs two bear seasons: spring bear January 15 – February 15, fall bear May 1 – June 5 alongside the deer/elk/pronghorn draw. Parties of two.

Moose, Bighorn sheep, Mountain goat — All applicants

Pure random draw: tags ÷ applicants, points play no part.

The once-in-a-lifetime species. Applications April 1-30, and a hunter may apply for only ONE of the three in a given year — so these are not three independent lotteries a hunter enters in parallel, they are one choice among three. A moose permit is once-in-a-lifetime in the literal sense: one antlered and one antlerless moose for the rest of a hunting life. The full tag fee is paid at application and refunded to the undrawn, which is why the fees registry marks these at-application rather than on-draw. Parties of two. Nonresident cap as above, which in practice means a single tag in most of these hunts.

Turkey — All applicants

Pure random draw: tags ÷ applicants, points play no part.

Spring turkey February 1 – March 1; fall turkey with the May window. Parties of two. Controlled turkey hunts are a small share of Idaho turkey hunting — most of it is general season over the counter.

Points: none. Idaho has no preference points, no bonus points and no squaring — the only state in this registry set with no currency at all. An unsuccessful application confers nothing on the next one. Applying every year for a decade leaves a hunter in exactly the position of someone applying for the first time, which is the single most important thing to tell an Idaho applicant and the thing every points-based mental model gets wrong.

Parties: allowed — averaged points round to the nearest whole point (.5 rounds up). Parties of up to 4. Party size depends on the species, and the registry's single max_size is the deer/elk/pronghorn figure because that is where parties are actually used: "up to four hunters may apply" for deer, elk and pronghorn, and "two hunters may apply" for turkey, spring and fall bear, moose, bighorn sheep and mountain goat. With no points there is nothing to average — a party is drawn or not drawn as a unit, so `rounding` is inert here and recorded only because the schema carries it.

Set per controlled hunt, published in the season rules and carried in the odds endpoint as PermitTotal. Nonresidents take no more than 10% of any hunt's tags, and no more than one tag where a hunt has ten or fewer.