Our Methodology

How Tag Planner builds your strategy. Transparent scoring, honest assumptions, and real data.

1. State Scoring (10-Factor Model)

Every state in your strategy is scored on a 100-point scale across ten weighted factors. Higher scores mean a stronger fit for your specific profile. The factors cover four things that matter when you commit years of points to a state:

• You. Physical comfort with the terrain and elevation, your hunt style, and your bucket-list goals
• Your money. How state costs fit your point-year budget
• Your time. How the state’s draw system supports how often you want to hunt, and travel from your home
• Your position. The points you already hold and the species you’re actually after

The exact factor weights are proprietary. What we commit to publicly: they are fixed, versioned, and never tuned to favor any state, outfitter, or partner. Changes are documented in the Changelog and covered by the stability lock below. The Opportunity Finder additionally gives you your own adjustable weight sliders for its separate scoring.

2. Cost Modeling

• Costs are built bottom-up: qualifying license + application fee + point fee per species.
• Resident vs. nonresident fees are resolved by your home state.
• Tag costs are estimates from published nonresident tag prices.
• 10-year projections use constant 2026 dollars, no inflation is applied.

Expect 2–5% annual increases on state fees. We display this disclaimer but do not compound it into projections.

3. Draw Timeline Projections

Point accumulation assumes +1 point per year. We also model point creep, the speed at which the minimum points needed to draw a unit rises as demand grows. High-demand trophy units creep several times faster than general units, so a “7 points to draw” unit today is not a 7-year wait; our timelines account for that.

Creep rates are calibrated per demand tier from observed draw history and are estimates. Projections are deterministic point-vs-creep calculations; they are not probabilistic and should be treated as estimates, not guarantees.

4. Draw Systems Modeled

Draw systems are not interchangeable. A point is worth something completely different depending on how the state hands out tags, and a model that treats them the same will lie to you about your timeline. We model each of these mechanics separately:

• Preference. Tags go to the highest point holders first.
• Hybrid. A portion of tags go to top point holders; the remainder are drawn randomly with bonus weighting.
• Bonus. Random draw where each accumulated point adds one entry.
• Bonus squared. Random draw where your entries equal your points squared, heavily rewarding patience.
• Dual pool. Two separate pools, one preference-based and one random, applied within a single draw cycle.
• Pure random. No accumulated preference. Every applicant has the same shot every year.
• Nonresident-restricted preference. A preference draw that applies only to the nonresident pool.

Each state in your strategy is modeled on the mechanic that state actually uses, and the state’s page names it. If a state changes its system, that change lands in the Changelog.

5. Data Sources

• All fee data, deadlines, and draw systems are sourced from official state Fish & Game agency sources.
• Data is verified and updated for each application season and runs through a monthly accuracy audit.
• State data shows “Last Verified” dates. Check the DataSource badges throughout the app.

If you find an error, email us at support@tag-planner.com. One wrong fee is a big deal to us.

6. Where Our Numbers Have Limits

Every projection rests on assumptions. Here are the ones that change how you should read a number on this platform:

• Dollars are today’s dollars. A 10-year cost total is the sum of current fees, not an inflation-adjusted forecast. Read it as what this strategy costs at today’s prices.
• Point creep is an estimate. It is calibrated from observed draw history per demand tier, not computed from full applicant rolls in every state, because not every state publishes them.
• Applicant counts are only as complete as the agency publishes them. Idaho publishes first-choice applicants only, so its figures, and the draw odds derived from them, describe the hunters who ranked a hunt first. Those figures are labelled “1st-choice applicants” wherever they appear. No total-applicant figure exists in that source.
• Cost covers what we can source. Licenses, application and point fees, tags, and travel estimates. It is not a full trip budget. Gear, food, lodging, and tax treatment are yours to add.

None of these are hidden in a footnote. Where a number carries one of these limits, the surface says so at the point you read it.

7. Determinism

Same inputs always produce the same outputs. There is no randomness in the scoring engine. Your strategy is reproducible.

8. Rollback Protocol

If we discover a data or model error after release, we follow a defined rollback protocol:

• Freeze. The current model version is locked and no further changes are applied.
• Revert. The engine is rolled back to the last verified-stable data snapshot.
• Notify. Affected users are informed of the issue and the corrective action taken.
• Publish. An incident explanation is posted to the Changelog with root-cause analysis.

9. Stability Lock (First 30 Days)

For the first 30 days after any major model update, we enforce a stability lock:

• No scoring weight changes.
• No inflation baseline adjustments.
• No silent ranking logic tweaks.
• Only verified data corrections are permitted.
• All changes are documented publicly in the Changelog.

Your strategy should not change unless the underlying data changes.

10. Where the Data Comes From

Every number Tag Planner shows you traces back to a public source. We do not invent data. When a number cannot be sourced, the surface stays empty.

• Draw odds and allocations: official state agency draw history, most recent three to five draw years.
• Harvest and success rates: official state harvest reports, per-unit where the state publishes at that level, statewide where it does not.
• Public-land context: federal land management boundary data.
• Season dates and fees: the state regulation sources themselves, refreshed each cycle.

Every number carries its source and its verification date in the app. If you want to check our work on a specific figure, the badge tells you where it came from and when we last confirmed it.

11. Calibration Tags

Numbers on a unit card carry a small provenance icon. The icon tells you how calibrated that specific number is to you and to the field.

12. When Data Is Missing

If a state has not published the underlying data, the surface stays empty. We do not fabricate harvest rates, fake draw history, or paper over gaps with placeholders.

An empty field is information: it tells you the state has not reported, or that the report is too thin for us to project from. Trusting that signal is more useful than trusting an invented number.

Data refreshed: July 2026.