- Moose - Dec 26 (Click Here)
- Mountain Goat - Dec 31 (Click Here)
- Desert Bighorn - Jan 5 (Click Here)
- Rocky Mountain Bighorn - Jan 10 (Click Here)
- Bison - Jan 15 (Click Here)
- Pronghorn - Jan 20 (Click Here)
- Deer - Today
- Elk - Jan 30
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I've had the opportunity to take part in two limited entry deer hunts. In both instances my friend Cody drew the tag and asked that I come along and help out. The first was a rifle hunt in the Book Cliffs back in 2010 and the second was a late muzzleloader hunt in the unit we typically hunt for the general season in 2018. Both hunts are chronicled on the Hunt Stories page. Cody was able to walk away from each hunt with very nice bucks and we had an excellent time in two very different areas of Utah. I'm actually hoping to convince another friend, Doug, to burn a couple of points as a non-resident on the same late muzzleloader hunt here in the next couple years.
Value of a Point
For non-residents the value of a point is 0.059% per bonus point. Follow the same formula to determine your average odds for non-residents take the number of bonus you have and add 1, then multiply by 0.059.. so if I had 9 points my average odds would be (9+1)*0.059 = 0.59%.
Some changes were made for 2020 though that the Utah DWR are hoping to relieve the point creep in the deer pool. The waiting period for successful deer applicants is now 5 years just like with elk, previously the waiting period was 2 years. The hope is that since limited entry deer and limited entry elk are similar in terms of drawing odds that this will keep successful applicants out of the applicant pool for a little bit longer allowing for more applicants to cycle through... we'll see if that is actually the result.
Applicant Pool Evaluation
Let’s get a feel for the overall applicant pool for deer using the two images below. The first image is shows the resident data, and the second image shows the non-resident data. The orange bars are the number of applicants who submitted an application for a specific hunt unit while the blue bars show the number of applicants who submitted an application to purchase the bonus point, both sets of bars correspond to the y-axis on the left. The gray line indicates the number of random numbers received by applicants who applied for a hunt unit corresponding to the second Y-axis on the right.
In the 2019 application there were more than 4200 new applicants for deer. The applicant pool for deer follows a smooth exponential curve with two blips occurring in the 1 and 2 point pools where growth in those two years seems to be slightly higher than the trend. Notice that the ratio of actual applicants compared to those who just buy the point is extremely high for deer... it seems that if somebody is applying in the deer pool they are going to apply for a hunt rather than apply for a point. Looking at the number of random numbers issued you can see just that the number of random numbers peaks at 10 points.
The non-resident pool for deer was dramatically impacted by the change about 10 years ago that allowed non-residents to apply for all limited entry and once-in-a-lifetime species. The number of applicants has increased dramatically since and has remained much higher than before. The most interesting part of this graph is that in the point pools below 10, it is about 50-50 split between applicants who apply for a unit versus applicants who buy points. This tells me that, like pronghorn, many deer applicants are simply adding on the deer point to their elk application because it's a relatively cheap investment for a potential future hunt.
Very quickly here, let's have a quick look at the percentage of applicants that apply for a hunt unit versus the percentage that purchase the point.
The trend for residents is to apply for an actual hunt unit rather than purchase a point, it is pretty consistent throughout with between 80% and 90% of the applicant pool applying for a hunt unit. Only the top point group shows a 50-50 split between point buyers and actual applicants. The non-resident applicant pool, as mentioned above, tends to have a higher percentage of point buyers but as the number of points an applicant accumulates the more likely he/she is to apply for a hunt unit... I find this an interesting trend.
Here is a look at the average number of bonus points over the last 5 years that it took to draw a Bonus Tag. I’ve included the PROJECTED 2020 average bonus points:
Here is where I typically type some things about "year savings", but in the deer pool there is no such thing. As you can see, for residents the average number of points that it takes to draw an archery, muzzleloader, or rifle tag doesn't differ by much. So when considering your choices for limited entry deer, decide which weapon you would prefer to hunt with and go for it.
The same goes for non-residents... there appears to be a slight "year savings" with muzzleloader tags but I think that corresponds to a high number of new muzzleloader hunts now being offered later in the season on our traditional general units. If you are familiar with a general unit that offers these late muzzleloader tags they are good options for a hunt that occurs in the pre-rut to early rut.
Tag Distribution
Here is a look at how the tags were distributed in 2019... The blue line shows the number of applicants and corresponds to the first Y-axis on the left. The orange bars are the regular tags drawn and the gray bars are the bonus tags issued to the highest point holders and correspond to the second second Y-axis on the right.
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