ImBillT
Well-known member
- Joined
- Oct 29, 2018
- Messages
- 3,886
The bonus point is like putting your name in the hat extra times. It’s not worth as much if you aren’t actually putting it in the hat though. The preference point actually gives you preference over anyone with fewer points than you. In UT they split the tags. In the preference portion of the draw, he who has the most points, gets the tag. In the bonus portion, everyone’s name goes into the hat. If you have zero points, your name goes in once. If you have five points, your name goes in six times.
Elk tags in UT are hard to come by. For some of the better units, if all you did was build points you would would probably never be guaranteed a tag. If you apply every year for twenty years, you have a good chance of drawing a good elk tag at least once, and a reasonable chance at doing it twice. If you have the money, by all means do it. If it keeps you from applying in a different state, then there are better options than UT. It’s really that simple. Either apply almost everywhere including UT, or focus your money on some other states. For states that use a point system, Wyoming gives a pretty good bang for the buck. You should be able to hunt elk there every 3-5 years, vs every 10-15 in UT.
Can you draw with zero points? Of course! Last year ten people with zero points drew limited entry elk tags. There were 2951 applicants with zero points, so that’s a .339%. There were nine applicants with twenty points that drew limited entry elk tags...but only twenty applicants had twenty points. That’s 45%. If you just buy the point, then twenty years from now, you can apply and have a 45% chance of drawing(assuming things stay the same, which they won’t, and actually 45% of those with 20pts drawing doesn’t mean they had a 45% chance. Calculating those odds would require me to actually do an awful lot of data compilation that I’m not interested in) OR you could go into the draw and let all of those odds compound. A simple example would be a unit in a state with no point system that always has ten tags and one hundred applicants. The odds of drawing this year are 10%. The odds of drawing at least once this year or next year would be 1-(.9X.9) or 19% over a ten year span you’d have a 65% chance of drawing at least once, and over a twenty year span an 88% chance. said another way, 12 of those 100 people would never draw a 10% hunt over a twenty year span. In UT getting points instead of going into the draw is not the worst thing in the early years because your odds with zero points are so low. But, by the time you have a few points, you’re giving up a lot of your already limited chances by not being in the drawing. Even then, there will be a lot of people who apply to UT for twenty years and never draw an elk tag. If it keeps you from hunting somewhere else, it’s a bad trade. If it has no bearing on what you do anywhere else, then by all means, go for it.
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