Colorado · Deadlines
Colorado application deadlines
Colorado publishes fewer of its own hunting dates than any state on this site. What follows is everything Colorado Parks and Wildlife does commit to in writing, read off its pages on the verification date — followed by an honest inventory of what it leaves out, including the draw results date.
What Colorado Parks and Wildlife publishes
Six dates. That is the complete set carried anywhere on cpw.state.co.us for the big-game draws, and it is why the table below is short.
| What | When | Read from |
|---|---|---|
| Primary draw — application period opens Annual qualifying licences also go on sale March 1 | March 1, 2026 | Primary Draw · Application period for Colorado big-game licenses begins March 1 · Qualifying License |
| Primary draw — application deadline Three CPW pages give three different time-zone labels — see below | April 7, 8 p.m. | Primary Draw · Application period for Colorado big-game licenses begins March 1 · CPW’s big-game draw deadline is one week away, get your applications in by April 7 |
| Veteran and first-responder lifetime combo application To be processed in time for the primary draw deadline | March 15 | Qualifying License |
| Veteran and first-responder lifetime combo application To be processed in time for the secondary draw deadline | June 13 | Qualifying License |
| Leftover licences go on sale Bear, deer, elk and pronghorn. No qualifying licence, application or points needed | August 4, 2026 | Big Game · Leftover (Remaining) and Reissued Licenses |
| First big-game reissue preview list Then Tuesdays at 11:00 a.m. MT, with those codes released for sale Wednesdays | August 11 | Leftover (Remaining) and Reissued Licenses |
One further date, from the same slider: mountain lion licences for 2026–27 went on sale March 31 at 11:59 p.m. MDT and run through 3/31/27 — Big Game page.
Three CPW pages, three time zones, one deadline
The 8 p.m. cut-off on April 7 is the single most consequential moment in the Colorado hunting year, and CPW labels its zone three different ways:
- “8 p.m. Mountain Time”
- “April 7 at 8 p.m. MT”
- “April 7 at 8 p.m. MST”
Colorado is on Mountain Daylight Time on April 7, so MST is not the abbreviation for the clock the state is running that evening. CPW does not acknowledge the difference or say which label governs. We are not going to resolve it for you — but note that all three readings are satisfied by submitting well before 8 p.m. Denver time, and that CPW's own advice on every one of those pages is to apply early rather than at the edge.
What CPW does not publish at all
Named here rather than filled in. Each row is a gap in Colorado Parks and Wildlife's own website as of 27 August 2026, not a gap in our reading of it.
| Fact a hunter needs | What CPW says instead | Checked on |
|---|---|---|
| Primary draw results | No date. CPW’s only statement is that “Your card on file will be initially charged after your draw results are posted.” | Primary Draw · Secondary Draw |
| Secondary draw — application opens | No date on the Secondary Draw page, which carries no dates of any kind. | Secondary Draw |
| Secondary draw — application deadline | No date. The nearest thing CPW publishes is “the big game secondary draw application deadline at the end of June”, on a page about veterans’ paperwork. | Qualifying License · Secondary Draw |
| Secondary draw results | No date, and no statement about one. | Secondary Draw |
| Payment deadline for a drawn licence | Named but not dated for this cycle. CPW refers readers to the brochures; the list printed live on the Primary Draw page is stamped 2024. | Primary Draw · Secondary Draw |
| Licence surrender window | CPW says the deadline “is listed in the email you receive” and in the brochure. It is not published on the website. | Primary Draw · Secondary Draw |
CPW's own deadline widget is empty
This is worth stating plainly because it explains the shape of everything above. The Primary Draw, Secondary Draw and Leftover pages each carry a section headed When to Apply → Application Deadlines. On all three, as of 27 August 2026, that section renders:
“No Results. There are no results to display at this time.”
That is served in the page itself, not a script that failed to load. The one dates-and-reminders slider that does populate — on the Big Game page — holds a single entry, and it is about mountain lion licences rather than any draw.
There is also no hunting equivalent of CPW's Licenses, Dates and Fees page for anglers. Colorado publishes a consolidated dates page for fishing and not for hunting.
Where the missing dates actually live, and why they aren't quoted here
CPW does not claim these dates are unknown. Its Secondary Draw page tells you to “See the big game, and sheep and goat brochures for payment deadlines”, and the brochures are the document the agency treats as authoritative all the way through.
Those brochures are not served from cpw.state.co.us. Every brochure link on CPW's draw pages points straight at cpw.widen.net, and CPW's own /2028-draw short link redirects to the same host — a vendor content delivery network whose robots file reads User-agent: * / Disallow: /, a blanket instruction to automated retrieval. We did not fetch them, so no date on this page comes from them.
A person clicking a public download link on a state agency's website is doing something different from a crawler, and you should download the brochure — it is the only place Colorado's payment deadlines, secondary draw window and surrender period appear. The distinction is worth naming rather than glossing: the dates Colorado omits from its website are the dates it keeps behind a host that blocks machines. That is the whole reason this page is shorter than the Wyoming and Utah ones.
What it costs to apply
Charged at submission: the application processing fee, per species, plus the habitat stamp. The licence itself is charged only if you draw. The point fee, where one exists, is charged only when the point is awarded.
| Fee | Amount | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Big game application processing — resident | $8.93 | per species, non-refundable |
| Big game application processing — nonresident | $11.49 | per species, non-refundable |
| Annual habitat stamp | $12.76 | ages 18 to 64, one per person per year |
| Lifetime habitat stamp | $384.16 | alternative to the annual stamp |
| Point fee — moose, Rocky Mountain bighorn, mountain goat — resident | $50.00 | charged only if you take the point; opt-out offered on the application |
| Point fee — moose, Rocky Mountain bighorn, mountain goat — nonresident | $100.00 | waived for youth and resident lifetime licence holders |
| Point fee — deer, elk, pronghorn, bear | None | CPW: “Deer, elk, pronghorn and bear do not have preference point fees.” |
Primary Draw · moose and bighorn sheep pages for the point fees.
Licence prices, charged on a successful draw. Nonresident figures are the licence-and-fishing combination CPW sells nonresidents; its fishing portion runs through March 31, 2027.
| Licence | Resident | Nonresident combo |
|---|---|---|
| Elk | $70.40 | $845.16 |
| Deer | $51.25 | $506.92 |
| Pronghorn | $51.25 | $506.92 |
| Bear | $64.01 | $302.56 |
| Moose | $385.66 | $2,823.53 |
| Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep | $385.66 | $2,823.53 |
| Desert bighorn sheep | $385.66 | $2,823.53 |
| Mountain goat | $385.66 | $2,823.53 |
Read from the elk, deer, pronghorn, bear, moose and bighorn sheep pages. The moose page dates its nonresident fishing portion to March 31, 2026; the other five say 2027.
You must already hold a licence before you may apply
This is the Colorado detail most often missed, and it is a hard gate. CPW: “A current-year qualifying licence is required for all hunters (including youth hunters) to apply for the big game primary and secondary draws, including applicants who are applying for a preference point as a first-choice.” It must be in the cart first. Fishing licences do not count, and annual qualifying licences are non-refundable.
Two CPW pages disagree about what that licence costs. The Qualifying Licence page and the species pages carry the same list of qualifying licences at different prices — every row differs, and neither page is dated or marked superseded.
| Qualifying licence | Qualifying Licence page | Species pages |
|---|---|---|
| Annual small game — resident adult | $33.96 | $38.49 |
| Annual small game — nonresident adult | $93.78 | $104.86 |
| Small game and fishing combo — resident | $56.97 | $64.02 |
| Spring turkey — resident adult | $35.76 | $38.49 |
| Spring turkey — nonresident adult | $183.94 | $194.21 |
| Annual youth small game | $1.40 | $2.53 |
We are not going to pick one. Budget the higher figure and you are covered under either reading; that is arithmetic on two published lists, not a price we are asserting. Both columns were read on 27 August 2026 — the left from the Qualifying Licence page, the right from the elk page and matched on the deer, pronghorn, bear, moose and sheep pages.
Preference points, and where Colorado charges for them
Points are earned in the primary draw only — by failing to draw your first choice, or by entering the point-only code P-999-99-P as that first choice. CPW is explicit that they “do not apply to the secondary draw, leftover or over-the-counter licenses”, and that drawing a first choice forfeits every point you hold for that species, weighted points included.
Deer, elk, pronghorn and bear points are free. Moose, Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep and mountain goat points cost $50 resident or $100 nonresident, charged when the point is awarded rather than at submission, with an opt-out offered on the application itself and a waiver for youth and resident lifetime licence holders. Desert bighorn sheep has no point system at all — CPW: “Preference points do not apply to and are not awarded for desert bighorn sheep license applications.”
Above three points, those three species switch to weighted preference: your application number is randomised and then divided by your weighted points plus one, and low numbers draw. That is a lottery weighted by points, not a queue.
After the draws
Licences unclaimed after both draws go to the leftover list, which opened August 4, 2026. Leftover and reissued licences can be bought without a qualifying licence, without an application and without spending points — the one route into a Colorado limited licence that costs you nothing in accumulated preference.
Returned licences move differently by species. Sheep, goat and moose licences, and deer, elk, pronghorn and bear codes that took five or more resident points to draw, are offered back down the draw order first; only if five contacted hunters decline does the licence reach the reissue preview list and then the leftover list. Codes that took four or fewer points go straight to the leftover list.
The big-game reissue preview list started August 11 and posts Tuesdays at 11:00 a.m. MT, with those codes released for sale as close to 11 a.m. Wednesday as the system allows and nothing new added after 1 p.m. MT. CPW notes that since September 10, 2025 CPWShop has thrown a deliberate delay at rapid repeated attempts, plus a reCAPTCHA, to blunt auto-clicking software.
Why there are no Colorado draw odds on this site.
Colorado publishes genuinely detailed draw statistics — more than most states. What is still unresolved is how that data may be acquired and redistributed: the statistics files are served from the same robots-blocked vendor CDN as the brochures, and the historical archive carries a non-commercial label. Until that is settled properly rather than assumed, Colorado gets deadline coverage and no odds tables. We would rather publish nothing than publish pooled odds — total applicants divided by total tags — dressed up as an answer to the question you are actually asking, which is what your points will do. That is the failure that makes the free tools useless, and it is not one we are going to repeat here.
Every source read for this page
- Primary Draw — the main big-game draw page, where the application window and the fee table live, fetched 27 August 2026
- Secondary Draw — the second draw for elk, deer, pronghorn and bear, fetched 27 August 2026
- Big Game — the hunting section landing page, carrying the leftover sale date and the dates slider, fetched 27 August 2026
- Qualifying License — what you must already hold before you may apply, and by when, fetched 27 August 2026
- Leftover (Remaining) and Reissued Licenses — the leftover sale date and the weekly reissue schedule, fetched 27 August 2026
- Application period for Colorado big-game licenses begins March 1 — CPW news release dated 27 February 2026, fetched 27 August 2026
- CPW’s big-game draw deadline is one week away, get your applications in by April 7 — CPW news release dated 31 March 2026, fetched 27 August 2026
- Hunting Elk — licence and application fees, resident and nonresident, fetched 27 August 2026
- Hunting Deer — deer licence fees, fetched 27 August 2026
- Hunting Pronghorn — pronghorn licence fees, fetched 27 August 2026
- Hunting Bear — bear licence fees, fetched 27 August 2026
- Hunting Moose — moose licence fees and the point fee tables, fetched 27 August 2026
- Hunting Bighorn Sheep — sheep and goat licence fees, and the desert bighorn point exclusion, fetched 27 August 2026
- cpw.widen.net/robots.txt — checked 27 August 2026 to confirm the brochure host's blanket disallow. The brochures themselves were not retrieved.
Elsewhere on this site
Deadlines tell you when to apply. What it takes to draw is a different question, answered from published results rather than a projection — and in the states where the agency publishes enough detail to answer it honestly.