My god is their system horrible..... I'm sure many of us are playing this game right now. Im over 10K in line, and the numbers have moved about 400 people in 45 minutes...

and that's after the adjusted start time due to some unforeseen issues....

Frustrating.

Yep what a joke. They need to just go draw imo. Thankfully there’s leftovers in my unit if I choose to hunt over there

100% agreed. Trying to get a general tag for you and a hunting partner is difficult at best. Probably a lynch mob headed to their HQ right now

They had a big crash earlier this year when the resident quota tags went on sale. They had a lot of really unhappy people.

Draw system for NRs is THE answer. No logical way around it when demand exceeds apply to this degree.

Hilarious thread on RS. Guys at 26k in line. That is nuts. Good luck all.

Best thing I ever did when I graduated college and left the state was get my lifetime license.

Genius

I'm just shy of 5000 in line. Good god, this is going to be an all night deal.

Down to 1775 in front of me. Dropping fast, so my preferred tag must have sold out.

I was trying to see how many tags are left and somehow ended up in line. I'm at 42,000. Their regular website is down for the day.

Apparently I signed up for the "six day war" or whatever they call Tex Creek rifle. Sounds like fun. First choice sold out moments before I got on.

With the capped tags in some elk areas, it is beginning to be a shïtshow for residents too and doubly so with the 5 day waiting period for those who applied for the draw.

I started off 1287 in line and was able to get a Sawtooth Elk B tag. Brother was 14,000-something and managed to get a deer tag for 33, only tags left for Sawtooth for him. Not the area we hoped for but will make the best of it.

Getting a Sawtooth B tag is a nightmare for residents, too. They have a total of 1800 B tags. On a set day, they put half of them on sale through vendors at 10am. At 1pm, they put the other half on sale online. They sell out as fast as you can type your name.

I've hunted it a lot. Used to be that we'd apply for draws in a closer unit, then if we didn't draw, come August we'd wander down to a local vendor and get Sawtooth tags. Then one year they were sold out in Aug. The next year they were sold out in July. The place had been discovered. Now it's a big mess. To cut down on competition, they decided that if you failed to draw in another hunt, you couldn't buy a tag until 5 days after they went on sale. Of course even 5 hours would be too late. Only those who hadn't applied for a hunt can buy them at starting time so they get them all.

Yep. It's way overdue. I see about 80% of NR vehicles at trailheads. It seems half of Washington state resides in Idaho starting at archery season and I'm constantly removing their camps and RV's off my place.

In a draw hunt, NR's can only draw 10% of the tags. That also applies in hunts with capped tags. In open hunts, I don't know how they set a quota for NR's. If an unlimited number of res can buy tags, how do they decide what 10% would be?

They farm out their IT system and it's been less than satisfactory the last few years. They don't have the ability to handle large numbers of applicants online at the same time and it crashes.

They probably learned from Colorado CPW

this is a repeat of a post I put on another thread about Idaho's problems last Thursday. They got hit with an unprecedented number of applicants. They had 67,000 online at a time and it crashed the system.
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Here's an article from our local paper describing the fiasco. They don't have a link so I posted a couple photos of the article. They explain that in past years, tag sales went smoothly over time. Last year, they suddenly got bombed with huge numbers of applicants and it got a lot worse this year. They had 67k applicants all hitting the site at the same time. The numbers were unprecedented and the system couldn't handle it.
Read the part about hunters flying in from all over the country to try to buy tags in person. Idaho has been discovered.

But we need to bring in more hunters.

Hunting in Idaho is kind of a bummer.

But man…..

No limit on catfish, and 5 lines for ice fishing is pretty fun!

That's why they had to put a quote on non-res tags. We were being overrun.

Yea,then ID sent them to Colorado. We are past being overrun

Idaho has been a [bleep] for quite some time. I remember growing up in the 90s there’d be lines of headlights for miles on opening morning in many areas.

Just like anywhere else though, proper planning and work can get you away from the crowds and into some pretty good hunting. It is no better or worse than Colorado’s general seasons, IMO. The draw odds may actually be worse in fact for a lot of the good hunts.

Idaho has 2 units that are well known for their mule deer. 54 is known for having lots of them, 45 is known having some real trophies. Tags in both are by lottery and the odds of getting one are about 1%. Non-res can get a max of 10% in either unit.

I shot my first deer in unit 54, back when it was an open archery season. A spike at 10 yards with my bow. 1996 I think?

Unit 45 is where a lot of magazine pictures of mule deer come from and where pretty much every Idaho deer supertag holder flocks to. I used to hunt the hell out of chukar there and my god we'd jump some huge bucks out of those lava/basalt canyons near King Hill. Some of them had to have been 210" + typicals. You may as well have been sheep hunting though, as far as the terrain goes.

South central and south western Idaho actually has quite a bit of water but it's all in those deep canyons. Deer go up and down those walls like goats. A minister I used to know would get his son a youth tag in 54. They'd hunt Rock Creek canyon. They'd climb to top the top of that beast to hunt the rim rocks and he got really nice bucks 3 years in a row. They earned them, though. Now days getting a tag there is close to impossible.

Girlfriend and I are looking at moving to Idaho. I’ll check online but what is there for over the counter tags? Or is it all draw? For residents…

There are over the counter tags for residents and those zones are over run by rigs from Washington and California. Lol

deer: OTC tags available all over the state. Some units are draw where there are too many hunters. Also, in general, whitetails are found in the north, mulies in the south. There's lots of overlap.
elk: in general, northern ID is OTC, southern ID is draw. There are many exceptions.

Okay thank you for that bit of info. Most of the work I can find is near Boise but I’ll travel up north a little if need be. I assume the issues here are about “desirable” areas?

The real deal is elk tags.

Deer tag OTC run statewide mostly.

But they have diced up elk hunting ad nausea

Sounds like time to raise the price on NR tags

Hunting out of state is close to becoming a rich man's game. Keep the tag prices down so the common man has some chance of hunting, too.

It is a rich man’s game. That’s why I don’t do it. Only so much resource to go around.

If you choose to go out of state I’m sorry but it should cost you a little

Idaho is far from what it used to be. Lotta folks purchasing tags trying to live a dream that used to be. Price increases are nothing more than Idaho admitting your hunting experience is going to be tough. Making you think twice about coming back. You're far better off giving it a try somewhere else. Unless your rich than go ahead donate...