LAST EDITED ON Apr-14-15 AT 04:26PM (MST)[p]You can apply for each sub species of bighorn sheep, but only either ram or ewe for each subspecies.
Page 12 explains it a little more. Page 19 just clarifies for Ram/Ewe questions. Basically you can apply for 1 category for each subspecies, has been like that since forever. I don't know why it reads so confusing in the booklet, it never was that way, but I just applied and no rejection, or in years past.
In regards to the OP.
You have to understand that you can draw any time in NV, so building points is kind of useless, as there is no guarantee that you will actually draw, and no points does not mean you won't draw. I am buying points for elk right now, not because I feel I will have a guarantee later, but because I just don't feel like hunting elk right now, and I want to make my odds as good as possible when I do apply. Even for cows, so I just buy the points, but I know that when I do apply it doesn't mean I will absolutely draw. For cows though, I can pretty much pick any area at this point and bet on a tag in the fall - I have 5 points including the point I just bought.
If you put an easy draw hunt first, all the time, then you will draw easy to draw units and never the harder units that you put after the first choice. You are all over the place in your hunts. You have early migratory herds, resident low population herd, low density migration herd, and all different season dates. Some are arguably better trophy areas than others.
If you put area 7 down as your first choice for deer, you will be hunting deer about 2-3 out of 5 years or so. If you put 194,196 as your first choice all the time, you might wait 10 years or better between tags. Also if you put hard to draw areas first and taper it off to saw area 10 archery, you will hunt deer every year but at least have a shot at a good area, though rare, every year. If you just apply for hard areas, such as 24, 23, 22, 194, 196, etc., then you will be waiting for a long time for a tag. And you burn your points when you draw a tag, though I think there was something recently about getting rid of that if you get a tag in the second or leftover pool.
As for the elk, you also did the same thing where you put arguably some of the better higher quality and tougher to draw hunts after some of the lesser quality and easier to draw hunts, at least by looking at the numbers from the bonus points information and draw odds on the NDOW website. Keep in mind though, that because of they way they go through all of your choices before moving to the next person, the draw odds aren't perfect, so you have to look at the bonus point data along side the draw odds information. The quality statement, particularly for elk can be found there also, as they have the antler length and age measurements for reported elk as well.
Big horn sheep (desert)you kind of did the same. If you want to hunt sheep in this lifetime, apply for the units which have smaller sheep on average. If you want a booner, you are going to wait - a really long time. I apply for a particular area that has good draw odds because I want to hunt sheep and get a mature ram, score be damned.
California sheep odds suck all the way around, so you just have to pick the areas the suit the way you can hunt. I have not desire to hunt wilderness, so I apply for areas that have limited amounts of wilderness.
