Overview

Transcript for Big Game Draw in Arizona

Speaker: So, you want to hunt big game in Arizona? First, you need a valid hunting license. Then, you need to apply for a hunt permit tag. Then you have to win the lottery—well sort of.

Amber Munig, Arizona Game & Fish Department: To hunt big game in Arizona, most of our hunts are a limited draw, and so you have to submit an application to be drawn for that particular tag.

Speaker: Amber Munig, the big game management supervisor for Game & Fish, is here to help us navigate the draw process, which can be tricky at times.

Amber Munig: Our draw is complex in Arizona, but it’s because we have a limited resource and high demand for those limited resources. And so in order to make it fair for everybody to draw a tag at some point, we’ve put these restrictions on how the draw operates.

Speaker: Now, before we get into how the draw works, let’s start with the basics like the hunt permit tag. You need one of these for most of Arizona’s big game hunts. There are dozens of hunts to choose from—organized by species, weapon type, hunting area, and characteristics that make an animal legal to harvest. Now, the odds of drawing a tag vary from hunt to hunt.

Amber Munig: If you’re applying for our deer hunts on the Arizona strip, which are units 13A and 13B, the odds are much less than 1%.

Speaker: It comes down to supply and demand—how many tags are available and how many hunters apply for those tags.

Amber Munig: If you choose hunts that are not as high demand, then those draw odds improve. And of course, if you’re looking for something like antlerless elk, then you have a pretty good chance—oftentimes, a 50% chance of drawing those tags.

Speaker: Each hunt in Arizona is assigned a unique number to use when applying for a tag. On your application, you may select up to five hunt numbers in order of preference. Then, after you submit a properly completed application on time and with the required payment, you are entered in the draw. Your application will be assigned a computer-generated random number. It’s the lowest numbers that get the first shot at a tag, and you get extra chances to be issued a low random number if you have bonus points.

Amber Munig: As you apply for a hunt and you’re unsuccessful in drawing a tag, you get awarded a bonus point. So every time you’re unsuccessful for that species, you start to accumulate bonus points. And the bonus points give you extra chances of getting low random numbers in the draw, which improves your odds of drawing that tag.

Speaker: Your bonus points accrue over time until you’re finally drawn for a hunt.

Amber Munig: You can also get a bonus point if you complete Arizona’s Hunter Education Course and that’s a permanent bonus point. It applies to all species. The other way is if you have applied for a species for five consecutive years, you’re issued what’s called a loyalty bonus point. That point isn’t cumulative—it’s either present or absent. So if you end up missing a year, it goes away.

Speaker: You may also use the hunt application to basically buy a bonus point instead of entering the draw. Now, that we’re familiar with permit tags, hunt numbers, and bonus points, let’s take a look at how Arizona’s Big Game Draw process works.

Amber Munig: Our draw has three different passes to it or phases to the draw. The first pass is what we call our 20% bonus point pass.

Speaker: This first phase of the draw awards 20% of all available tags to applicants with the highest number of bonus points.

Amber Munig: Let’s use elk for an example. If there are hundreds total tags that we’re issuing for a hunt number, 20 of those will be issued during the bonus pass of our draw. Let’s say there are 22 maximum points for elk. We pull up all applications with 22 points. Each of those applications is issued a random number.

The lowest random number is the one that comes up first. That application gets their first choice. We go to the next lowest random number and look at their first choice. If a tag is available, they get that choice.

If there’s not a tag available, we look automatically at their second choice. If there’s a tag available there, they receive it. If not, their whole application goes back in the pool for the next phase of our draw, and we go through each application this way until we’ve gone through everybody who has 22 bonus points.

If we haven’t issued the entire 20% of those tags in this bonus pass, then we drop down to the next number, which is 21. We do the same thing looking at their first choice, looking at their second choice. Then, we’ll drop down to the next lowest number and the next lowest until we’ve issued the entire 20% in this pass.

Once that 20% is gone, then we go into the second phase of our draw. This is where it becomes truly a random draw—more of a lottery. We’re issuing the remaining 80% of the tags here. You get a random number for your application, and you get a random number for each bonus point that you have. So if I have 10 bonus points, I’m getting 11 random numbers—one for my application and one for each bonus point.

We look at an application’s first choice, issue the tag if it’s available. If it’s not, then we automatically look at the second choice. If neither choice is available, which means that all tags for that hunt have been issued, that application goes back in the bucket for the third pass of our draw, which is where we look at the third, fourth, and fifth choice on a hunt application.

Speaker: So that’s Arizona’s big game draw process. It’s the same for non-Arizona residents, except nonresidents are limited to no more than 10% of all available big game tags. The 10% cap pertains to each individual hunt for most species except bighorn sheep and bison where the cap is applied to all hunts combined.

Amber Munig: And that’s because there’s so few tags offered for bighorn sheep and buffalo in the state. Again, I do want to emphasize that the tags for nonresidents aren’t guaranteed. It’s just up to 10%.

Speaker: And only half of that 10% may be issued in the first phase of the draw.

Amber Munig: So in a hunt that has 100 tags, 10 of them are available to nonresidents to be drawn. Five of the 10 can be issued in the bonus parts of our drawer, so that’s where we look at max bonus points. And the remainder, the remaining five may be issued in the second phase of our draw.

Speaker: Arizona’s big game draw is designed to give everyone a chance to enjoy the thrill and the privilege of hunting the state’s big game species. Good luck next time you put in for the draw!

On screen: Arizona Game & Fish logo