About
About this site
A free, independent reference for hunters applying for western big-game tags — built because the information already exists in public, and is almost impossible to actually use.
Why this exists
Every western state that runs a limited-entry draw publishes its results. Those results contain the answer to the only question that matters when you're deciding where to apply: given the points you're holding, what did it actually take to draw this tag?
The answer is free and public. It is also, in practice, unreachable — distributed across hundreds of PDF reports that can't be sorted, filtered, or compared across years. The subscription tools solve the access problem and charge $99 to $199 a year for it. The free sites that rank well mostly publish pooled odds, which look like an answer and aren't one.
This site is the transformation and nothing else: state documents into a sortable, point-level table, with the source linked on every number. The data isn't ours. The work of making it usable is.
Who runs it
Big Game by State is published and edited by Justin Adams.
I'm not an outfitter, a guide, or a hunting personality, and I'm not going to tell you where to go. What I do is build reference sites that take public data nobody can practically use and make it usable. I've done it for bank transaction codes and for medical billing codes. This is the same job applied to western draw results.
That shapes what this site is and isn't. I don't have opinions about which unit is best or which tag is worth your points. I have the state's own reports, parsed into tables you can sort, with the source document linked beside every number so you can check my work. Where the data can't answer your question, the site says so rather than guessing.
Every figure here is verified against the agency document it came from before it goes live. That's the reason states are released one at a time instead of all at once, and it's the only thing this site really has to offer that the paid tools don't.
Reach the editor at editor@biggamebystate.com, or send a correction to corrections@biggamebystate.com. Corrections are handled the way a software team handles a shipped bug — fixed on the page, with a note saying what changed and when.
Independence
This site is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to any state wildlife agency, and it isn't a licensed outfitter, guide service, or application service. We don't sell tags, applications, point-management services, or memberships. We don't take payment to feature a unit, and we never will — the moment a unit appears here because someone paid for it, every other number on the site becomes worthless.
The site is free and supported by advertising. That's the whole business model.
What we don't do
No accounts, no logins, no email capture, no credit card — there is nothing here to sign up for. No predictions or simulated odds. No maps, trophy scores, or "recommended units." The full reasoning behind those choices is on the methodology page.