The day tag results come out, there’s always elation (Yay! I finally got my _ tag!), sadness (Bummer. Another year not chasing antelope.), and confusion (How the heck did a unit go from 100% draw odds to 10% draw odds???).
I won’t belabor the point Big Fin has made much more eloquently than I can in the past, which is, if we only focus on the pie that’s left, instead of growing the pie, we’re all playing a zero-sum game. There are a ton of people on this site that devote substantial time and monetary resources to conservation efforts, and I can’t thank them enough.
But because there are so many new people to this forum (many of whom I try to help as best I can with my limited knowledge, as many of you did for me several years ago), I thought maybe a general discussion of what the GoHunt effect is in the context of the antelope draw might be useful, as specifically shown by everyone’s current favorite “what the heck happened there” example, and that is, Unit 69 non-resident doe/fawn antelope tags.
In 2019, there were 167 doe/fawn tags in that unit against only 83 non-resident applicants. That makes it a 100% draw unit in that year (Period. Even if every 1st choice applicant requested two doe tags, there would still have been one left over, and in fact we know it was 100% because there were leftover tags in that unit in 2019).
But, and this is the big caveat, if you just look back in time one more year, to 2018, what you see is that there were 251 first choice applicants (there were also only 78 tags available that year). So in that year, at best, your odds of getting that doe tag were only 31% (78/251). And the real odds were lower because I’m sure some of those applications requested two tags.
In other words, the people going into the 2019 draw (which ended up being 100% for this tag) THOUGHT they only had a 31% (or less) chance.
This is the GoHunt/Information effect. People applying for a 2019 tag saw that their odds were not good (when there are much better doe tag odds elsewhere) and chose not to apply for unit 69 and focused on other high odds units. Fast forward to 2019, where the draw odds tell you it’s a 100% unit for a lot of accessible land, and bingo. It’s still not quite a full explanation for why it went from 83 first choice applications to 1264 (not a typo) first choice applicants, but still...
This, to my mind, is both the blessing and the curse of the amount of information that out’s there now (and by the way, Wyoming has been publishing this data for a long time in an accessible way, it’s just that GoHunt makes it even easier for everyone to digest). The fact is, each year, some units will have much better draw odds than before because people look at last year’s odds and don’t like their chances, so they don’t apply. Then some units, like this one, will go from gettable to a really long shot overnight. Winner and losers.
But to parrot Randy’s point, if every year there’s just a general bemoaning of how the odds are getting worse and the points are creeping, and no real action taken to increase and protect the resource itself, my fear is that some day soon, hunting will be exclusively a rich person’s game (those that can afford to hire outfitters and pay for private land tags). And as I am not a rich man, I again say thanks to all those who are doing what they can to help grow the pie.
I won’t belabor the point Big Fin has made much more eloquently than I can in the past, which is, if we only focus on the pie that’s left, instead of growing the pie, we’re all playing a zero-sum game. There are a ton of people on this site that devote substantial time and monetary resources to conservation efforts, and I can’t thank them enough.
But because there are so many new people to this forum (many of whom I try to help as best I can with my limited knowledge, as many of you did for me several years ago), I thought maybe a general discussion of what the GoHunt effect is in the context of the antelope draw might be useful, as specifically shown by everyone’s current favorite “what the heck happened there” example, and that is, Unit 69 non-resident doe/fawn antelope tags.
In 2019, there were 167 doe/fawn tags in that unit against only 83 non-resident applicants. That makes it a 100% draw unit in that year (Period. Even if every 1st choice applicant requested two doe tags, there would still have been one left over, and in fact we know it was 100% because there were leftover tags in that unit in 2019).
But, and this is the big caveat, if you just look back in time one more year, to 2018, what you see is that there were 251 first choice applicants (there were also only 78 tags available that year). So in that year, at best, your odds of getting that doe tag were only 31% (78/251). And the real odds were lower because I’m sure some of those applications requested two tags.
In other words, the people going into the 2019 draw (which ended up being 100% for this tag) THOUGHT they only had a 31% (or less) chance.
This is the GoHunt/Information effect. People applying for a 2019 tag saw that their odds were not good (when there are much better doe tag odds elsewhere) and chose not to apply for unit 69 and focused on other high odds units. Fast forward to 2019, where the draw odds tell you it’s a 100% unit for a lot of accessible land, and bingo. It’s still not quite a full explanation for why it went from 83 first choice applications to 1264 (not a typo) first choice applicants, but still...
This, to my mind, is both the blessing and the curse of the amount of information that out’s there now (and by the way, Wyoming has been publishing this data for a long time in an accessible way, it’s just that GoHunt makes it even easier for everyone to digest). The fact is, each year, some units will have much better draw odds than before because people look at last year’s odds and don’t like their chances, so they don’t apply. Then some units, like this one, will go from gettable to a really long shot overnight. Winner and losers.
But to parrot Randy’s point, if every year there’s just a general bemoaning of how the odds are getting worse and the points are creeping, and no real action taken to increase and protect the resource itself, my fear is that some day soon, hunting will be exclusively a rich person’s game (those that can afford to hire outfitters and pay for private land tags). And as I am not a rich man, I again say thanks to all those who are doing what they can to help grow the pie.
