How do you choose a unit for NR Idaho elk

[HighUintas]

I live/hunt in Utah and im considering hunting in Idaho for elk next year. I've never hunted the west as a non-resident, I'm very unfamiliar with the process of picking out a place to hunt where I've never been.

I'm wanting to either rifle or muzzleloader hunt and am fine with shooting antlerless. I want maximum chance to fill my tag, so bull or cow is fine. I live near salt lake, so staying out of the panhandle to shorten the drive is important.

I looked through some units on the IDFG site, looked at success rates, etc and I'm looking at the beaverhead elk zone, but not sure. It's the first place that caught my eye.

If you have some general info, warnings, things I should definitely know about that zone, please PM me. I plan on calling IDGF to ask about it too.

How do you guys go about picking a place for the first time? Are there any primary strategies you use? Just go off a list of priorities?

 

[realunlucky]

Thing about Idaho is it's a shit show on how you get in the queue and what's left when you actually got in and go to check out.

Good luck

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[WeiserBucks]

to shorten the drive is important.

This is mistake #1. Find the best hunt for you and do it. Couple hours driving won't mean jack.

 

[HighUintas]

Thing about Idaho is it's a shit show on how you get in the queue and what's left when you actually got in and go to check out.

Good luck

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Kind of like Utah's general season ALW elk tag sale 2019-2023? Or worse?

 

[jonesn3]

Have a list of options based on some key unit stats that are important for your style. Options 1 through 10. Depending on your random number, you might really have to take a shot in the dark based on what’s remaining tag wise. At the moment, I prefer opportunity in the form of %public land, size of the unit, and some form of population metric.

 

[HighUintas]

After researching heavily for a couple of days, I came up with five different zones that I would consider purchasing a tag for if I had the opportunity to do so today.

To my surprise, every single one of those sold out in the first 30 minutes! And then I continued to watch in amazement as nearly all tags except for FC, LOlo and Selway sold out, not much longer than an hour or hour and a half. I was #8000 on my phone and #20000 on my computer, with no real intent to buy a tag. I just wanted to see what would happen and how quick they'd go.

I think I will just have to start researching routes into the deep wilderness since I do not know how to fully abuse the Idaho online system as some do.

Or I'll just continue hunting my own state haha

 

[Dirtscoots]

As flustering as my home state is to draw or hunt general elk units…….. my experience is you may be driving away from elk to hunt wolves. Only half of my group got tags for 24 we didn’t even log in this year.