Making Sense of Hunting Tags and Licenses
This post is a continuation of a previous string of posts focusing on the state of Box to explain to the reader how permission is granted from the state game management agencies to individuals to pursue a game animal on a hunt within that state (i.e. Tags). We’ll first define Tags and Licenses, then we will continue the story of Mule Deer in Unit 1 of Box and finally, explain all the various methods state game agencies choose to permit hunters to purchase a Tag for a game species.
Definitions
I have found that folks new to hunting often get confused between two terms, license(s) and tag(s). To make matters worse, I have witnessed veteran outdoorsmen use these terms interchangeably, which only adds to the confusion. In this brief section, I will define the difference between a License and Tag.
License (Hunting, Fishing, etc.) - I believe the best place to start thinking about Licenses and Tags in terms of their hunting context is in levels of permission. A License is the first stop for any hunter along their journey to take a legal game animal in a state. The Hunting Licenses is the state’s way of vetting a potential hunter and verifying that they are in good standing to legally hunt game within that state. The requirements for obtaining a License varies by state, by Idaho requires potential hunters to attend and pass a hunters safety course, verifying that individual is prepared and knowledgeable. This is very similar to a drivers test that one would take in order to obtain a state drivers licenses. In both cases, an individual is proving, in some way, to the state their competency and ability to perform in certain scenarios (hunting, driving, etc.). Obtaining a hunting licenses does not permit a hunter to kill an animal… instead, it provides the hunter with the RIGHT to apply for, and purchase a hunting Tag.
Tag - A Hunting Licenses is unique only at the state level. One further layer down is a Tag. A Tag is what the state allocates out in very specific geographic regions and quantities that permits a hunter to go after a specific game species during a specific time period in a year with a specific weapon class. A Tag is the hunter’s legal permission to kill a game animal that the Tag is authorized for harvest. State game agencies will decide how to allocate tags to potential hunters utilizing one of the methods expanded on further in this article.
To clearly articulate with an example. During a calendar year, I only need to purchase one hunting licenses for the state of Idaho. With that purchase, that license allows me to buy a Tag for any of the big game species in Idaho. The Tag will be very specific, such as:
Species: Elk; Unit: Lolo Zone; Weapon: Archery; Dates: Sept 1-30
Species: Mule Deer; Unit: 39; Weapon: Archery; Dates: November 1-30
Both of these examples are different Tags but they are purchased under one single License (mine).
The Box Story Continued
Returning to the story of Box (Figure 1), the Box Fish & Game (BFG) department has decided that 15,000 mule deer need to be removed from Unit 1 during the calendar year with the help of hunters (see this post for the math). Because of this, BFG needs to figure out how many Tags to give out for Unit 1 within Box.
For those new to this system, it might seem that if 15,000 deer need to be removed from the landscape by hunters during the calendar year, that 15,000 tags should be allocated to those that want to hunt mule deer in Unit 1. Alas, it’s never that easy, but we will work to simplify the explanation by highlighting major contributors to the decision of how many tags to allocate.
There are a few historical considerations that game management agencies must look at when deciding how to set up a hunting season. The first was covered extensively in a previous post, but the population numbers and ecosystem health is a major contributor to this decision. Secondly, is historical hunter success rates. Hunter success rates is simply what percentage of hunters who have a tag harvest an animal in that year. Success rates can range from 5% (meaning only 5 out of 100 hunters who have a tag actually kill an animal) for some difficult archery elk hunts, all the way up to over 90% for an any weapon Pronghorn hunt. Using our example, if Unit 1 in Box has a historical hunter success rate of 50% for the entire mule deer hunting season, than BFG agents would likely make 30,000 tags available to potential hunters, assuming that only 50% of them will harvest an animal, which would achieve their goal of removing 15,000 deer from the landscape.
Additionally, state game agencies are trying to figure out how to best control the quantity of animals taken off of a landscape during a calendar year, there are usually TWO controllable variables that they can play with to achieve their objectives. The first variable is the number of Tags allocated, and the second variable is the length of the legal hunting season. The previous paragraph gave an example of state game agencies controlling the number of tags based on historic hunter success, but agencies could also shorten or lengthen the time of the legal hunt in order to facilitate less, or more, game animals harvested. To explain this, let’s say historically in a two week hunting season, 20,000 hunters have harvested 10,000 mule deer out of Unit 1. BFG, as previously mentioned, could allocate 30,000 tags this year instead of the historical practice of 20,000. However; let’s the landscape is crowded during that hunting season, and BFG worries about compromising the safety of hunters by allowing an additional 10,000 people on the landscape during the hunt. So instead, BFG decides to allocate 20,000 tags but instead of the season being two weeks long, they extend it to three weeks. By allowing the 20,000 tag holders an additional week to harvest animals, they are betting that they can get closer to their goal of removing 15,000 mule deer from the landscape versus the typical 10,000.
The beautiful state of Box
Tag Allocation Methods
Now that we’re clear about the differences between Licenses & Tags, and we understand that game agencies can modify the quantity of tags AND/OR the length of the season to facilitate harvest goals, the last thing to understand (and this is a big one), is how to legally obtain a tag.
This is a vitally important topic, because each state has their own rules, and new hunters often get overwhelmed by the complexity of the systems and it is easy to give up at this point when you’re so new to the sport. However; if you break the allocation process down to the four core methods below, it will allow you to navigate many different state’s systems without getting lost, and it will greatly increase the number of opportunities for Tag acquisition across various states.
The four principle manners in which tags are allocated are below. State-by-state, they may be called something different (i.e. Idaho calls their Random Draw a “Controlled Hunt”) but by understanding the principles behind the methods, you’ll be able to pick out what kind of strategy is required for obtaining a Tag within a given state. Throughout all of these explanations, it is assumed that an individual already has a Hunting License for the state in which they are applying for the tag. License comes first, Tags second.
Over-The-Counter - Over-the-Counter (OTC) tags are tags that anyone with a Hunting License has a right to purchase. Starting on the date of legal Tag sales, an individual could walk into any retailer (WalMart, Cabelas, Fish & Game agency, Gas Stations, online, etc.) that is legally authorized to sell hunting Tags and purchase a Tag for that game species and hunt. OTC hunts are the best option for someone looking to get into hunting, as they are relatively easy to obtain and you can be guaranteed a Tag year in and year out. There are two different types of OTC
Unlimited - An Unlimited OTC hunting Tag means that there are no limits on the quantity of tags sold during a calendar year for that specific hunt. This is the best option for someone planning a last minute hunt, as you can generally purchase a tag one afternoon and be hunting the species (legally) the very next morning. These types of Tags are available in units where population numbers are well above the threshold of healthy.
First come, first served - First come, first serve (FCFS) tags are tags that anyone can purchase, but there are a set quantity available for the year. When they sell out, that’s it for the year, no one else can purchase a tag for that hunt. There are FCFS OTC (yuck, acronyms) tags in Idaho that sell out in 9 minutes, and there are FCFS OTC tags that never reach their max quantity. For this type of allocation, the state agencies will set a quantity, say 100 tags for a specific hunt, and as soon as the 100th tag is sold, no one else is getting authorization to go hunt that species for the year.
Preference Points - Preference point allocation is a system where a hunter accumulates “points” for every year that they have applied for, but been unsuccessful in, obtaining a tag. A straight preference point allocation process begins with individuals that have the most points, gives them the tags first, and then goes down a list in descending order distributing tags until there are no tags left. And for those hunters who are towards the bottom of the list, and left without a tag, then they get another point tallied to their total and they can reapply for the tag next year.
This method deserves an example. Let’s say for a specific unit, there are 100 Tags the game agency needs to allocate. It uses a preference point model, and there are 10 individuals with 5 points (5 years of unsuccessful application), 20 with 4 points, 30 with 3 points, 40 with 2 points, and 50 with 1 point. There are also 100 new applicants (so zero points). Using a straight preference point model, the agency would start with the individuals with the highest number of points (5) and distribute the tags. Therefore, everyone with 5 points would get a tag, leaving 90 tags yet to be distributed. They would then move on to 4 point holders, all of whom get a tag in this example, and leave 70 tags remaining. After distributing to 3 point holders (30 of them), there are 40 tags remaining. Finally, the 2 point holders take the last 40 tags, and zero tags are left. In this example, if you had 0 or 1 preference points, you would not receive a tag, but would get an additional preference point. This means that next calendar year, those that had 1 point would have 2 and holders of zero points now have 1, bettering their odds of receiving a tag
Clearly, the allocation hardly every works so cleanly. Often, remaining tags need to be allocated between holders of the same number of points, and each state gets to decide how that “tie” is broken.
Random Draw - Random draws are much more straight forward than the Preference Point method. It is the classic, ‘everyone put your name into a hat’ scenario. Regardless of if you have been applying for a specific tag for 30 years or if this is your first year, everyone has the same odds of drawing that tag. Random Draws can be excruciatingly difficult or exhilarating, based on your luck. They can really expand the types of hunts that you go on if you’re smart about how you apply, as there are some extremely rare and valuable hunts that are straight random draws.
Weighted Draw (#2 & #3 Combined) - Finally, there is a method that combines the Preference Point system (which rewards loyalty and persistent application) with the luck of the Random Draw, which we’ll call the Weighted Draw. The weighted draw is still an ‘everyone put your name in the hat’ type situation, except if you have applied 30 years previously, you get to put your name in the hat 30 times, and if this is your first year applying, your name goes in once. There are variations to how states give weight (i.e. vary the probability of a draw) to their applicants, but this is a very simplified way of explaining the method.
In a Weighted Draw, the first time applicant still has a small chance at a tag, enough so to incentive new application to apply, but the draw does favor those that have been loyally applying to the tag for years, if not decades.
By understanding these four principle methods of Tag allocations, individuals can now understand every system that states employee for deciding who has the right to purchase a tag. There is nuance to every state, so it’s important to comb over their website and game laws, but in essence, all allocation methods can be traced back to these four systems. It should also be noted, that states may choose different allocation methods between species (say elk are OTC, deer are Random Draw) or they might even differentiate methods within a species (elk in the Lolo Zone of Idaho are FCFS OTC; elk in the Owyhee Zone of Idaho are Random Draw), but these nuances shouldn’t confuse or stop people from applying due to complexity.
To complete our story of Unit 1 mule deer in Box - being that a large number of mule deer need to be taken off of the landscape for the calendar year (15,000 as compared to 10,000 historically), BFG has decided to make the Unit 1 deer hunt a First Come, First Served OTC Tag with a maximum tag number of 20,000, but they will extend the season by a week to give hunters more opportunity to harvest an animal, hopefully increasing hunter success rates. This was done after considering the population & ecosystem health, the politics of the area, the safe number of hunters to have on the land and the historical success rates of the area.
It is obvious now that hunting tag allocation is, at best, an imperfect science. It is the hope of the author that at this point, a novice hunter could navigate a state game agency’s website to understand what tags are available to them and how they need to go about obtaining them. The best way to view it is as one big strategic game, so instead of getting frustrated by all the different language and nuance state to state, it becomes a strategic long game that has its origins traced back to the four principle allocation methods.
Happy hunting (and applying)
Kyle Zibrowski
