PJ DelHomme – Okayest Media Contributor
I’ve played the tag lottery enough not to care anymore. In the last couple of years, I’ve been more excited to draw an extra doe tag than anything else. How can this be? What kind of hunter wouldn’t want to hunt for the biggest bucks, bulls, and rams?
‘Twas the night before Montana’s limited-entry tag draw deadline, when all through the house, not a creature was stirring, except for me in the basement sitting in front of the computer. Before me on my screen, in all its glory, was 15 years’ worth of playing the points game—13 points for elk, 10 points for sheep, moose, and goat.
I halfheartedly looked through the regs, thinking about where to apply. Then, I lost all interest and motivation. I closed the laptop and went to bed. I am what they call a quitter. And I’m okay with that.
What are Draw Tags?
Most states manage consumable wildlife like big game for residents and revenue. Tags and licenses generate money to keep the lights on and manage wildlife resources and their habitat.
Where I live in Montana, managers set aside some hunting units for opportunity, meaning I can hunt for a bull elk every year. In other units, the state offers a very limited number of tags for bulls, which means it’s a coveted trophy area. For those units, there is a high demand for a finite resource, which means not everyone gets a tag. In fact, the odds of drawing some units are less than one percent.
It’s not just Montana. States across the West (and a growing number in the East) have created various lotteries, preference point systems, bonus points, auction tags, landowner tags, and other ways to make hunters feel lucky. Some tags are sold to the highest bidder and come with special privileges. Other tags are truly the luck of the draw.
A Booming Tag Industry
The demand for any tag that’s not over-the-counter is so great that tag consultant companies have sprouted to help hunters navigate the morass of applications, dates, fees, and regulations. My friend Robert Hannenman is a tag consultant for Huntin’ Fool. He draws tough tags for himself and his family every season because that’s his job. To be fair, he’s also a city firefighter. Huntin’ Fool is certainly not the only tag service/consultant business out there.
Thanks to these tag services, more hunters than ever are throwing their names into the draws across a dozen states. They’re playing the odds on a much greater scale than some schmuck like me who just kind of figured out how to play the tag game in his own state. I like to think of myself as a do-it-yourselfer, but Montana’s hunting regulations get more complicated every year. Unless you like spending money on disappointment, you really do need help from someone who knows what they’re doing.
What Happens If You Draw?
Before throwing in the tag towel, I had mixed emotions about drawing a fancy tag, which, I admit, sounds dumb. I get only a handful of days to hunt each season, and they typically aren’t in a row. Life is wild right now with careers, kids, dog, chores—you name it. Hunting doesn’t pay the bills, but it occasionally fills the freezer. What would I do if I drew a Rocky Mountain bighorn tag for a hunt five hours away?
I’ve heard horror stories from good friends who have drawn “slam dunk” tags, posted their good fortune on social media, and then felt the collective weight of their hunter friends, all wondering why they couldn’t fill that tag. Their first mistake was posting it online or telling anyone. Even if you told no one, there is still pressure to fill a once-in-a-lifetime tag with nothing short of a record-book animal. I just don’t need that in my life.
The Coup de Draw
Because I’m a quitter, I’d like to end this on a pity party. For more than a decade, I put in to hunt one unit where I used to live near Bozeman. It was a place I knew well, having seen plenty of elk there, yet only five tags are dolled out for this area each season. The odds of me drawing that tag in 2023 were around three percent with a dozen points.
To be fair, some people do draw “impossible” tags, like hunting megacelebrity Steven Rinella. Earlier this year, I tuned into the latest MeatEater episode to watch Rinella, a fellow Montana resident, hunting the very unit of my dreams. Not only did he pull this miracle tag, but he filmed it, too. The episode has been viewed 1.7 million times in just six months. If I were a bigger person, I’d be happy for him.
Quick disclaimer: I appreciate what Rinella has done for hunting. He and Randy Newberg are incredible ambassadors for hunting. But when I realized where Rinella was hunting, it felt like a straight kick to the gonads.
“A lot of people will say that this is the best elk hunting opportunity in the whole state,” Rinella says. “This is the first time ever in my life, in Montana, that I’ve ever drawn a limited-entry unit,” he goes on to say. “I’d say it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, but it’s probably like a once-in-two-lifetime opportunity.”
Yeah, no shit. The odds of drawing that unit were already dismal. I can’t wait to see how many apply for it in 2025. I do know that there will be one less applicant.
If there is one upside to this cathartic rant, it’s that my fellow hunters will have one less hunter’s hopes and dreams to compete with. Consider this my gift. I sincerely hope my fellow hunters decide not to bother applying for antlerless whitetail permits, for which I actually have a 1 in 3 chance of drawing. Those are odds I can live with.