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Best App for real draw odds

What do you recommend. Looking for the most accurate draw odds template.

With all the high point holding hunters jumping down to lower point guaranteed hunts the accuracy of draw odds varies from year to year. Yes I am sick of point creep.

GoHunt seems to be a good source, though I have not spent $150 to use it.

I've been happy with TopRut. It's not very expensive. I'll have to bring it up and see if 11 points in WY get me a general tag at this point!

How many or What apps are out there for this type of info?

Sitting on 34 application for 8 states from 0 to 27 points. Used up 12 points last year on two tags and 18 points year before. at 67 need to pick up the pace considerable to use them up. :-) LoL!

Agreed with above that TopRut is a winner. Inexpensive and statistically sound calculations/explanations

There are only 2 sources for predictive odds, Ron Wold for Oregon odds, and your own calculations for the other. All other sources are showing you odds for the previous draw. Both GoHunt and Toprut buy databases and run simulations but it's last years app pool. Those two sources also have the actual nr point pools for AZ; Toprut lists those applicants for each unit when you click the "more" link. Last I saw, GoHunt uses a "trend line" rather than giving you those applicant numbers but that will show you where things have been heading. If you don't have the point pool numbers, it's my opinion you're just spinning your wheels. 100% odds last year simply means they cleaned out the given point pool. Those "100% odds" mean nothing if the next point pool down has 3x more apps than tags for the following years draw. As far as recommendations, I tell people Toprut for odds, GoHunt for hunt area synopsis. If you want to do the odds thing yourself, get the real data from the game dept of states you hunt.

Sivart, you didn't specify a state, but normally "real draw odds" aren't known until the actual draw is run, and the stats are released. Since we don't know beforehand which point holders and how many have applied, there's generally no such thing as "real draw odds" for an upcoming draw. You can look at a few recent year's worth of actual data to see whether the historical application trend is stable enough to predict future draw odds. For some states (like Colorado Elk), the historic recap data is simple to access and holds fairly stable from year-to-year, so it's easy to analyze on your own. For other states the application history is more volatile, and/or the calculations are highly convoluted. Examples being the Idaho OIL species, or any of the states with squared point systems. For those, unless you are a stats whiz, it's easier to just subscribe to one of the services.

FWIW, my current philosophy in most cases is to apply for the hunt selection I want most, regardless of "draw odds". So if I looked at the historic draw odds and saw 0.7% historical odds for the hunt I really want, versus 2.2% for a lesser quality hunt, it wouldn't change my mind about what to apply for. In order to draw, a guy just needs to get lucky. "Forget the odds, just apply" has worked out a number of times so far. But if all you want is historical odds tables, Toprut seems to be on top of things. Huntin' Fool more recently has also been doing a fair job in their magazine and app.

I also concur there's no one app that can be precise. Reason being is some states (Montana comes to mind) do their draws in a manner such that you can have 6 points, put in for a draw and not draw. You can have 0 points going into the exact same draw and draw it. That happened to me last year.....I drew a lope tag with 0 points. The previous year it took 3 points.

Oregon odds????? When only less than a handful of branch antlered elk tags in the premier Blue Mtn units are allocated to non-residents, I don’t think anyone is wanting app info for that NR unfriendly state.

^When I was stationed there (twice), some of the coast range units were easy for NR's to draw.

I been a go hunt subscriber for few years, howver last year I let it run out and went with top rut. I really think gohunt needs to find a way to add more value to their subscription

I like Hunterstrailhead.com it is simple and a lot cheaper than GoHunt. $35 a year.

Another Toprut user.

I also use hunterstrailhead.com and I would say the value I get is in line with what the annual fee is. I paid $24 last year when he ran a sale about this time of year. Not sure if he will do it again. I buy mostly for speed and convenience of looking up draw odds quickly for AZ.

What I have noticed is that he is getting REALLY slow on loading the data. Up until about a month ago he was still running all the 2018 numbers as his most current for Arizona. His service needs to improve or I am going to drop him and do it like I used to. It's not very difficult to find odds for AZ if you know where and how to look on AZGFD website.

I'm also on the fence currently with goHunt but siding towards Toprut when my subscription ends in March. Been applying for 25 years so pretty much have my hunts targeted. goHunt is good especially for newbies, but for me I find it's kind of too much information. Seen some big swings in odds already from the 2019 stats, that are affecting my applications. Got to pay attention.

I switched from GoHunt to Toprut and prefer it. The fact that it's a lot cheaper is icing on the cake.

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