Tag Applications – Is GoHunt the Answer?

Taking Time to Enjoy the Scenery

My Passion

I used to begin the ritual in March. Then it was February. Now I start the day after my last big game hunt concludes. My passion is big-game hunting. I am a data junkie when it comes to big game hunting. I pore over checkout summaries, draw odds, and harvest statistics. For me, this is like Cyber Monday (or even Facebook?) for some. Between hunt statistics, draw odds, digital mapping, and tag application selection, I may be on the computer as much as in the field.

I thought I had my home-state Nevada stats pretty well figured out. Then when my daughter became an Idaho resident and hunter, I had to adapt to a new world. I foundered a bit adjusting to the new system. Through two years of trial and error both on the computer and in the field, we see improvement in our Idaho understanding. It just isn’t happening fast enough.

A Better Way?

A few years back, I subscribed to Eastmans’ Hunting and Bowhunting Journals. I was intrigued by their Member Research Section (MRS) in the magazines. The MRS does a good high-level job of providing an overview of each western state big game tags. The folks at Eastmans’ do a heck of a good job in providing you a picture of big game options in each state.

My inner-nerd wasn’t completely satisfied with the MSR. While it was fun to poke through each month, it simply wasn’t enough. I find that digging into an individual state’s data is far more fun; however, my experience in ramping up for Idaho isn’t one I can replicate for every state. There simply isn’t enough time. There really are only so many hours in the day/week/month. The data overwhelms, if you consider all western states.

The Pilgrimage Continues

This year, in particular, I’ve found a number of great podcasts. I keep stumbling across information on a team from Las Vegas, Nevada, called GoHunt. In particular, as I was listening to bighorn sheep podcasts and researching my wife’s bighorn sheep hunt, these guys kept popping up.

I found a bunch of great articles on GoHunt’s website. I believe it was on a Jay Scott podcast that I heard a really intriguing interview with the GoHunt team. They were like me, with one exception. They were smart enough to monetize their passion. GoHunt have collected the big-game data from most western states and made it available through subscription as an interactive database.

Our Recent Experience

A few years back, I killed a ginormous mule deer and in 2016 my son killed a positively toady 89 inch pronghorn. Let me set the record straight: we hunt for food and sport. Cow elk forms the centerpiece of our table fare, and we add the rest as the year goes on. Now we eat mutton, but that is a different story…but, we have been trying a bit harder to find and hunt trophy animals.

My daughter drew a fantastic Idaho controlled hunt in 2017. My wife drew a nice deer tag and a world-beating desert sheep tag in 2017. What we are seeing, however, is the diminishing odds of drawing buck deer tags in Nevada. Importantly, the odds of drawing an archery or muzzleloader deer tag in Nevada are very poor as well. Clearly, to continue to enjoy big-game hunting on a regular basis, I need to take a larger world-view. My experience with Idaho tells me that I need some help.

Our Decision

On the sporting side, I am positively addicted to the location and hunting of big game animals. I love the effort it takes to find trophy-sized or unique animals. I love venison. This works for my family.

My wife and I have taken up the hobby of big-game hunting as a core healthy activity in our lives. We’ve backed off on some other pursuits and centered our lives around the outdoors. Hiking, camping, fishing, hunting, backpacking, and just about any outdoor adventure are all fair game for us. The core revolves around the outdoors and big game hunting is a highlight of every year for our family. We’ve decided to focus our discretionary money in this area.

The Answer

We finally made the move. As an early Valentine’s Day present to ourselves, we subscribed to GoHunt. As an aside, I don’t think I can quite get away with not getting my wife something nice for the day, but I’m super satisfied with that particular gift for my part! Just as an aside, I used a promo-code as I found out mostly about these guys through Jay Scott. It gave me a partial refund as a credit in their outdoor store.

GoHunt is a database. These folks compile information for each state, with some of the highlights in the following table:

While this may not seem like a lot, it is plenty for you to get a good idea which tags might be worthwhile to have.

Idaho Elk Example

Locating elk in some tough conditions.

For instance, my daughter enjoys Idaho elk hunting. The Sawtooth general bull elk season is hard to get, as tags run out very fast. Generally, your odds of harvesting in those units runs about 20 to 35 percent. Controlled hunts (draw) give you much higher success rates, but come at the price of very low draw odds. What if we were to seek a balance? Let’s limit choices to areas where draw odds were at least 20 percent and success rates at least 50 percent?

What this search reveals is a smattering of central-Idaho elk hunts. It includes archery, muzzleloader, and even rifle opportunities. What it showed me is my daughter could have a 1:4 chance of drawing a 50 percent success bull elk hunt in a unit accessible to her. This is considerably better than her Sawtooth opportunity.

To further the example, I can search for a backup plan, if her 1:4 chance doesn’t pan out. In this case, we can choose an over-the-counter (OTC) archery hunt in several areas that give 20 to 30 percent success odds.

Nevada Deer Example

Let’s turn to Nevada, where I thought I understood the data. We run a bonus point system here, so your chances of drawing a good trophy tag are good if you are patient. The trophy potential in Nevada is far higher than most states, including Idaho. However, the trade-off is the wait.

Let’s set GoHunt’s trophy potential slider to units that they calculate can return 170-inch or bigger bucks. This quickly limits areas. Now, pick a resident with a single bonus point, and draw odds of 20 percent or more. What we quickly find out is applications are limited quite drastically to almost only archery opportunities…and that is hunting deer only about every third year!! The point to be made, without disclosing GoHunt’s proprietary data, is you can only expect to hunt mule deer bucks in our part of Nevada maybe once in every three to five years.

An Option

GoHunt has helped me to see a particular Idaho opportunity. This opportunity will allow me to hunt trophy mule deer with a bow, almost every year (choice #2). I can even put in for a trophy rifle tag (choice #1) and expect to get it every four or five years. The Idaho NR tag cost is stupid, but this is our primary hobby, so…

We can also see a bull elk opportunity for my daughter (and for nonresidents too) that will give her a solid chance at a quality tag. Her backup plan may be to take up the bow, or to choose an OTC hunt if she doesn’t draw. If she desires a trophy bull, she will probably have to choose to be patient in another state.

Worth It?

Is the $150 GoHunt annual subscription “worth it”? Right now, for the first year, the hunting geek in me shouts out with an easy and loud YES! After 12 months of playing with it and learning what I want to know, will it still make sense? On this, it is hard to say. I suspect there are only so many gems out there worth unearthing. We will always hunt cow elk every year, and typically someone in my family is hunting deer. So, we don’t have unlimited time to pursue animals in other states. For those who have a lot of time and need to big game hunt every year, it may well be worth it.

For now, this tool is certainly worth every penny paid. The articles are high-quality and the research saves so much time. Their research is supposed to be accurate. I doubt that, but anything I do on my own won’t likely be any better. Their data is probably accurate enough to make my application decisions better. If we can slide in one or two targeted big-game hunts per year to make sure we have meat on the table and horns to chase, then it is worth it.

By the way, I do not get any $$$ from GoHunt in any way, shape, or form. I’m just sharing something that I think is pretty cool.