Caribou Gear

ID nonres sheep/Moose/Goat apps?

I wonder if you can accurately calculate Idaho’s NR draw odds for MSG. NR and Rs are drawn from the same tag pool. NRs can draw up to 10% but aren’t guaranteed any tags.

The steps are if a NR is drawn from the pool:
1. Has the 10% NR quota been met. (6 tags for 3,014 NR Sheep in 2022)
2. Are there tags available for the unit. (Number 1 percentage against unit draw odds which includes residents)

Once number 1 has been met, all NRs are out of the draw.

I think the true draw odds are way less than IDFG publishes on its website. Or it could be much better depending on what NR tags are drawn first. If 11 and 37 are drawn first, it eliminates a lot of NRs from the 10% pool.

I’m back to thinking it’s very hard to get accurate NR draw odds for Idaho MSG.
 
Last edited:
I think the true draw odds are way less than IDFG publishes on its website.
Yes, it is well established that Idaho GF draw odds are bunk. They tell you that 27L rocky sheep is 8% draw odds for NRs because 1 of 12 NRs drew in 2022. But no one could have known that an NR tag would have went to 27L that year until after it happened.

Toprut and others understand and correct for the problem you describe.
 
I wonder if you can accurately calculate Idaho’s NR draw odds for MSG. NR and Rs are drawn from the same tag pool. NRs can draw up to 10% but aren’t guaranteed any tags.

The steps are if a NR is drawn from the pool:
1. Has the 10% NR quota been met. (6 tags for 3,014 NR Sheep in 2022)
2. Are there tags available for the unit. (Number 1 percentage against unit draw odds which includes residents)

Once number 1 has been met, all NRs are out of the draw.

I think the true draw odds are way less than IDFG publishes on its website.
And way less than what tag application services want people to think
 
I may be wrong - The 10% max is always met because more than 10% NR apply. Moose looked to be about a 5% chance for NR with both sheep and goats being a little less than 1%. With total tags drawn being in the 90's, 9 NR sheep tags have been drawn in recent years.

My big decision - put in for sheep or goats? For residents the odds on many hunts are about 5%. Moose about 10%.
 
I may be wrong - The 10% max is always met because more than 10% NR apply. Moose looked to be about a 5% chance for NR with both sheep and goats being a little less than 1%. With total tags drawn being in the 90's, 9 NR sheep tags have been drawn in recent years.

My big decision - put in for sheep or goats? For residents the odds on many hunts are about 5%. Moose about 10%.
10% max for sheep wasn’t met in 2022. Only 6 NR tags from a pool of 78 tags. NR are also competing against R’s drawing all the tags before the 10% NR quota is met too.
 
Yes, it is well established that Idaho GF draw odds are bunk. They tell you that 27L rocky sheep is 8% draw odds for NRs because 1 of 12 NRs drew in 2022. But no one could have known that an NR tag would have went to 27L that year until after it happened.

Toprut and others understand and correct for the problem you describe.
That's not really how it works statistically. The odds weren't 8%. They just seem that way, but a NR had way less than 8% chance of pulling that tag.

All the numbers are basically in one big hat. They start pulling. When 10% is met for NR, they are supposed to stop counting those. Except last year they never stopped and informed an extra dozen NRs they had a sheep tag....oops.

This is why our unit 11 tag almost always goes to a NR....so many NRs put in it often one gets picked before a resident.
 
10% max for sheep wasn’t met in 2022. Only 6 tags from a pool of 78 tags.
9 NR sheep tags were drawn.... California and Rocky are clumped together for the 10%.

Percentage-wise, NR happened to do better for the Californias. NR drew 21% of the California bighorn tags.
 
9 NR sheep tags were drawn.... California and Rocky are clumped together for the 10%.

Percentage-wise, NR happened to do better for the Californias. NR drew 21% of the California bighorn tags.
Didn’t know they clumped sheep tags.
 
I’m back to thinking it’s very hard to get accurate NR draw odds for Idaho MSG.
Yes, it's very difficult to calculate the odds the way the 10% cap works. Toprut runs a bunch of draw simulations to get a good estimate of the odds, not sure what the other services do but they now get similar results. For bighorn sheep the odds are generally in the 0.2% to 0.7% range, depending on your unit choice.

In the past some hunting "advisory" services grossly overestimated your sheep chances, they have mostly corrected that now.
 
I respectfully disagree. Not that tough to calculate the odds. Idaho F&G website give you all the draw numbers.

Currently, nonresidents are limited to ≤10% of all bighorn sheep, moose and mt goat tags and not
more than 1 nonresident tag can be issued for controlled hunts with ≤10 tags (≤10% to nonresidents in hunts with >10 tags).
 
Last edited:
I respectfully disagree. Not that tough to calculate the odds. Idaho F&G website give you all the draw numbers.
True - a PhD level statistician should be able to get it absolutely correct. I think alot of these services employ mostly hobbyist statistician/hunters in most of these numbers jobs.

ID G&F clearly doesn't have a handle on this concept. Or, maybe they purposely present the % column in a misleading fashion to bump up applicant numbers. https://fishandgame.idaho.gov/ifwis/huntplanner/odds/

Currently, nonresidents are limited to ≤10% of all bighorn sheep, moose and mt goat tags and not
more than 1 nonresident tag can be issued for controlled hunts with ≤10 tags (≤10% to nonresidents in hunts with >10 tags).

The bolded part is the piece that makes this difficult to model. Sure, the services can claim to run exact simulations. But review LinkedIn for the guys involved here and you will find the founders and department heads involved with these services. They are just techie software hunter guys - not math/stats PhDs (or even BS/Masters).

But they are certainly doing a much better job today than they were just a few years ago.
 
I have applied for sheep the past couple years to increase my overall opportunities of drawing sheep tags in my life but I will be sitting out Idaho for this year and the next couple to allocate that money towards a sheep hunt.
 
Retraction of prev statement. in for sheep. Got around to realizing I already had the annual hunting livense paid for whne I snagged an elk tag Dec 1st to ninrefundabke cost just for sheep app is more “reasonable”.
 
Last edited:
GOHUNT Insider

Latest posts

Forum statistics

Threads
111,061
Messages
1,945,465
Members
35,001
Latest member
samcarp
Back
Top