I guess the reality is that you have to consider what a person's goal is when it comes to hunting. Does a guy want an opportunity to go on a special hunt with a chance to take a trophy animal? Or is he simply looking for an good chance to put some meat in the freezer? Pretty much, any zone in Idaho offers a "reasonable" chance at doing both, but there are those units which (as some of us remember used to be hunted on a general tag) that provide an exceptional experience.
It's easy to say that this tag has 3% odds, 10% odds or even 25% odds of drawing the tag. But really, what do those odds mean? 3% is 1 hunter out of 33 will draw a tag, 10%, one hunter out of ten will draw, 25%, one in four. Looking at the stats for last year, there were 57 antlered deer tags in the rifle draw. 8 of those tags had better than 1/5 draw odds (but not much better); 11 hunts had odds between 10% and 19% odds of drawing; 11 hunts had odds between 6% and 9% odds of drawing and 21 hunts had 5% or less odds of drawing. And of course, those 21 hunts had reasonable access into a zone where you might expect to find trophy animals. The other zones had either worse access to huntable land or perhaps less desirable trophies which is why fewer people were interested in drawing the tag.
I believe that anyone who hopes to one day draw a decent tag has never really considered how unlikely their chances are of doing that. Let's go middle of the road and take a hunt with 15% odds of drawing. That's basically 1/7 chances of drawing. Take seven pieces of paper, with a different number on each one, assign one number to yourself. Put them in a bag and shake them up, draw one. If it's not your number, put it back in the bag, shake it up and draw one. Repeat this until you number comes up. How many times does it take to draw your number?
Certainly some numbers will be drawn on the first few draws, but most will take many, many more than that to be picked. Now, consider a 1/33 chance. Not likely that any given hunter will draw those zones, especially considering that one's entire hunting career might only be 40 years. Sure, SOMEONE will draw those tags. By choosing no type of preference system to reward longevity in the sport, a hunter is conceding that they will most likely never draw a tag that they would love to have.
As each year passes and more hunters move into this state, more zones will be turned into controlled hunt zones and those that don't will become more crowded. so regardless of what you did 5 or 10 years ago, your chances of doing that again have diminished.
No one wants Colorado's system or even Utah's but why can't a system be designed to increase a person's chances without preventing a new hunter's chances? Nevada offers a small portion of the number of tags that Idaho offers, yet hunters get to hunt the "in demand" hunts much more often than they do Idaho's hunts. Personally, I like Oregon's system. 75% of tags are based on preference points. 25% of the tags are based on random draw which anyone can draw. The 25% of tags are drawn after the regular draw which means those tags will means that those tags will most certainly go to residents as the non-res quotas have been reached in the preference point draw. And there isn't any reason that a different system cannot be designed to allow for any other needs. Factor in a different system for exceptionally high demand tags by making them once in a lifetime tags for instance, eliminate tag transfers which have ever grandma and grandpa applying so they can transfer the tag to a family member and so on. Just by having the dfg considering a hunter's first AND second choice before moving on to the next applicant would be a big improvement.
And lastly, I believe that a state should only consider the opinions of the resident hunters when designing the system. It is my belief that a hunter should live in, pay taxes in and support the economy of the state in order to benefit from those things that the state has to offer.
