The Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission voted Thursday to update the way Colorado awards most of its big game tags. It’s the latest in a years-long policy review that has received plenty of public commentary and criticism. The draw changes, which take effect in 2028, are designed — in part — to combat point creep. Now, hunters who have already racked up preference points in Colorado are facing a moving goalpost.
The biggest change to the annual application process is the elimination of Colorado’s hybrid draw system. CPW is replacing it with a split-draw model for all elk, deer, bear, pronghorn, and turkey tags. The available tags for each hunt will be divided evenly between two pools of applicants: Fifty percent will be distributed under a familiar preference point system, where hunters with the most preference have the best odds of drawing a tag. (Those hunters are usually the ones who have applied and waited the longest, thereby accruing the most preference points.)
The other fifty percent of tags will be available through a bonus draw, which “functions more like a raffle or ‘names in a hat,’” according to CPW. In other words, while hunters with preference points may get their name in the Bonus Draw hat more times, it’s also possible for a hunter with fewer or no points to draw a tag over a hunter who has been saving his points for decades. (One hunter who spoke up in the meeting noted he has 28 elk points.)
Although Colorado’s current hybrid model offers additional chances to hunters who come up short on the annual draw, it still requires preference points to participate. With the forthcoming switch to a split-draw system, many hunters who have been saving up preference points are mourning the loss of predictability.
“The only way that is possible is that [CPW is] taking away the value of preference points from people who’ve been loyal to Colorado who have applied for years for those points,” Colorado guide and social media personality Cliff Gray said in a recent Instagram video. “Plain and simple. If you have accumulated a ton of points in Colorado, you just got fucked.”
Though he considers the new rules unfair to longtime applicants, Gray and other stakeholders have acknowledged the challenges CPW faces in trying to update its draw system. These include combating point creep, generating revenue, and attracting new applicants who have been intimidated by a waitlist of hunters who are years ahead of them in line for tags.
The final decisions about big-game draws were presented to the CPW Commission on Jan. 9 as the second installment of a two-part meeting to present the findings of a Draw Process Working Group. (The first was held in November.) The working group, which met in 2023 and 2024, was made up of qualified hunters — primarily Colorado residents — as well as CPW staff and commissioners. They were asked to “reduce complexities within Colorado’s draw system and address preference point issues, while keeping in mind biological and sociological concerns.”
Another contentious issue with the rule change has been how to divvy tags among residents and nonresidents. Ultimately the Commission voted to save 75 percent of all deer, elk, bear, pronghorn and turkey licenses for residents, and sell the other 25 percent to out-of-state hunters.
“I do not agree with the 75/25 split,” said resident hunter Joshua Haga during the public comment session at Thursday’s meeting. “All other Western states give nonresidents between five and sometimes 15 percent of tags. We’re way too generous, and it’s at the demise of our youth and also our resident hunters.”
Haga also mentioned that caps on resident hunters were important given that more nonresident archery hunters would be entering the draw. Last summer, Colorado announced it would eliminate over-the-counter archery elk tags for nonresidents.
Other key changes include increased preference-point fees, a bonus draw for Rocky Mountain bighorn, waiting periods of at least three years to draw premier species tags, and a new once-in-a-lifetime harvest rule. (Hunters who tag a bull moose, bighorn ram, or either-sex mountain goat become ineligible to draw a tag for the species in the future, with a few exceptions.) You can read the full list of big-game tag revisions here.
Several members of the working group who spoke at Thursday’s Commission meeting noted the group had been told to disregard revenue considerations.
“I am curious if we had had direction to follow dollars — more than looking for solutions — if we’d have come to other solutions,” said Jennifer Burbey, president of the Colorado Outfitters Association and a Draw Process Working Group member. “That said, we did not. What we were told to do was simplify the draw, in essence, so that’s what we strove to do.”
Some application procedures remained the same, however. For instance, desert bighorn sheep applications have been random and will remain random — no preference points involved.
Read Next: Is Point Creep Killing Western Big-Game Hunting?
“The [working] group agreed that a fully random draw is the most simplistic and fair draw method, especially for species with extremely low quota. It also eliminates issues of point creep down the road,” Andrea Gess, CPW licensing deputy said in the Jan. 9 meeting. “If we could go back in time to when we were first developing draws for Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep, goat, and moose, armed with the knowledge and insights of today, the likely proposal would have been a fully random draw for all of theses species. However, given the amount of time and money customers have invested in the current system and into weighted points, the group did not feel it would be appropriate to transition to a fully random draw at this point for Rocky Mountain bighorn, sheep, and goats.”
CPW notes that these new policies won’t be implemented until the 2028 draws to give CPW time to update its systems and educate the public. The regs will be re-examined every 10 years.
