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Andrew McKean
1/16/2008
by Andrew McKean
www.HuntersTrailhead.com or by emailing trailboss@HuntersTrailhead.com.
Months before you can draw on a Booner buck or bugle in a broad-beamed bull, you have to draw a different kind of trophy.
It’s a special hunting permit and, unfair as it sounds, your ticket to September’s date with wild ungulates in the West isn’t earned by bullseye accuracy or off-season repetitions at the 3-D course. It’s punched by an accountant’s ability to decipher draw odds, a gumshoe’s talent for sniffing out under-subscribed hunting units and an attorney’s skill in comprehending the often-cryptic modern hunting regulations.
All tempered by a dose of dumb luck in the permit lottery.
If you’re serious about hunting one of the West’s premium trophy opportunities, this is the month to narrow down your destination, then request permit information and sharpen your application skills. And it¹s never too early to start saving money and vacation time that you’ll spend on the best hunts.
You’re already behind the curve in some states. Utah’s application period begins Jan. 2 and ends Jan. 31. Miss this window and you’ll miss all opportunities to hunt antlered game in the Beehive State. Application dates for Wyoming elk are Jan. 31; for Arizona deer and antelope in mid February; for Montana deer, elk and antelope in mid March.
A dizzying variety of choices await first-time hunters. You can put all your marbles into an Arizona elk hunt or a bighorn sheep tag in the best units. Or you can bank on more reasonable odds on an Idaho general elk hunt or a Montana antelope hunt.
Here are a few of the best destinations in the West for a traveling bowhunter who wants a shot at an animal that probably isn’t available on your deer lease or your neighborhood wildlife management area:
1. New Mexico’s Gila Elk
If you simply want to kill an elk, apply for an archery permit that puts you in touch with Colorado’s 310,000 head of wapiti. But if you’re after a rarified trophy, start building preference points for an Arizona behemoth or one of Utah’s Monroe Mountain whoppers. Or take your chance on a New Mexico permit.
Unlike Arizona, where extremely limited numbers of elk permits ensure that its tiny herd of 24,000 animals produces world-class racks, New Mexico has no preference or bonus point system. That means that first-time applicants have just as good a chance of drawing as long-time applicants.
The Gila unit, Unit 15, has the state’s best reputation for big animals on public land. But this year only 250 tags will be issued for the first archery hunt, Sept. 1-10, and another 200 for the Sept. 11-18 season. Draw odds for a non-resident hover around 4 percent but rut-season archers routinely take 350-inch and better bulls out of this remote unit on the Arizona border.
Application deadline is April 9 this year. Non-resident elk tags in the Gila cost $768, a bargain for the world-class opportunity.
2. Wyoming’s Red Desert Antelope
If you aren’t discouraged by long odds or desolate landscapes, Wyoming’s premiere antelope unit should appeal to you. It’s Unit 60, the remote Red Desert north of Interstate 80, where only 100 tags are issued for some 50,000 head of antelope and 15-inch bucks are commonplace.
Last year non-resident applicants with a preference point had a 2.5 percent chance of drawing one of these coveted tags. There’s no separate archery season for pronghorns here, but the country is so vast and the antelope herd so well distributed, that you won’t run into conflicts, and water-hole hunting can be productive into October.
This is the second year that Wyoming has managed its drawing with preference points, and there’s such a distinct advantage (2.5 percent draw odds for those with preference points compared with 0.3 percent draw odds for those without) that you need to pony up the $30 to buy a point. That’s if you don’t want to part with the $286 for the tag. Application deadline is March 15.
If you’re looking for a little more buck for your application bang, apply for one of Montana’s 900 antelope tags. These allow you to hunt anywhere in the state during the archery season. Application deadline is June 1.
3. Utah’s Paunsaugunt Mule Deer
Utah’s limited-entry mule deer units are legendary the Henry Mountains, the Book Cliffs, Dolores Triangle. But for consistency and opportunity, it’s hard to overlook the famed Paunsaugunt.
This southern Utah unit ranges from the timbered uplands just west of Bryce Canyon National Park west to the spectacular Pink and Vermillion Cliffs along the Arizona border. Because you’ll be bowhunting as early as mid August, you have a shot at whopper bucks in full velvet. And in much of the unit, you’ll find deer where you find water and green forage.
The challenge is drawing a tag, and if you want a realistic shot at the opportunity, you need to be accumulating preference points now. Last year nonresident bowhunters with 10 points drew the tag. Those with four points had a 1 percent chance of drawing.
Utah’s application deadline for limited-entry bucks is Jan. 31. A tag costs $563, but the good thing about the Beehive State is that you don’t have to cough up the money unless you actually draw.
4. Montana’s Missouri Breaks Bighorn Sheep
As long as impossible odds aren’t a deterrent, throw in for a bighorn sheep tag in Montana’s District 680. This is the Missouri River Breaks south of Havre, Mont., where rams routinely score north of 180 inches and in the last couple of years kegger rams in the upper 190s were shot.
While there’s no special season for bowhunters, there are so few tags here 30 either-sex tags for the herd that numbers around 450 sheep that archers can easily hunt in the same season and places with rifle hunters.
And the country is tailor-made for bowhunting. The sheep hang out on benches that drop into deep coulees, so hunters who use the terrain can easily work themselves into bow range.
The tough part of the hunt isn’t connecting on an animal. It’s pulling the tag. Last year nonresidents with a full six preference points had about one quarter of one percent drawing odds. It’s a little better for residents, who get 90 percent of the quota, but you should start applying and expect years of failure before you have a realistic shot at drawing. Permits cost $755 for nonresidents and the application deadline is May 1.
5. Idaho’s Clearwater Whitetails
It’s rare to find a Western state that manages its white-tailed deer for trophy bucks. Instead, these are generally general-tag opportunities where access and hunting ability are the tickets to wallhangers.
Idaho’s Clearwater River country is one of those spots. It’s relatively easy even guaranteed if you act quickly enough to score a tag, and much of the hunting is on public grounds. And, as the region¹s whitetail herd recovers from a blue-tongue outbreak in 2005, its trophy quality makes it a great destination for trophy bowhunters.
The whitetail season in this corridor that stretches generally between Lewiston in the west and the Montana border west of Missoula runs Aug. 30 through Sept. 30 for bowhunters. You won¹t be hunting bucks in the rut, but they¹re widely dispersed on the Clearwater National Forest and around Dworshak Reservoir out of Orofino, and spot-and-stalk, still hunting and stand hunting can all pay off here.
Deer tags cost $260, and hunters must ensure they buy a whitetail tag that gives them access to the best units, 8, 8A, 10, 10A and 12. The drawing deadline is June 5, but you can buy a deer tag starting in March.
And the best detail of all is that there¹s no rigorous drawing, a soothing consolation when you strike out on your low-odds permit in other states.
SIDEBAR
Drawing odds web site offers free information
Sifting through the mountains of data available for permit hunts can leave you with a brain throb and diminished interest in actually hunting a limited-quota opportunity.
But a web site created by a hardcore hunter has crunched the numbers for you and lets you pick hunting areas based on permit availability, season type and species.
It’s HuntersTrailhead.com, created by Utah archer and self-described "statistics nerd" Jon Crump. The free site allows prospective applicants to review drawing odds, success odds and preference point details for many Western states.
HuntersTrailhead has stats for Utah, Wyoming, New Mexico, Nevada, Montana and Idaho and Crump expects to have Colorado’s information online this winter.
How does Crump generate all the information, some of which isn’t even available in such a useful form from state agencies?
"I calculate the odds all myself," says Crump. "I take the data that each state puts out regarding applicants for each hunt. I have created several calculators and simulators that crunch the data and calculate the statistical odds."
The site requires no membership or payment. Crump makes money through the advertising of outfitters, who like the service because it puts them in touch with hunters who are pre-selected to hunt specific areas and seasons.
Contact Crump through the website,