Draw odds / Washington
The draw is how Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife hands out its limited deer, elk, moose, mountain goat, bighorn sheep, black bear 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 Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife’s published materials — verified against the cited sources on 2026-08-16.
Washington hunting units — public land, access and harvest for every unit →
Deer, Elk, Moose, Mountain goat, Bighorn sheep, Black bear, Turkey — All applicants
Bonus squared: every applicant stays in the lottery holding points² + 1 entries — more points, better odds, nobody at zero.
One pool per hunt — no nonresident quota exists, so residency does not split the draw. Applicants may list multiple hunt choices; the published statistics count selections by choice (first through fourth) plus those drawn for another hunt and those not selected, and those six dispositions sum exactly to the application total. The statistics are aggregate per hunt. See the header: WDFW publishes average winner points but not the applicant distribution, so no point-level odds exist for this state.
Points: bonus. One point accrues per application purchased, per SPECIES CATEGORY, and the balance resets to zero in that category on drawing a permit — both codified in WAC 220-412-080. Points cannot move between hunters or between categories. WDFW describes the weighting as squaring the balance, so three points are worth nine ranking numbers. That multiplier is not in the WAC; it is the agency's own account of its draw and is treated here as such. Nothing downstream depends on it, because the published statistics carry no point-level breakdown to weight.
Parties: allowed — averaged points round to the nearest whole point (.5 rounds up). Parties of up to 4. WDFW accepts group applications for special permits. The group's point handling is not stated in the regulation text read here, so no rounding rule is claimed beyond the schema default; re-check at the next verification before anything is built on it.
Point calculator
The field — applicants at each point level:
At 3 points your first-choice odds are 11%
Same formulas as the published odds tables (expected-value-v1) — see methodology.
WAC 220-412-080 — special hunting season permits (accrual and reset)
WDFW — special hunt permit drawing result summaries (the statistics)
Methodology: expected-value-v1, with published backtests.