Idaho General Seasons
Idaho's general OTC elk and deer tags for 2021 go on sale Dec. 1st. These tags offer an opportunity for those still fueled by the crushing heartbreak or joyful success of the current season to start obsessing about the next year. However, rather than spend all Thanksgiving researching which general zone or GMU to buy a tag for, HuntScore has done the heavy lifitng. So read this article, pick a zone and/or GMU and apply. Then spend the next 8-10 months e-scouting, exercising, hitting the range and dialing in your gear! Also, be on the look out for our "Follow" feature in Spring 2021. It will allow you to get notifications pushed to you about the unit(s) or tag(s) that peak your interest.
Note that a big change for nonresident tags in 2021 occured. Quota caps on elk zones were adjusted and deer tag sales are now restricted to a game management unit instead of a zone. So we've broken our analysis out accordingly and provide more recommendations for deer units than elk. This change was implemented to spread out nonresident hunters.
Using the last two decades of harvest data published by Idaho Game and Fish, we forecast 2021 harvest statistics using an ARIMA time series models. Most folks are probably not familiar with this technique but suffice it to say these models take a historical trend, apply some fancy mathematics and produce predictions. ARIMA models tend to perform well and are a staple for many forecasting tasks.
We generate forecasts for total harvest, hunter success, hunter days and % of harvest meeting an antler point threshold. With our predictions in hand, we normalize each variable on a 0 to 100 scale within the species (elk, deer) and manner of take (archery, rifle) and weight the factors according to the following formula:
score = total_harvest*.2 + success*.4 + days*.15 + points*.25
This yields a score between 0 and 100 for each zone or GMU that is weighted toward success but accounts for the 3 other factors as well.
If you don't like our approach, we provide time series plots of historical harvest data for Idaho general zone elk and gmu deer so you can compare zones/units to your heart's content. However our Top 10 recommendations for each season and manner of take are in the tables below. Good luck with selecting an Idaho general season tag.
Top 10 Idaho 2021 Archery Deer GMUs
| Unit | Score | 2021 Predicted Success |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | 65.0 | 17.3% |
| 1 | 64.0 | 12.3% |
| 40 | 62.0 | 30.1% |
| 15 | 61.0 | 30.2% |
| 24 | 60.0 | 26.7% |
| 63A | 59.0 | 31.0% |
| 28 | 58.0 | 24.8% |
| 11A | 55.0 | 17.4% |
| 63 | 49.0 | 11.8% |
| 43 | 49.0 | 16.8% |
Top 10 Idaho 2021 Firearm Deer GMUs
| Unit | Score | 2021 Predicted Success |
|---|---|---|
| 10A | 78.0 | 48.6% |
| 11A | 73.0 | 52.3% |
| 30 | 72.0 | 46.3% |
| 15 | 70.0 | 45.5% |
| 14 | 65.0 | 36.0% |
| 51 | 64.0 | 29.9% |
| 1 | 64.0 | 23.0% |
| 28 | 63.0 | 33.3% |
| 8A | 63.0 | 31.3% |
| 17 | 60.0 | 38.8% |
Top 10 Idaho 2021 Archery Elk Zones
| Unit | Score | 2021 Predicted Success |
|---|---|---|
| Diamond Creek | 86.0 | 22.5% |
| Pioneer | 65.0 | 11.3% |
| Sawtooth | 62.0 | 19.9% |
| Brownlee | 58.0 | 19.4% |
| Island Park | 56.0 | 16.6% |
| Beaverhead | 56.0 | 17.8% |
| Panhandle | 52.0 | 6.4% |
| Smoky - Bennett | 43.0 | 10.0% |
| South Hills | 41.0 | 11.3% |
| Snake River | 40.0 | 20.8% |
Top 10 Idaho 2021 Firearms Elk Zones
| Unit | Score | 2021 Predicted Success |
|---|---|---|
| Weiser River | 68.0 | 20.4% |
| Panhandle | 66.0 | 14.1% |
| Salmon | 64.0 | 21.7% |
| Elk City | 63.0 | 25.4% |
| Pioneer | 60.0 | 17.7% |
| Dworshak | 59.0 | 18.2% |
| Diamond Creek | 57.0 | 19.5% |
| Tex Creek | 53.0 | 17.3% |
| Brownlee | 49.0 | 20.5% |
| Big Desert | 49.0 | 25.1% |
Historical Trends
Deer Archery General Harvest Trends
Overall harvests trends for Idaho general archery units are broken down below. Compare units by selecting any set of units.
Total Harvest
Success Rate
Days Per Hunter
% Harvested with 4 or 5+ Points
Deer Firearms General Harvest Trends
Overall harvests trends for Idaho general firearms units are broken down below. Compare units by selecting any set of units.
Total Harvest
Success Rate
Days Per Hunter (To Harvest)
% Harvested with 4 or 5+ Points
Elk Archery General Harvest Trends
Overall harvests trends for Idaho general elk zones are broken down below. Compare zones by selecting any set of zones.
Total Harvest
Success Rate
Days Per Hunter
% Harvested with 6+ Points
Elk Firearms General Harvest Trends
Overall harvests trends for Idaho elk general firearm zones are broken down below. Compare zones by selecting any set of zones.
