For decades, Idaho stood out as one of the last places where a guy from out of state could still roll the dice on a general-season deer or elk tag without praying to the draw gods. Show up in December, buy over-the-counter, and hunt some of the best public-land big game country in the Lower 48. That era just ended.
Starting with the 2026 season, Idaho Fish and Game has pulled the plug on nonresident over-the-counter general deer and elk tags. Everything moves to a straight-up draw. No more waking up at 3 a.m. to sit in an online queue. No more flying into Boise a week early to stand outside headquarters with a camp chair and a cooler. It’s application, credit card, and cross your fingers like Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, and pretty much everywhere else.
Last December, roughly 80,000 nonresident hunters jammed the online system chasing about 28,000 available tags. People were getting random queue numbers in the 40,000s and 50,000s. One hunter who works in the industry, Derek Horner, drew number 49,571 and knew right then his plans were toast.
Tara Reichert, license operations manager for Idaho Fish and Game, says the department had watched tags sell out faster every year since Covid. “We’ve been on a trajectory of selling out tags every December, which led to the draw model rather than over the counter,” she told reporters. “This decision is based on public response rather than congestion in the field.”
That last part matters. Back in 2021, Idaho already put hard caps on nonresidents per unit because certain areas were getting hammered. This new change isn’t about too many orange vests on the mountain; it’s about too many guys glued to laptops or camped on sidewalks in December.
Before 2021, a nonresident could land in Idaho the day before season, walk into a Walmart, grab a tag, and be in the timber by the weekend. Now the same guy has to burn vacation days and plane tickets just to maybe buy a tag in person, or sit bloodshot-eyed in front of a computer hoping the server doesn’t crash when the clock hits 10 a.m. Mountain Time.
Reichert points out the obvious unfairness: “How many people can take off work for a week to fly to Idaho for a tag? How many people have the time and money to do that?”
Not many regular working stiffs, that’s for sure.
So the draw is supposed to fix that. It spreads the pain evenly. But there’s a new hurdle: every nonresident now has to buy a full non-resident hunting license up front before they can even apply. That license runs $195 (includes a $10 access fee) and covers one calendar year of hunting plus three days of fishing. No refunds if you don’t draw.
“People have expressed concern because they haven’t had to do that in the past,” Reichert said. “But we’re not pioneering this by any means. This is really similar to other Western states and how Idaho already does its controlled hunts.”
Translation: welcome to the club.
Idaho Fish and Game runs 100% on license and tag revenue; they get zero general fund money from the state. Nonresidents have been paying roughly 60% of the freight for years. The department is betting the state’s reputation—big bulls, huge mule deer, millions of roadless acres, and reasonable success rates—will keep out-of-staters willing to fork over the $195 application fee even if the tag isn’t guaranteed.
Timeline for 2026 tags:
- Application window: December 5–15, 2025
- Results posted: early January 2026
- If you draw, you have until January 20, 2026, to buy the actual tag
The unit-by-unit nonresident caps put in place in 2021 stay exactly the same. So the total number of nonresident tags isn’t changing; only the way they’re handed out is.
Some hunters are cheering. The guy who can’t drop everything to camp on a sidewalk or stare at a loading wheel for ten hours finally has the same shot as the trust-fund kid who used to fly in every December. Others who made the system work for them every year are grumbling that their sure-thing Idaho hunt just turned into another long-shot application.
Reichert sums it up plain: “We’re hearing from folks who are excited because they couldn’t fly out here and stand in line. But guys who could afford to fly out and hang out in line are not as pleased. It changes their odds a bit. It levels the playing field.”
Bottom line for anyone who’s been chasing elk in the Frank Church, deer in the Panhandle, or both in the Sawtooths: Idaho just joined the rest of the West. The days of easy nonresident general tags are gone. Come December 2025, you’ll either pony up the license money and roll the dice in the draw, or start looking harder at Montana, Wyoming, or Colorado and hope your preference points are worth something.
For a lot of us who grew up thinking Idaho was the last best place to just show up and hunt, it feels like another door quietly closing. Whether the new system is fairer or just turns one kind of frustration into another, only time will tell. One thing’s certain: the Gem State isn’t the free-for-all it used to be.
