Unit research · Idaho · Unit 21
Unit 21 — Idaho
99% public hunting land across 325,996 ac. Real backcountry here — 26% of the public land sits more than a mile from any road. Almost none of the public land is landlocked.
Computed from primary government data by the AGPL pipeline. See the code →
Tags & season
Draw hunts on this ground.
8 limited-entry bighorn sheep, deer and turkey hunts are drawn on Unit 21: apply in the Idaho draw, by the agency's deadline below.
Season dates: see Idaho Department of Fish and Game's regulations
Idaho bighorn sheep, deer and turkey draw calendar
- Feb 1, 2027 — applications open
- Mar 1, 2027 — application deadline
- Apr 1, 2027 — applications open
Fees and draw dates from Idaho Department of Fish and Game, 2026, verified 2026-08-13. Tag type from the agency's published draw statistics: a unit that appears in none of them has no limited-entry hunt we know of. Source: IDFG — Licence, tag and permit costs, residents · IDFG — Licence, tag and permit costs, nonresidents · IDFG — Controlled hunt application information.
Land & access
Backcountry
Where the ground sits
Tap or hover the bars for each elevation band
Slope mix
Which way the slopes face
Share of ground steeper than 5° — flat ground has no facing
North slopes hold shade, cover and snow; south slopes open first.
USGS 3DEP 1 arc-second (30 m), slope at native resolution in a local metric projection, sampled on a 200 m grid. See the code →
Unit intelligence report · Pro, $5 a month or $49 a year
278,554 ac of this unit has burned — 85% of the unit. The full report assembles it into one printable document and keeps it current as the facts change.
Harvest — agency survey estimates
Deer · 2025 · by unit
49% success
405 taken by 824 hunters · 4,820 days afield
386 bucks · 19 does
Deer hunter success · 2015–2025 · 41% → 49%
IDFG harvest by Game Management Unit, one row per unit per season per take method. Success rates and hunter days are published by IDFG and carried verbatim wherever a row comes straight from the department; nothing here is derived except where several hunts share one area, and there the rate is recomputed from the summed hunters and harvest because a per-hunt percentage does not survive being added up. Where a cell is blank IDFG suppressed a small sample, and it stays blank rather than being back-computed. Take method ("Any Weapon", "Archery", "Muzzleloader") is the variant for general seasons and the rows are NOT summable — each is its own season, not a component of a total. IDFG's own "All Weapons Combined" row is carried as the `all` variant, so the total is the department's arithmetic rather than ours. Idaho's draw-only animals have no general season at all. Moose, mountain goat and both bighorn herds appear under a `controlled` variant covering the limited-entry hunts, and the two sheep herds stay separate — a Rocky Mountain and a California bighorn are different animals in different mountains, with their own once-in-a-lifetime rules. Source: IDFG Hunt Planner — general hunt harvest statistics by unit (deer) · IDFG Hunt Planner map service — HarvestStats_mainTbl (all other species).
How these numbers are made
Computed, not curated: no paid research team, no opinions dressed as data. If a number looks wrong, tell us at support@openhuntmaps.com — the fix ships for everyone.
Ready to scout it?
Everything on this page, live on the map — ownership, boundaries, roads, and your own waypoints.
Take Unit 21 into the field
Download Idaho’s pack and this unit works with no signal — boundaries, ownership, roads, elevation. Record your hunt with the screen off. Check what’s visible from any ridge.
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