Utah draw odds

Species

Utah draws its two bighorn subspecies separately, with separate point pools, so they are listed separately here.

Every figure here counts first-choice applications only

That is not our caveat. It is the division's, printed above the reports this site parses:

When you review the drawing odds, please keep in mind that the reports only reflect hunters' first-choice selections. Due to the complexity of the odds for hunters' second through fifth choices — which can be affected by residency status, youth status, group applications, dedicated hunter selections and weapon types — those odds are not included in these reports.Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, drawing odds and points reports

Utah runs five choices and publishes odds for exactly one of them. A hunt you would rank second or lower is not described by any number here, on this site or anywhere else, because the data does not exist.

The drawing order, which changes what you should apply for

Utah draws big game permits in a fixed sequence (R657-62-18): limited-entry buck deer first, then limited-entry bull elk, then limited-entry buck pronghorn, then once-in-a-lifetime permits, then the general buck deer draws — Lifetime Licence holders, Dedicated Hunters, youth, and everyone else — and finally draw-only youth elk.

The consequence is stated in the guidebook directly underneath it: because you may draw only one limited-entry or once-in-a-lifetime permit a year,drawing any limited-entry permit removes you from the once-in-a-lifetime draw — and you receive a bonus point instead. A limited-entry elk tag drawn at step two costs you your shot at a sheep tag at step four, that year. Whether that is a good trade is your call; it should be a decision rather than a surprise.

Six ways to lose points you spent years accruing

This is the part of Utah that costs people most, and four of the six are in no summary we have found.

• 1. Drawing the permit. The obvious one. Draw a general-season deer permit and your preference points go to zero; draw a limited-entry or once-in-a-lifetime permit and your bonus points for that species do.
• 2. Buying a leftover permit over the counter. Obtain a general-season buck deer permit that remained available after the drawing and you lose your preference points exactly as if you had drawn it. The same applies to antlerless leftovers, CWMU antlerless permits and antlerless elk conservation permits. A permit you bought because it was going spare costs the same accrued position as one you waited five years for.
• 3. Taking an unclaimed limited-entry or once-in-a-lifetime permit. Same mechanic on the bonus side, and it adds a waiting period on top.
• 4. Management buck, cactus buck and HAMSS hunts. Draw one and you lose your bonus points and incur a five-year waiting period.
• 5. Surrendering a permit inside 30 days of the opener. Hand a drawn permit back less than 30 days before the season opens and you lose every accrued point for that species and earn none for the year. Surrender it more than 30 days out and you keep them all. Thirty days is the whole difference.
• 6. Somebody else in your group doing number five. Quoted in full below, because it reads as an exaggeration otherwise.

If some of your group members surrender their permits less than 30 days from the season opener, all group members will lose all of their bonus or preference points.Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, Antlerless Application Guidebook

Four hunters can apply together for general-season deer, limited-entry deer, elk or pronghorn. If one hands their permit back too late, the other three lose everything they had accrued for that species — not their permit, their points. Once-in-a-lifetime hunts take no group applications at all, and if a resident applies in a group with a nonresident for a hunt with no nonresident permits available, the whole group is excluded from it.

Utah publishes no quota, and half the permits go to the point pass

There is no permits-available figure in these reports at all — only permits issued, split across two passes and drawn separately per permit pool. So a Utah permit count on this site is never a quota, and it is not comparable with Wyoming's or Idaho's published caps.

As for the split between the two passes, the division states no percentage anywhere we could find, and its guidebook's own link to its drawing-mechanics page is a dead 404. So we measured it: across 7,950 bonus-system hunt-year-pools,of the pools that use a bonus pass at all, 99.4 per cent put exactly half the permits in it, with the rest going to a random pass open to everyone. A third of pools use no bonus pass at all. That is an observation about ten years of results, not a rule the division has confirmed, and this site will not promote it into one.

One rounded decimal, and 1,436 rows that said 100%

The division publishes a success figure as a ratio rounded to one decimal place —1 in 1.0, 1 in 2.4. Convert it to a percentage and you have a draw rate without doing any arithmetic. Except that 1 in 1.0 is anything from a true 100 per cent down to about 95, because everything in that range rounds to 1.0.

This site computed its Utah percentages that way, once. The result:1,436 rows across 186 hunt pages published as 100.0 per cent when they were not — including a pool with 912 permits for 957 applicants, where forty-five people went home empty from a hunt we were calling a certainty. Every rate here is now derived from the exact permit and applicant integers in the same row, with the rounded ratio used only as a check. The source document is one click away on every hunt page; you can do the division yourself.

The points-to-draw number is real here, and it is still not a floor

Unlike Arizona and Montana, Utah is a state where a points-to-draw figure means something: its preference pools are a genuine queue, so the lowest point level at which everybody drew is a real observation. We publish it, worded exactly that way — the lowest point level that drew at 100%, an observation about a past draw rather than a forecast of the next.

It is not “the points you need.” On 186 of 9,264 preference pools — 2.0 per cent — somebody holding more points than the published level did not draw. In 164 of those the level was short by exactly one applicant. It happens in every year from 2016 to 2025 and concentrates in general-season pools. The division offers no explanation and neither will we.

What is here, and what is not

1303 hunts across 10 published years, 2016 to 2025. Each row is a point level, split resident from nonresident, and split again by permit pool — the general draw, youth, lifetime licence holders and Dedicated Hunter are separate draws for the same hunt and are reported separately.

Utah has not published a 2026 report. The 2026 draw closed on 23 April 2026 and results were released by 31 May, but as of the date on each hunt page the division had posted no 2026 odds report. The most recent year here is 2025.

Coverage starts at 2016 because that is where Utah's hunt numbering becomes joinable. The division used bare hunt numbers through 2015 and prefixed codes from 2016, and matching the two would mean assuming the schemes line up, which it has never stated. Its 2012-and-earlier consolidated report carries no point levels at all — it is applicants over permits, the pooled figure this site exists not to publish.