WY Unit 75- GoHunt was wrong?!?! (Maybe it was me...)

[adamjcook]

My buddy and I applied on a party tag for non resident special tags last season to unit 75, we had 8 bonus points together (average to 4 ea) and I did research for weeks to maximize our chances of really good ground and great goat potential. GoHunt still shows 100% draw odds for this tag, but we didn’t draw. Did I miss something with the party tag application or did point creep just get us? If so, are there similar good options around for non resident regular tags now that we will have an average of 5 points each? No more non resident special applications for me...

 

[pointingdogsrule]

According to Wyo game and fish....... 60% drew with 4 points in unit 75. (special non-resident).

good luck to all
the dog

 

[fishing4sanity]

As pointingdog pointed out (no pun intended, until after I typed it out) in 2017 at 4 points it was 60%, in 2016 it was 100% until you got to 3 points. I'm guessing your research and perhaps GoHunt's was based on 2016 odds. I got caught in the same boat in a different unit. Not sure if it's point creep or change in tag numbers. I'm most likely going to try the same app this year and hope it works for 2018.

 

[Topgun 30-06]

I don't use those other kind of services when you can just go on the G&F website for free and get the actual draw odds for anything you want.

 

[375H&H]

I don't use those other kind of services when you can just go on the G&F website for free and get the actual draw odds for anything you want.

Exactly.

 

[Flatrock]

I've had a few issues with gohunt's draw odds. Their screener doesn't seem to always give accurate draw odds.

 

[wytex]

Get your info right from the source, Wyoming Game and Fish Department.

 

[WapitiBob]

You're getting odds from the prior years drawing, which, without the number of apps in the individual point pools, you're spinning your wheels trying to determine odds for the upcoming draw. The odds for a hunt could have been 100% in 2017 because they fillled every app in a point pool, but if there are 200 apps in the next lower point pool and 10 tags, there is no way you'll have 100% odds the next year; with the usual caveat that the apps need to stay the same. I believe gohunt uses trends in place of posting point pool numbers.

 

[Schaaf]

Too bad you didn’t have it in 2016. I killed a good buck in there that year

 

[Okbow87]

With gohunt you have to keep in mind that the info it is giving you isn't a prediction for this years draw, it is the results from last years draw. They are getting ready to update all the draw odds for this new 2018 application season, and they will all be the draw results from 2017.

One way you can use it to semi predict the draw odds would be too look at the drawing trends function and see how much the point increase has been for a particular hunt over the last few years. If you see that the unit has taken about another .5 point for the last 4 years to be 100% draw and the unit was 100% with 4 points in 2017, it would be reasonable to expect it to take 4.5 to be 100% for 2018. I haven't looked at it, that's just an example. A lot of times I will use the filtering to find units I am think I will be interested in and get an idea of the points needed, then check the Wyoming game and fish site to get the exact number for the year prior.

 

[LuketheDog]

Nobody knows what the odds for the upcoming season will be in a given unit, you just have to look a little deeper at the data trends...

 

[LopeHunter]

2018 will see significantly worse odds in upper tier deer and elk units as the recent price hikes in Wy will have hunters sitting on the sidelines for over a decade realize the cost to just build points and the cost to buy the tag just went up. Would you trust a G&F that waited until after the Buy a Point window closed to start the publicity campaign about the new price structure? Sure, the information was out there, just not on the Buy a Point page.

Anyway, the price increases just made it a lot more expensive to build points across the board if you were dialed in on several species as is the case for lots of hunters. Thousands of applicants that just sat around buying a deer or elk point and happy to be in the Max point pool will be submitting an application and they are not going after the 5 point units. Odds will get worse and eventually hunters that bought points for over a decade will realize they are a long way from getting that primo tag they thought was waiting for them. They will slide down just as Colorado saw happen and the downward cascade effect will accelerate point creep in the mid-tier units. Low end units will still churn rather quickly but still might become a once every 5 year sort of deal.

There just are not enough primo tags to quickly clear out all the point builders that are going to jump into submitting applications. Welcome to the new Colorado, er, new normal.

 

[Big Fin]

Nobody knows what the odds for the upcoming season will be in a given unit, you just have to look a little deeper at the data trends...

Jackpot. ^^^

All published odds are based on prior year results. There is no predictive model out there. I have just about every draw odds and research service known to man. I want to see what they are all doing and what they are recommending. I also know which of those can sway things a certain direction based on what they recommend or how they present their "best odds we can give without extensive cost." The reason I ended up with goHUNT and use them as my reliable source is that they have the best odds, by a long stretch. They put a ton of money into getting those odds correct, and it shows when compared to how others present odds.

In simple states, such as Wyoming, you can easily get the same information by looking at the state published information. When you get to states like, AZ, NM, NV, things get nearly impossible. Even with the most accurate odds, they are not predictive, only historic.

An example of history needing some analysis is when a world record bull gets arrowed in a unit in Montana in 2016, and the elk tag odds to go in the crapper for 2017. Same as in Wyoming for antelope and deer when the brutal winter of 2016-17 was over. For 2017, a ton of people moved their deer and antelope applications to central, southern, or eastern Wyoming in hopes they would have better hunting than what remained in the hard hit areas of Western Wyoming. As a result, it was harder to draw those central/southern/eastern units than in the past. If Wyoming escapes bad winters going forward, expect applicants to start migrating back to the western side of the state where there is more public land and some great hunting.

Those are examples that cannot be predicted based on history, rather requiring some assumptions of hunter responses to certain events. What Okbow mentions below is also a good point.

With gohunt you have to keep in mind that the info it is giving you isn't a prediction for this years draw, it is the results from last years draw. They are getting ready to update all the draw odds for this new 2018 application season, and they will all be the draw results from 2017.

One way you can use it to semi predict the draw odds would be too look at the drawing trends function and see how much the point increase has been for a particular hunt over the last few years. If you see that the unit has taken about another .5 point for the last 4 years to be 100% draw and the unit was 100% with 4 points in 2017, it would be reasonable to expect it to take 4.5 to be 100% for 2018. I haven't looked at it, that's just an example. A lot of times I will use the filtering to find units I am think I will be interested in and get an idea of the points needed, then check the Wyoming game and fish site to get the exact number for the year prior.

Here is another example of how you need to do some of your own extrapolation to predict point creep or other trends in applications. Let's assume there were 20 tags last year and 18 got filed at the 4-point pool, with the remaining 2 filled at the 3-point pool. Let's assume there were 39 people in that 3-point pool. Odds are that in the following year, the remaining 37 people in the 3-point pool will apply again, thinking they are a lock for the tag in this new year, given they have 4 points. Well, if there are 37 people who moved up to 4 points and only 20 tags, 17 of them are not going to draw at 4 points. You can gather that information in some states, even in Wyoming in some instances.

Another dynamic that is going to start hitting Wyoming much harder is how many people have been just buying points, not even applying for tags and thus don't show up in the historic results. With the price increases many of them will cash their points this year. And, as many folks get to a higher point level, they get "off the sidelines" and start actually applying for units, further complicating the example I showed above.

I always look at the point pool I was in "last year," not the point pool I will be in this year. I can then see how many of us at my point pool are coming forward this year. That gives me a better indication of what will happen than if I assume the point levels to draw and the size of each point pool stays the same every year, something we know does not stay constant.

I also have spreadsheets that track the trends of every state that has random draw odds, even if only some of the tags are random. If you do that, you would be surprised to see how often there are predictable patterns by applicants over the course of many years. Mrs. Fin thinks I have better things to do, but I am sure I have drawn a few tags by watching what others did over the course of years and using those behaviors to determine where I will apply that year.

 

[WapitiBob]

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