Show Notes
In this episode, Brian Krebs breaks down the essentials of Idaho’s 2025 hunting application season, focusing on elk and mule deer hunting with an emphasis on over-the-counter tag sales. Learn how to navigate the tag allocation process and maximize your chances of success in Idaho’s legendary hunting grounds. Brian shares expert tips on preparation, hunting strategies, and what makes Idaho a premier destination for Western hunting. From its rugged terrain to its thriving elk and mule deer populations, this episode equips solo and group hunters with the knowledge they need to tackle the season with confidence. Don’t miss this ultimate guide to planning your Western hunting adventure in Idaho!
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Show Transcript
Brian Krebs (00:05.558)
Welcome back to another go hunt bonus series episode of the Western rookie podcast. And if you're listening to this, you know what that means. It is time to kick off the twenty twenty five application season. And the first one up to bat, like every year, is the Idaho over the counter tags that go on sale. They always go on sale at the end of twenty twenty four in December. This year is no different.
Except there's an exciting update this year. Idaho has decided to set the sale of the over the counter takes for December 10th. They've moved it back nine days this year, quote unquote, to help the user experience and the the give more people opportunity. I don't know what that means. I don't really know what the difference between December 1st and December 10th is going to do. But this year, Idaho.
General tags for elk and deer go on sale December 10th at 10 a.m. Mountain time We're gonna go over briefly how this works same as last year The whole point of this boat go hunt bonus series is to give you the listener a heads up when some of these deadlines are coming because the whole point of this podcast is to help you and everyone like you have the opportunities to hunt the West I've
hunted the West for years and I absolutely love it. I want everyone to be able to have that opportunity and that all starts with getting a tag which is why we've done this Go Hunt bonus series. We've partnered with Go Hunt, the number one resource when it comes to Western hunting. Just to help people know what's out there, what opportunities are coming up and what are the dates and deadlines that they need to be aware of. And so we're gonna launch that second season of the Go Hunt bonus series today.
And doing so, we're going to give you guys all the details you need to know to get an Idaho tag. So like last year, you will have to sign in. You can do it by phone, by online or at a licensed vendor in Idaho. But if you're a non-resident, you're probably going to be doing it online. And so I'm going to preface this entire podcast with saying.
Brian Krebs (02:25.17)
Idaho is notorious for having long wait times, a very slow process, lots of technical difficulties with tens of thousands of people signing online. Expect goofy things to happen. It happens every year. Sometimes the system crashes, sometimes it goes dark.
It's not a true over the counter sale. It's a waiting in line process and we'll describe that. the point is be prepared. Maybe have multiple laptops ready to go if you have that. So that way if one laptop crashes, you could try on your phone or try on another computer. Just be prepared for things to go wrong. There's a lot of people that are going to be signing online for this sale and things happen. So how this works.
You will want to sign in before 10 a.m. Mountain time. You will want a hunting license. You must have this ahead of time and there's no refunds. It's $185. You have to, I recommend if you were a serious about getting the Idaho tag, you must have this to check out. So you can buy it ahead of time. You can roll the dice by adding it to your cart, but you have to have it in order to check out.
You sign in before 10 a.m. There's a 30-minute lobby where you sign in between 930 and 10 and you wait in the lobby At 10 a.m. Precisely at 10 a.m. The system will assign everyone a random number and then the countdown begins and you will see your place in the line and your Estimated time to wait until it's your turn. So it doesn't matter if you sign in at 931 or 959
you have the same odds of getting a low random number. If you sign in after 10, you're gonna automatically go to the end of the line. So once it's your turn in line, whether you're maybe your number one, you're the first person to get to pick, you have a time to pick your tag, you look for the unit that you want, you add it to your cart, you check out. Now,
Brian Krebs (04:42.178)
the next person goes and they'll cycle through this. If you run out of time, if you're too slow to pick, you're going to lose out on your chance and go to the end of the line. what I recommend is go head over to Go Hunt. And if you don't already have an insider, you should. I mean, if you're a Western hunter, especially an out of state Western hunter and you don't have insider, you are at a disadvantage. There is so much information in the Go Hunt.
Insider subscription service, finding units, finding draw odds, finding public lands, access, strategy articles, point tracker, the gear shop. It's so many great things over at Go Hunt. But I recommend if you're serious about potentially picking up an Idaho tag, go use Insider, go use Filtering 2.0 and have a list of units that you're interested in hunting ready to go. Maybe five choices.
My number one unit, my number two, three, four, and five. After that, I'm not interested anymore. I'm not going to buy a tag. That's how I recommend doing it. The reason for that is that way you're not scrambled and stressed under the clock trying to figure out which units left. Every unit that you're willing to hunt and buy a tag for in Idaho, write it down on a list in order. That way when you're up, you could see which units have tags left. All right, my first unit, maybe you're 500th in line. Maybe you're 5,000th in line.
My first unit, they're all gone. My second unit, they're all gone. My third unit, there's one left. All right, automatically I know that's the one I'm taking. Boom, got it in my cart, I'm checking out and I got an Idaho tag coming up this fall. That's how I would do it. You don't wanna be like, my number one unit's gone. Now I'm trying to Google good units in Idaho. Maybe you find one, maybe you don't. Maybe you're just like, there's some units left in this one and you click that and it's a terrible unit to hunt. Have the information ready to go.
One of the things that we want to cover this year, the tag prices have not changed, which is promising that we're seeing a lot of tag price hikes across the West in the last few years. Montana's are going up. Wyoming special went way up. Idaho is a very approachable state to hunt. You have to have a hunting license. It's $185, but the tags 351 75 for deer, 651 75 for elk. Both of those are very strong tag prices.
Brian Krebs (07:09.376)
Montana, you're going to 850 for an elk and 650 for a deer. So very good tag price in Idaho. Every unit has different amount of allocation for non-residents. The best way to go look this up, there's way too much data for me to cover in a bonus episode of this podcast. The best way is just to look at Insider, look at what they're allocating for non-residents this year. And you can also use the filtering.
2.0 to find statistics on the units. I got a brief list. We covered this last year, but by and large, Idaho has some gem units, absolute gems. Elk units, there are 84 general units. Some of these units are producing like 330 to 350 class bulls. Some units are seeing 30 % success rates. Some units are seeing 95 % public land. I mean, there are some absolute gems.
when it comes to elk in Idaho, if you can get in low in that order and you get a crack at some of these top tier units. Mule deer statistics, Idaho, we all know Colorado is the king of mule deer. It's been the king for a while. Wyoming is the king of antelope. We all know that. Elk, it's a little bit trickier to figure out where the best elk are because the units that produce the best bulls are the hardest to draw. So it's kind of hard to say, you know,
Northwest corner of Colorado, amazing elk herd, impossible to draw unless you're at top tier points. So is that the king of elk? I don't know. Montana, tons of land, tons of access, tons of opportunity. It's hard to say. But when it comes to mule deer, Idaho has some units that will rival any place in the country. Idaho has some giant mule deer.
87 units are up for grabs in the general OTC sale. The top units are producing 190, 200 inch bucks. We're seeing harvest rates upward of 40 % in some places. And just like elk, some of these units are 95 % public land. So whether you're looking for size, whether you're looking for punching a tag and just bringing meat home, or whether you're looking for just a backcountry adventure, Idaho has options for all three of those.
Brian Krebs (09:28.726)
They've also got some pretty stellar whitetail units. You don't typically think of whitetail in the West, but there's some units producing booner whitetails and there's some units producing 40 % success rates. Now the one caveat with whitetails in the West, it's generally low elevation and the low elevation in the West is generally private. So you definitely want to look at public land access if you're planning to hunt public and you want a whitetail tag.
It might be tricky to find overlap of whitetail habitat and public land. So just be aware of that. So we talked about this last year, use the tags, tags and suit and units will sell out incredibly fast. People know where these gems are. So have plenty of backup options. Like I said, filtering 2.0, the single best resource that comes to Western hunting is filtering 2.0 in the Go Hunt Insider Service. You can find these units ahead of time.
and get a sense of where you're hunting. But once you do that, you definitely want to look at the map. Idaho is notorious for some of the most intense terrain in the Western United States. There's some units in Idaho that are absolutely brutal. So just because a unit looks good on paper, it's got a big elk, big deer, high success rates, tons of public might be that way for a reason. Might be really, really hard to navigate that unit. So double check the map.
have a realistic expectation of what you're capable of physically and if that unit matches up with your skills. If you're an ultra marathoner, if you're a veteran of Western hunts, maybe that's not as big of a concern, but if you're planning your first Western hunt, it can be pretty shell-shocking to get to your unit and be looking up a straight-off cliff. definitely take a look at the map before you go and buy a tag.
Now, here's what I'm going to say overall when it comes to Idaho.
Brian Krebs (11:28.148)
It's really hard to apply as a group because of the whole waiting in line process. It's very easy to do it as an individual. And so if you're someone that's just looking to get out West, you're not really sure where to go and you're going to do it either by yourself or maybe with one other person. Idaho can be a phenomenal option for a couple of reasons. It's very early in the process. December 10th, there's no other applications open yet.
And so you get basically a free at-bat to see if you can pull a good take, especially if you're hunting solo. Maybe you have an elk group that you always go to Colorado or Montana or Wyoming with a group of buddies. Maybe you have a deer group, but you're looking for like that one other hunt. You got a little extra vacation, you want to get one more hunt in by your, and you're going to do it by yourself. I think Idaho is a great option. You can easily sign up.
call in, see what your number is, and see if you can pull a good tag. If not, well, we go back to the application season. But if you have the desire to chase some big animals, Idaho can be a great option for you. And here's how you would do it with two people. Right off the bat, I would say you want to be in the same room. You want to be on speakerphone. You want to have time available because you're going to need to communicate.
You're also gonna need to do a little bit different research. If you're solo, I recommend just looking at units that you are incredibly excited about hunting, the best of the best units. If you're hunting with a group of two, you'll probably wanna take a more realistic approach and look at units that are still good, that you would still be happy to hunt but have more tags allocated from, because you're gonna need a larger buffer in between. And what I mean by that is the first person could get number 947 in line, right?
there's probably a fair number of units that'll still be available at 947. Your second partner might get 5,234. All of the good units that are available at 947 are probably gonna be sold out by the time your buddy gets to go. So you either have to decide, are we going either way, right? Whoever's up first, are you gonna go either way? Or are you only going if your buddy can get a tag? That's the problem with Idaho because there's no guarantees.
Brian Krebs (13:49.324)
that the unit person one picks is still gonna be available when person two goes. And so what I recommend if you're in a group, just sign in and see how close together you two are in the waiting line. Hey, I got in, I'm number 510. great, I'm number 597. Okay, now you're really close. 87 people in between you, if you get to a unit and there's still 100 tags left when the first person gets to pick,
you automatically know the second person's gonna be able to pick that unit too. Even if everyone in the middle still picks that unit, there's gonna be like 10 tags left over. So that's one strategy. You can go to Idaho with two people. It just gets drastically more complicated and lower chances of success if you have three, four, five, six people going. The only thing you could do then is maybe start taking a region approach. Like, hey, I'm gonna be hunting this unit. My buddy got the next door unit. At least we can camp together.
If someone shoots something, we can both help pack out, but I'm going to hunt unit A, my buddies hunting unit B, maybe we got another guy that got a unit C tag, and we're all going to camp in the same area, but we're each hunting different units. You could take that strategy. It's just, you know, it's not how I like to hunt. Like if me and Abby were going to go out West, obviously we wouldn't want the same unit. We'd want to be hunting together. So it can be tricky, but it's also an incredible opportunity to draw. I mean, if you get under a hundred.
in the waiting line, you're going to be basically taking your choice of some of the best units for mule deer and some awesome units for elk out of anywhere in the country. So I recommend at least if you're not part of a designated group that already has a strategy of which state you're hunting this year, you're just trying to get out West, maybe do a first hunt. I really recommend Idaho. Take a look at Idaho, go get filtering 2.0 sign up for go hunt insider. And by the way, just like last year, if you use the code Western, when you sign up,
for Go Hunt Insider, that's W-E-S-T-E-R-N, Western, like in Western Rookie. They're gonna give you $50 worth of points in the gear shop. that could be a new headlamp, that could be $50 towards a new pack, that could be, I think I've got KineTrek Gators with my bonus points before. I've gotten all kinds of great stuff. And I believe, don't get me wrong, but I believe if you sign up this week,
Brian Krebs (16:09.994)
you can still get a hundred points for their Black Friday sale. Let me check on that. I want to check on that before we end today and see if that Black Friday sale is still going to be going on. I got an email from the team over at Go Hunt that talks all about their Black Friday deals. And I want to make sure I get the date right on this.
Brian Krebs (16:36.682)
Black Friday membership.
Starts on 1112. Let me see. I believe it goes until 1205
Brian Krebs (17:05.484)
So there you go, there you have it. That's the Idaho breakdown. I recommend swinging for it. You never know what you could draw. You could be number one in line and you could have your choice of any unit in Idaho and there's some phenomenal units in Idaho. So especially if you're hunting solo, I definitely recommend it. Get your tag early. Use the rest of the season to build points in all the other states and go shoot a big animal this year. Man, I just really want all of you to...
to get out West, enjoy it, bring home some special animals, fill the freezer, and have a great fall. So there you have it. Episode 1 of the 2025 Application Bonus Series is wrapped up. Don't forget, December 10, 10 AM Mountain Time, Idaho General Tags go on sale. Thanks for being here, folks.
