Most people saying anything negative about applying in NV are simply saying that it should be toward the bottom of your list if you are not a NV resident and can’t afford to apply in all the states you would like to hunt.
You seem to be a resident. Your price to apply is far lower than for a NR and your odds of drawing a tag are far higher. When you drew your first archery bull tag in 2005, the highest point holders had twelve points, or 145 random numbers. Today the highest point holding resident has twenty-six points or 677 random numbers. The situation will continue to compound year after year. A hunter with 26pts is 677 times more likely to draw a sufficiently low number than a new applicant. Next year it will be 730 to 2, followed by 785 to 5, 842 to 10, 901 to 17. That’s only comparing one applicants relative odds to another’s, but each year the number of applicants with more than X points increases as well. You said it yourself. All they’re doing is giving the point holder more chances to draw a low number. This year they’re giving him 676 more chances. There will be an unavoidable point in the future at which someone your age, who started applying at age twelve, will have 41 points, or 1681 more chances to draw a low number than someone just starting out. It’s unavoidable because the number of applicants sufficiently exceeds the number of tags to prevent clearing of all high point holders for perpetuity. With each passing year you’ll see the average number of points held by tag holders increase, and you’ll see the average age of tag holders increase. That is until it breaks under its own weight, or hunting becomes sufficiently unpopular.
Point systems do not increase or decrease opportunity. They skew the distribution of opportunity, and the skewness increases with each passing year.
If anyone has a strong desire to hunt NV, then they should apply, because that’s the only way they’ll draw a tag. On the other hand, if they simply want to go hunting as often as possible, they need to consider whether applying in NV will result in their inability to apply somewhere else. If so, then NV is statistically a bad call. If it won’t prevent them from applying in the other states they want to apply in, then why not add NV? You apply in five states. It’s probable that even if you were not a NV resident, the money you would spend each year applying in NV would not prevent you from applying somewhere else that you want to hunt. For me on the other hand, if I added NV to my list of applications, I would have to remove another state(or two). I have to ask myself if the current situation in NV is worth dropping another state that I’m more likely to draw a tag in.
For a resident elk hunter there are five archery hunts and one rifle hunt above 1% draw odds with zero points, and the highest is 14%. For a non-resident, the highest draw odds elk hunt for zero points is .19%.
