Unit research · Idaho · Unit 8
Unit 8 — Idaho
1% public hunting land across 490,265 ac. Road access is easy — only 0% of the public land is more than a mile from a road. Watch the checkerboard: 628 ac of public land has no public route in.
Computed from primary government data by the AGPL pipeline. See the code →
Tags & season
Draw hunts on this ground.
3 limited-entry elk and moose hunts are drawn on Unit 8: apply in the Idaho draw, by the agency's deadline below.
Season dates: see Idaho Department of Fish and Game's regulations
Idaho elk and moose draw calendar
- Apr 1, 2027 — applications open
- Apr 30, 2027 — application deadline
- May 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
29,795 ac of this unit has burned — 6% of the unit. The full report assembles it into one printable document and keeps it current as the facts change.
Season conditions — measured, not vibes
Historical temperatures · 2000–2025
Normals for 2000–2025 — tap or hover for a month
Measured at LEWISTON-NEZ PERCE COUNTY AIRPORT, 40 km from the unit’s center and ~1,300 ft below its median elevation — expect the unit to run colder. NOAA ISD-Lite hourly observations.
Harvest — agency survey estimates
Deer · 2025 · by unit
30% success
545 taken by 1,797 hunters · 10,991 days afield
411 bucks · 134 does
Deer hunter success · 2015–2025 · 46% → 30%
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 8 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.
Scan to install OpenHunt for Android. Open this page on the phone afterwards and it lands in the app.
