Hopefully I can help with at least some of the questions going on here
First, license setting:
Out here, deer classification flights are flown in late December, while elk in mid February. Harvest survey data comes back by early March, bears usually mid to late March. Biologists then work the models based on those inputs and lay out suggestions for the Area meetings with game wardens and supervisors in mid to late March (I go to 3 of these because of how my district lays out, so Gunnison, Grand Junction and Montrose). After the license setting meetings are done at the Area level (state administratively divided into 18 areas, those 18 areas into 4 regions), then the upper level regional staff meet to approve in April before sending on to the Commission meeting in early May. This year that was May 3-4 in Grand Junction. This is a public meeting. After May 4, I'm not entirely certain what happens, but someone has to input 3- 5,000 hunt code changes. I do know that the actual computerized drawing doesn't take very long. But, there's also proofing that occurs so that people with 2 points don't draw a 201 elk tag and things like that. I don't know how much of that occurs in a random sample or if literally every single hunt code is proofed entirely.
The draw itself:
When you apply your application receives a random number ( I believe it is 6 digits). The draw occurs hunt code by hunt code, not by applicant like some states do. So the people with the highest number of points get the license first, then down the line until there are more applicants then licenses available, at which point those are allocated randomly based on your application number or something like that. I assume the random application numbers are the ones still in play for the hybrid draw, but I honestly don't know the details on that part of the draw.
Hope that helps. So, I don't know what all occurs between May 4 and June 4, but as you can imagine with thousands of hunt codes hundreds of thousands of applicants, everything takes a while. But at least under our current system, there's no way the draw could be done and announced by April 5.
