What Actually Predicts Whether a Hunter Fills a Tag?

Studies that tracked real hunters point to scouting, hours afield and knowing the ground. ATVs, age and gender did not matter.

A handful of studies have followed real hunters and then checked who filled a tag. The things that separated successful hunters were mostly effort and local knowledge. Gear and age did not show up.

The evidence is thinner than hunters might expect. One Oregon study does most of the work, so read the limits at the end.

Scouting and hours afield: the Oregon study

At the Starkey research forest in northeast Oregon, 416 hunters carried GPS units and filled in daily questionnaires during controlled five-day hunts for antlered deer and elk from 2008 to 2013. Each hunt had a five-day scouting period before it. ^[1]

Over the six years, 34% of rifle elk hunters and 33% of rifle deer hunters filled their tags. Archery elk hunters managed 5%. ^[1]

The researchers tested age, gender, years of experience, ATV use, scouting, share of time on foot and hours per day outside camp. For rifle hunters, the best models kept just two things: whether the hunter scouted, and how many hours a day he or she spent outside camp in shooting hours. ^[1]

Scouting. Among rifle elk hunters, 41% of those who scouted killed an elk, against 16% of those who did not. For rifle deer it was 38% against 20%. In the model, scouting raised the odds of success for rifle elk hunters by 418%. ^[1]

Hours afield. Each extra hour per day outside camp raised the odds of success by 18% for rifle elk hunters and 26% for rifle deer hunters. Hunters averaged only 6.3 to 6.8 hours a day outside camp during shooting hours. ^[1]

The two together. For a rifle elk hunter who scouted, the modeled chance of success climbed to about 50% at ten hours a day outside camp. For one who did not scout, it reached only about 12% at the same ten hours. ^[1] Long days paid off mainly for hunters who already knew where to go.

Archery was different. More than 80% of archers scouted and success stayed low regardless. ^[1]

A separate study of 483 rifle deer hunters on a California research property found a related effort effect: hunts lasting more than one day had 3.33 times the odds of success of single-day hunts. ^[2]

Knowing the ground

Scouting is one way to know a place. Having hunted it before is another.

An old but direct result comes from the Sapphire Mountains of western Montana. Of 418 deer and elk hunters surveyed after the 1971 season, those who had hunted the area before succeeded 31% of the time. Newcomers succeeded 18% of the time. ^[3]

A newer Montana example is small but striking. Under a state program in 2025, some ranches opened to public elk hunters. Hunters assigned by the state from a randomized list who went hunting reported 16.5% success, and only about half of them saw an elk. Public hunters picked by the landowner reported 67% success, and every one saw elk. ^[4] That second group was just nine hunters who answered a survey, so the exact number means little. The direction is the point: same kind of property, very different results, and the likely difference is who was told where to go.

The Oregon GPS tracks show the same thing from another angle. Successful hunters used far less ground than unsuccessful ones. Successful archers' core areas averaged 104 hectares against 681. Successful and unsuccessful rifle elk hunters hardly overlapped on the map. ^[7] Successful hunters were not covering more country. They were in different places.

Getting off the road, for elk

In the 1971 Montana survey, 44% of unsuccessful hunters said they road hunted most or all of the time. Among successful hunters it was one in four. Of the successful elk hunters, 83% never or only occasionally road hunted. ^[3]

Idaho's elk plan cites research from that state in which hunter success was about 25% in roadless and managed-access areas and about 15% in an area with a high density of roads. ^[6]

In Oregon, successful rifle elk hunters kept using ground farther from open roads more than unsuccessful ones did. ^[7]

This is an elk result. For deer the evidence is mixed. In the California study, roads were the strongest predictor of where deer were killed. ^[2]

Access type

Statewide success rates blend very different kinds of hunting. A Montana legislative study reported that in 2014 about half of the elk harvest came from public land, but only 14% of elk hunters on public land were successful. On private land enrolled in the state's walk-in access program it was 8%. Success was higher on other private land and highest on outfitted or fee-access land. ^[5]

If you hunt public land on your own, the number printed for your unit likely overstates your odds, because it includes hunters with private access.

What did not predict success

In the Oregon study, these carried little or no weight for rifle hunters ^[1]:

• ATV use. Success rates differed little between hunters who used one and those who did not.
• Age. Successful and unsuccessful rifle hunters were similar in age.
• Gender. It was the least informative factor tested. Men and women had comparable success.
• Years of experience, mostly. Successful and unsuccessful rifle deer hunters had nearly identical experience, about 25 years each. For rifle elk, successful hunters had somewhat more (20 years against 15), and experience appeared in the second-best model but not the best one.

Read alongside the Montana result, the pattern is that general experience counts for less than experience of the specific place.

What this does not tell you

• The scouting numbers come from one fenced research forest in Oregon with 25 permits per hunt, antlered-only tags and a built-in scouting period. A general-season public unit is a different setting.
• "Scouting" there meant being on the ground in the five days before the hunt. No study has tested whether map scouting from home has the same effect.
• These are associations. Hunters who scout may differ in other ways, such as fitness or drive, that the studies did not measure.
• The Montana survey is from 1971 and relied on what hunters reported about themselves.
• The 2025 Montana ranch figures rest on very small, self-selected samples.
• Nothing here covers Colorado, party size, weather, or guided against unguided hunts.

FilledTag builds one exact plan for your tag: parking, camp, morning and evening sits, and routes, with every pin checked against public land ownership and road rules. It is free for testers this season at https://www.filledtag.com/#signup.

Sources

1. Rowland, M.M., Nielson, R.M., Wisdom, M.J., Clark, D.A., DiDonato, G.T., Hafer, J.M., Naylor, B.J. and Johnson, B.K. (2023). Success is dependent on effort: unraveling characteristics of successful deer and elk hunters. Wildlife Society Bulletin 47:e1414. https://research.fs.usda.gov/download/treesearch/66487.pdf
2. Gaynor, K.M., McInturff, A., Abrahms, B.L., Smith, A.M. and Brashares, J.S. (2024). Hunting mode and habitat selection mediate the success of human hunters. Movement Ecology 12:29. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11021010/
3. Stankey, G.H., Lucas, R.C. and Ream, R.R. (1973). Relationships between hunting success and satisfaction. Transactions of the 38th North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference. https://research.fs.usda.gov/download/treesearch/61187.pdf
4. Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks (2026). Elk Hunting Access "454" Agreement, 2025 Program Evaluation Report. https://fwp.mt.gov/binaries/content/assets/fwp/commission/2026/jun-12/parks/eha/2025-eha-evaluation-report.pdf
5. Kolman, J. (2016). Roads, Land, and Big Game Harvest: HJ13 Study. Montana Environmental Quality Council. https://archive.legmt.gov/content/Committees/Interim/2015-2016/EQC/Meetings/Jan-2016/hj13-road-land-biggame.pdf
6. Idaho Department of Fish and Game (2024). Idaho Elk Management Plan 2024-2030. https://idfg.idaho.gov/sites/default/files/idaho-elk-management-plan-2024-2030.pdf
7. Rowland, M.M., Nielson, R.M., Wisdom, M.J., Johnson, B.K., Findholt, S., Clark, D., DiDonato, G.T., Hafer, J.M. and Naylor, B.J. (2021). Influence of landscape characteristics on hunter space use and success. Journal of Wildlife Management. https://www.fs.usda.gov/pnw/pubs/journals/pnw_2021_rowland001.pdf