New Mexico Draw

[ncavi8tor]

In the draw pool for NM this year with the rest of you folks!! Being a tax paying American citizen I am very excited to see and hunt more of OUR land!

Good luck to everyone! Hope to see you on the mountain!

NC

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[Stubborn_bowhunter]

Gila has best bulls. Gila best hunt. Everyone always put in for the Gila. Best odds too.

 

[WestTexasBestTexas]

For those of you that are also planning on CO serving as a backup, are you applying for a unit with decent odds for your respective season, going OTC, or some other strategy?


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[Red Letters]

I'm not sure I want to admit this or if its even kosher to ask in a setting like this, but is (B) in the Gila that much harder to hunt?

I've always skipped applying there just reading how steep it is and that horses/outfitters are recommended.
Draw odds are better, harvest rates go down though.

 

[WRO]

I am sure your buddy scouts and spends time there. Most NR that come in the day before will probably not be as lucky. The north part of the unit gets crowded. It has the Gila and AZ bulls so there is a chance a at a monster.

Not to sound like a dick, but most people are lazy and that's why they don't kill elk..

If you're willing to work at it, killing elk is relatively easy especially if you're not too picky.

They got into town 2 days before the season..



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[mdp22]

I guess I don't understand your comment. 16B/C had over 50% chance to draw the early September archery tag last year for residents. 16E both Newberg and Jacobsen have shot archery bulls on public, so it's clearly doable there. One of those northern units had 2 really nice bulls shot and the video posted on YouTube last year, and that was on public. The 34 tag is a December archery tag but that's better than not hunting especially considering there aren't any bonus points you have to burn and there's some monster bulls. To each their own but I'd take every one of those options over hunting coyotes and hiking.

In 16B/22 first archery I see that there were 586 resident applicants with 189 drawing tags. My public math isn't the greatest but that's around %32.

 

[FlyGuy]

I'm not sure I want to admit this or if its even kosher to ask in a setting like this, but is (B) in the Gila that much harder to hunt?

I've always skipped applying there just reading how steep it is and that horses/outfitters are recommended.
Draw odds are better, harvest rates go down though.

It’s a giant wilderness, so yeah it’s harder due to limited access points and no ATV’s or truck scouting/hunting. To make it worse, many of the trails haven’t been maintained since the big fire and don’t actually exist anymore (ask me how I know) 16a is exact terrain but it has plenty of roads. I don’t know if one is really any steeper than the other. But 22 (part of 16B) is stupid steep. That is just plain punishment for no good reason. I don’t know if there are even any elk in there but if so they are plenty safe.


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[wannakillabigbull]

In 16B/22 first archery I see that there were 586 resident applicants with 189 drawing tags. My public math isn't the greatest but that's around %32.

If only NM's draw was that simple When they look at every applicant's first three choices before moving on to the next applicant it's not as simple as dividing one number by another. If you're interested in how to calculate NM draw odds there's some articles out there, but none of them will give you their full method that I've seen.

goHUNT had last year as 57% odds for residents with the number of applicants and tags that you stated. I don't have a membership to toprut but for free they'll tell you 2018 draw odds, which were 52% for the early archery.

 

[FlyGuy]

Yeah, I’ve got to say that if you only drew 4 elk tags in 50 years you either have the worst in all of NM... or you just don’t want to hunt that bad. And that’s ok! I’m not attacking you. If you only want to hunt the upper tier/upper middle tier units or you’d rather do something else with your time - that’s fine. But you can’t blame the state for your choices?

If you really want to be out in the elk woods most every year then you would apply for 1 top tier unit, 1 with 25-35% odds, and one with 50%+ odds. It’s almost statistically impossible not to draw a tag close to 2/3 years with that strategy. Yeah, they aren’t all great units but you have a much better chance of success with a tag in your pocket than you do with all those red bars on the screen.

I sincerely wish you the best of luck in the draw this year and I hope you get to spend some time in the Mtns with a great tag in your pocket.







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[mdp22]

If only NM's draw was that simple When they look at every applicant's first three choices before moving on to the next applicant it's not as simple as dividing one number by another. If you're interested in how to calculate NM draw odds there's some articles out there, but none of them will give you their full method that I've seen.

goHUNT had last year as 57% odds for residents with the number of applicants and tags that you stated. I don't have a membership to toprut but for free they'll tell you 2018 draw odds, which were 52% for the early archery'

I researched on Toprut, don't have a membership but did the '18 draw data available. I've never given the group application any thought but their odds calculator for units I've drawn show a 30% increase in draw probability over my simple math. Would love to see their app with the NM data set that they use.

 

[Okbow87]

Using the number of tags available and the number of people who applied gives you the lowest possible draw odds for a unit. Those would only be accurate odds if every single person who applied for that unit put it as their first choice. That doesn't take into account how many people drew another tag in a previous choice in another unit and weren't really in the draw for that unit.

I have always looked at it like this, if its a really good unit who a lot of people are going to have as their first choice, that's probably pretty accurate. Where as a lesser unit where people are going to be putting it as their 3rd choice, your odds are going to be higher than that number due to other people drawing tags that were their 1st or 2nd choice.

 

[WRO]

Using the number of tags available and the number of people who applied gives you the lowest possible draw odds for a unit. Those would only be accurate odds if every single person who applied for that unit put it as their first choice. That doesn't take into account how many people drew another tag in a previous choice in another unit and weren't really in the draw for that unit.

I have always looked at it like this, if its a really good unit who a lot of people are going to have as their first choice, that's probably pretty accurate. Where as a lesser unit where people are going to be putting it as their 3rd choice, your odds are going to be higher than that number due to other people drawing tags that were their 1st or 2nd choice.

I drew a 4% unit 3rd choice in 2019..

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[PAhunter58]

I'll say this, not exactly knowing if it's a correct assessment or not. The odds that Toprut shows is only if your applying as an individual. If you apply with a group in NM, the odds are way lower.

 

[Okbow87]

I drew a 4% unit 3rd choice in 2019..

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Anything is possible in New Mexico! Thats the awesome part of them looking at all of your choices when your application comes up. I think it is safe to assume you had a pretty low random number assigned to your app if you drew that popular of a tag as a 3rd choice.

The point I was trying to make is that using the number of total applicants and number of available tags does not give you accurate odds. It gives you the worst case scenario.

 

[Ryder12]

Really? Seems to me that there's well over a few dozen elk tags that are greater than 50% draw odds for a resident, and countless deer tags as well. A good number of those tags have over a 30% success rate, too. Unless goHUNT and toprut are lying to us.

I am using NM G&F drawing odds for 2020. Not goHUNT.

 

[NoWiser]

I am using NM G&F drawing odds for 2020. Not goHUNT.

Those are not the draw odds. Those are the draw statistics. There's a significant difference. New Mexico needs to rename that document.

 

[Gila]

Those are not the draw odds. Those are the draw statistics. There's a significant difference. New Mexico needs to rename that document.

That is correct. You need to calculate your own odds using the statistics. There are areas opening up that have not been open before. And in some areas the number of tags have been reduced. The only way I have found to track these things is the Wildlife Commision meeting minutes.

 

[PunkRockDoc]

The only way I have found to track these things is the Wildlife Commision meeting minutes.

Been looking this over since I saw your post. These are a goldmine of interesting information. Thanks for bringing it to my attention! For anyone else interested: http://www.wildlife.state.nm.us/commission/meeting-agendas/

 

[Ryder12]

Anything is possible in New Mexico! Thats the awesome part of them looking at all of your choices when your application comes up. I think it is safe to assume you had a pretty low random number assigned to your app if you drew that popular of a tag as a 3rd choice.

The point I was trying to make is that using the number of total applicants and number of available tags does not give you accurate odds. It gives you the worst case scenario.

Yes I agree, anything is possible as it is truly luck of the draw. What data do you think would change the odds? To me, the odds are, x number of applications for y tags given. What else is there? I am happy to listen and entertain all theories. I am only looking at the 84% resident numbers and ignoring the 10% pool and combination of 10% that includes residents that use an outfitter. I suspect that number for residents is very small and meaningless to the overall odds. Also I have rounded to full percentages.

I did not draw anything but, which 3rd choice are you talking about?

All random numbers and random generated picks should all be equally possibilities. We are not talking about normal distributions. So, the number on the application should make zero difference.

Off to a great start here......

Thank you. I appreciate you welcoming sentiment.

 

[wannakillabigbull]

I am using NM G&F drawing odds for 2020. Not goHUNT.

@NoWiser is correct that those are not the drawing odds, they're just the basic statistics. To calculate the true draw odds for a system as complex as NM takes a lot of work, and is why companies like goHUNT and toprut are able to get people to pay them money every year to calculate them. You can't do it by simply dividing the number of tags by the number of apps. A certain number of the applicants will never be considered for a tag they applied for as their third choice because they already drew either their first or second choice. So the number of apps for a given tag that are actually considered is smaller than the number you're seeing reported in that PDF that NM puts out, thus the true draw odds are better than what you're calculating.

If you're legitimately interested in what the experts say I suggest reading the below link (not a Rokslide sponsor, mods can remove if they want).

Toprut - Western Big Game Hunting Reference

Draw odds, harvest data, interactive maps and more - Toprut is the most open and accessible western big game hunting research site ever created.

www.toprut.com

There's even other factors we're not talking about here that toprut accounts for, one of which being group applications. NM will only award your group a tag if there are enough tags to supply the entire group (some other states do it differently). I believe that isn't even listed in the "NM G&F drawing odds for 2020" report you're looking at. You can pay for a more detailed report that includes group apps and additional details, and that's what goHUNT and toprut do in order to calculate true draw odds.