How We Calculate Draw Odds

Idaho's controlled-hunt draw is pure random with no points, so applicants vs. permits is your actual probability. We pull IDFG's Hunt Planner odds data directly — first-choice applicants and permits split resident/nonresident for every controlled hunt, 1998–2025 (twenty-eight years, the deepest demand history on ProRut). Residency splits must reconcile against IDFG's own totals and published percentages or the hunt is excluded — about 1% of rows are source-side defects (zeroed columns in 2002, a corrupt nonresident percentage in some 2025 turkey hunts) and are left out. Unlimited-permit hunts are omitted as draw-odds-meaningless, and only the main draw is shown (not the August leftover re-draw).

Source: IDFG Hunt Planner controlled-hunt drawing odds, 1998–2025.

Montana squares bonus points before the draw, which makes simulated odds unreliable — so we don't simulate. FWP's Detailed Bonus Point Drawing Statistics publish actual applicants and successes at every point level, split resident/nonresident (landowner pools are folded into each), and that's what we show: empirical per-point-level odds for deer and elk permits and B licenses, antelope, moose, sheep, and goat, 2006–2026 (FWP's Excel-era exports cover 2006–2022; deer/elk/antelope 2022 was never published). Hunts are listed by FWP hunt code (district-license, e.g. 217-10). Every hunt's pool must reconcile against the report's own TOTAL row or it's excluded — two source-side inconsistencies are currently excluded for that reason. Bison isn't published in this report series yet. Harvest comes from FWP's harvest-estimate surveys, which report at the hunting-district level: for permit species (moose, sheep, goat, antelope) that's effectively the permit holders, while for deer and elk it's everyone who hunted the district including general-license hunters. Where FWP hasn't published hunter-effort estimates (elk and antelope before 2024, deer in 2024) we show the harvest count without a success rate rather than compute one from missing data.

Source: Montana FWP Detailed Bonus Point Drawing Statistics 2006–2026 and harvest-estimate surveys 2006–2025.

Arizona runs a three-pass draw: a bonus pass awards 20% of each hunt's permits in descending bonus-point order, then random first-second and third-fifth choice passes. We parse AZGFD's bonus point reports — which publish first-choice applicants AND permits drawn at every point level, split resident/nonresident — so Arizona's point-pool charts show actual drawn-vs-applied at each level (residency-specific, the data that otherwise takes a public-records request). Headline odds are permits issued ÷ first-choice applicants per residency. Hunts are listed by hunt number; one hunt can span several GMUs (all are shaded on the map). Harvest data comes from AZGFD harvest summaries where rows pass an internal check (published success rate must equal harvest ÷ hunters) — deer, elk, pronghorn, bighorn sheep, bison, javelina, and turkey all extract; bear and mountain lion are over-the-counter in Arizona and have no per-hunt draw harvest to show.

Source: AZGFD draw odds, bonus point, and harvest summary reports, 2024–2025.

Colorado runs a pure preference-point draw, so last year's results are deterministic: the hunt drew down to an exact point level. We parse CPW's post-draw recaps to show the odds at your choice position, the minimum points that drew, the success rate among applicants at that final point level, and — for preference-point species — the full applicant pool at every point level (the point-pool chart on unit pages, 2022–2026). Pools are only published when they reconcile exactly against CPW's choice-1 totals; weighted-draw species (moose, sheep, goat) rank by a preference-and-weighted-point pair, so a flat pool would mislead and is deliberately omitted. July secondary-draw results and adult/youth applicant splits appear on unit pages where CPW publishes them, and season calendar dates come from the official 2025–2029 Big Game Season Structure (only statewide seasons — GMU-variable dates are left blank, never approximated).

Source: CPW post-draw recaps (primary + secondary), statewide harvest reports, and the 2025–2029 season structure, 2021–2026.

Wyoming sells nonresident licenses at two price tiers — Special and Regular — drawn as separate pools, and we list each tier as its own hunt (filter by Draw Tier on species pages). The headline odds come from WGFD's random-draw demand reports (the 25% pool); where WGFD publishes preference-point sheets we also show the preference pool's points-to-draw and the full applicant count at each point level. “<N” bands in the point-pool chart are party applications whose averaged points fall just under N. WGFD removes some older-year reports from its site, so year coverage varies by species.

Source: WGFD demand reports (random draw + preference point), 2023–2025.

Nevada awards entries equal to your bonus points squared plus one, so your personal odds depend on your point count. Headline percentages are overall applicants vs. tags from NDOW's Hunt Summary workbooks — the all-points average. The point-pool chart on unit pages goes deeper: NDOW's Bonus Point and Application Choice Trend reports publish first-choice applicants and winners at every bonus-point level, split resident/nonresident, and we ingest a block only when every choice column reconciles against the report's own totals. Pools cover most hunts 2020–2025; a few NDOW hunt classes (the nonresident guided mule deer program, junior hunts in some years) are published with different season structures than the workbooks and are deliberately left without pools rather than guessed.

Source: NDOW Big Game Hunt Data workbooks and Bonus Point & Application Choice Trend reports, 2020–2025.

Utah uses bonus points for limited-entry and once-in-a-lifetime hunts (half the tags go to the highest point holders, half to a weighted random draw). DWR's draw-results report publishes applicants and permits at every bonus-point level, split resident/nonresident, and the point-pool chart on unit pages shows exactly that — empirical results at each level, no simulation. A panel is only ingested when every level reconciles: bonus + regular permits must equal the total, per-level sums must equal the published totals, and the printed success ratios must reproduce from the counts (one nonresident sheep panel in 2025 fails DWR's own arithmetic and is excluded).

Source: Utah DWR big game draw results (bg-odds) reports, 2017–2025.

New Mexico is a pure random draw with no points, so applicants vs. tags is your actual probability — the cleanest math of any state. Quotas split roughly 84% resident / 6% nonresident / 10% outfitter-sponsored; we show resident and nonresident pools separately.

Source: NMDGF draw odds and application statistics, 2023–2025.

Oregon awards 75% of each controlled hunt's tags to the applicants with the most preference points, then draws the remaining 25% at random from everyone left — so the points-to-draw cutoff matters, but low-point applicants always retain a real chance. ODFW's Preference Point Draw Reports publish applicants and tags drawn at every point level, split resident/nonresident, and that's what our point-pool charts show (2021–2026; the per-level drawn counts cover the preference phase — random-phase winners appear only in hunt totals). Every hunt must reconcile: residency splits must sum to published totals at both the hunt and point level, or the hunt is excluded (one ODFW inconsistency, the Chesnimnus buck hunt, is excluded 2021–2024 for this reason). Buck and antlerless deer are separate ODFW report series shown together under deer (ODFW's 2026 antlerless upload is currently a duplicate of the buck report, so 2026 antlerless hunts are missing until they republish). Bighorn sheep and mountain goat draws are random-only with no published per-hunt draw statistics, so they aren't shown yet; same for pre-2021 reports, which ODFW published as scanned images.

Source: ODFW Preference Point Draw Reports, 2021–2026.

Washington's special-permit draw is a weighted random: every applicant's chance is proportional to (points + 1)², points accrue per permit category, and residents and nonresidents compete in ONE shared pool — WDFW never publishes a residency split, so the odds shown apply to any applicant. WDFW stopped publishing standalone drawing statistics after 2021; our applicants-and-permits series comes from WDFW's per-hunt game harvest pages, which carry Total Applicants and Permits Issued for every special hunt from 2013 through 2025 — thirteen years of demand history — alongside hunters, harvest, and success rates. The headline percentage is permits ÷ applicants (the all-applicant average): your personal odds are better with more points and worse with fewer. WDFW hasn't published per-point-level results since the 2020 draw, so unit pages and the strategy view also show estimated odds at each point level — the hunt's average scaled by (points + 1)² against the statewide 2020 point distribution (WDFW's last per-point publication), always labeled as an estimate rather than passed off as published data. WDFW reuses hunt names across weapon and season categories within a year AND reshuffles hunt numbers between years, so hunts are identified by name-plus-number — complete and never misattributed, at the cost of multi-year trend lines breaking in the years WDFW renumbered. WDFW's 2024 draw had a vendor error with post-hoc permit re-allocation, so 2024 figures reflect the corrected allocation.

Source: WDFW game harvest individual-permit-hunt statistics, 2013–2025.