Point creep is going to be real this year in Colorado with these season dates. This is going to affect residents and NR alike in being able to draw tags. Unless you have 5pp or more I would not plan on drawing a tag. Unless you are you are going to use your 5pp on a GMU that takes 0-2pp that is the only way I see it happening. I could be wrong. I hope I'm wrong. Time will tell.
The reason I say this is due to the fact there are 34,263 hunters that have preference points ranging from 5-32pp. This is according to the 2020 deer draw recap report. There could be a great number of hunters in that range that for whatever reason did not apply in 2020. They are likely going to apply in 2021 though. This group of hunters, especially the ones with 10-20pp, are going to dictate what happens to those of us under 5pp. They are not all going to apply for the same high point units. They will be cashing in their points on units that take significantly less than the points they have.
According to the 2020 deer draw recap report there are 131,834 hunters with 1pp or more for the 2021 season. Like I said above 34,263 have 5pp or better. So there are 97,571 hunters with 4pp or less.
For reference there were only 100,687 tags available for the 2020 deer draw. Of those there were 65,756 that got drawn for their first choice. There were 13,851 that went in 2nd/3rd/4th choice. For a total of 79,607 tags issued. The rest went to the landowner draw and secondary draw.
Now back to the first choice draw of 65,756 tags. There were 30,812 hunters that had 1pp or more. Meaning there were 34,944 hunters had 0pp. That means there are roughly 30,812 tags available that required preference points.
Again there are 34,263 hunters with 5-32pp THAT WE KNOW OF and 97,571 with 1-4pp! Competing for 30,812 tags that required points.
Just going to have to sit back and see where the dust settles and hope we get lucky on a tag.