It’s application and everybody is planning their hunts, me included. After listening to various podcasts, reading forum posts, and looking at draw stats it’s very clear that point creep is real and will only get worse in the future. I’m fairly young and have been in the points game for a short time and I have been cycling through my points every couple of years. It’s insane to see that a hunt that I did 4years ago in Wyoming for 1point guaranteed now requires 4 points. I will likely not be able to hunt that unit again in the near future nor do I want to wait that long.
So how do the states fix this and allow more people to cycle through their points? As I thought more about the situation I came up with an idea that I would implement if I had the power. Feel free to shoot holes in it but I would like some constructive ideas of how these draw systems should be improved.
Let’s take Colorado for example. It takes 20+ points to draw some units and anybody with less than that will likely never get to hunt top tier units. My suggestion would be to lock in everybody’s current preference point number today. There are about 13800 nonresident hunters that applied in the draw with over 10 points and about 550 were successful in the draw. This could be due to various reasons but it would take about 25 years for these folks to cycle through.
Now I am not saying to get rid of the points system completely, I think they should cap the amount of points that you can hold at a certain number for a certain species. For this case let’s say 10 points is the cap on elk. Anybody with less than 10 points will be able to accrue points until they reach 10 and then they will have to pay the preference point each year to keep those points. If you forget to apply or don’t want to pay the fee you go back to zero.
The next step would be to allow points to be averaged across the hunt group to help eliminate the point holders above 10 points. The state would continue to get their money, high point holders would still have the greatest odds of drawing the unit of their choice, and once the high point holders were out then the max points would be 10 and basically it would be a random draw for the highest demand units. There would be no incentive to keep accruing points because your odds don’t get any better. Over the long term the middle units would experience point creep, but would level out and everybody that stays in the game for at least ten years will have chance, albeit dismal, to draw the top tier units.
Obviously other species would have different preference point totals or systems but for deer, elk, and antelope this would even the playing field and eventually whether you’re 12 years and just leafally old enough to start getting points or 40 and just getting into the draw you are only 10 years away from being in the max point pool.
Thoughts?
So how do the states fix this and allow more people to cycle through their points? As I thought more about the situation I came up with an idea that I would implement if I had the power. Feel free to shoot holes in it but I would like some constructive ideas of how these draw systems should be improved.
Let’s take Colorado for example. It takes 20+ points to draw some units and anybody with less than that will likely never get to hunt top tier units. My suggestion would be to lock in everybody’s current preference point number today. There are about 13800 nonresident hunters that applied in the draw with over 10 points and about 550 were successful in the draw. This could be due to various reasons but it would take about 25 years for these folks to cycle through.
Now I am not saying to get rid of the points system completely, I think they should cap the amount of points that you can hold at a certain number for a certain species. For this case let’s say 10 points is the cap on elk. Anybody with less than 10 points will be able to accrue points until they reach 10 and then they will have to pay the preference point each year to keep those points. If you forget to apply or don’t want to pay the fee you go back to zero.
The next step would be to allow points to be averaged across the hunt group to help eliminate the point holders above 10 points. The state would continue to get their money, high point holders would still have the greatest odds of drawing the unit of their choice, and once the high point holders were out then the max points would be 10 and basically it would be a random draw for the highest demand units. There would be no incentive to keep accruing points because your odds don’t get any better. Over the long term the middle units would experience point creep, but would level out and everybody that stays in the game for at least ten years will have chance, albeit dismal, to draw the top tier units.
Obviously other species would have different preference point totals or systems but for deer, elk, and antelope this would even the playing field and eventually whether you’re 12 years and just leafally old enough to start getting points or 40 and just getting into the draw you are only 10 years away from being in the max point pool.
Thoughts?
