What Is a Bonus Point? Montana Hunting Terms, Decoded
Montana's hunting regulations read like a phone book that argues with itself. You open the deer and elk booklet expecting a straight answer and get hundreds of pages of cross-references instead. Ten minutes in, you still cannot say whether you are buying a license, applying for one, or entering a lottery you never meant to enter.
The words are the problem. "General," "combination," "permit," "point," and "B" all sound like the same thing to a first-time applicant, and the regulations seldom slow down to define them. So this page does the one thing the phone book will not. It gives you each term in a sentence or two of plain English, then hands you to the page that explains it in full.
Treat this as a decoder you keep open in a second tab. The glossary hub holds the rest of the vocabulary, and the cluster pages hold the mechanics. This page is the map, not the territory. Read the definition here, then follow the link the moment you are ready to actually apply.
One more thing before the decoder itself, and it prevents the most common confusion. Montana does not run one points system. It runs two, they obey different rules, and only one of them ever expires. Hold that in mind as you read the entries below.
What is a bonus point?
A bonus point is an extra chance in a Montana drawing, and Montana squares your points before the draw, so ten points become 101 entries instead of eleven.
That squaring is the whole trick, and it is the reason the last few points matter so much. FWP's own example makes it concrete: ten bonus points become (10 × 10) + 1, which is 101 entries. Five points would give you 26, and eight points would give you 65. The distance between eight points and ten is 36 entries, and between ten and twelve it is 44. That curve is the entire design, which is why the last few years of patience are worth more than the first few.
| What it does | Adds entries to a drawing — extra tickets toward one permit. |
| The core rule | Points are squared before the draw: 10 points = (10 × 10) + 1 = 101 entries. |
| How you get one | One bonus point per license year, per permit type. |
| When they end | They accumulate until you draw. |
| Do not confuse | Preference points are a separate system, used only for the nonresident Combination. |
Read that table once more, because one line in it corrects the most common mistake on the internet. A bonus point is not a loyalty reward, and it is not a queue position that creeps forward one place a year. It is arithmetic, and that arithmetic is stacked in favor of the patient hunter who stays in the game without ever drawing a thing.
The full explanation, the party rules, and what happens to your points on the year you draw all live on the bonus points page. What follows is the rest of the vocabulary you will meet on the way there.
Preference point
Only the nonresident Combination drawing uses preference points, and that single fact makes them the most misunderstood term on this site. Of those licenses, 75% go in preference-point order, and the other 25% go to a random draw among applicants holding zero points. They max out at three, they cost $100 each, they are lost if you skip a year, and they are used up when you draw. Compare that to bonus points, which accumulate until you draw and never expire. If you are applying for anything other than a nonresident Combination, preference points are not your system. The nonresident license costs page walks through both.
General license
A general license is valid across broad areas rather than one district, which is why it earns the name "the workhorse" in every hunting camp you visit. Residents buy general deer and general elk licenses over the counter, with no draw and no deadline attached. Nonresidents cannot, and that one difference shapes the entire out-of-state application. Everything else, meaning the permits, the B licenses, and the drawings, stacks on top of whichever license you already hold. To see a general tag and a permit interact on one species, read the elk tag guide.
Limited-entry permit
A limited-entry permit requires an application and is usually tied to one district, so it is a specific hunt rather than a broad season. Deer, elk, Deer B, Elk B, antelope, moose, bighorn sheep, mountain goat, and bison all pass through this door. Some of these drawings are brutally competitive, and some are not: many pronghorn either-sex and Elk B antlerless drawings run in the double digits. The elk tag guide covers how a permit layers onto the license you already hold.
"B" license
A B license is a Deer B or Elk B license, and it is generally antlerless. B licenses sell by drawing in some cases and over the counter in others, and the two routes carry different prices. Residents may hold up to three deer licenses and three elk licenses, one general in each group, so a B license adds meat to the freezer without costing you your general tag. A nonresident Combination holder may add up to two Deer B licenses. The elk tag guide shows how they stack.
Combination license
The Combination license is the nonresident deer and elk license, and it is the one out-of-state hunters apply for every spring. Three versions exist, and each includes upland game bird hunting plus a season fishing license. A nonresident may hold only one Combination per year, which means one application, one draw, and no backup on the same license type. Prices, deadlines, and the alternates list all live on the nonresident license costs page.
Hunting district
A hunting district is a numbered unit, and the number tells you which FWP region it sits in. Region 1 districts start with 1 or 001, Region 2 with 2 or 002, and so on through Region 7. That prefix is not decoration. It is the fastest way to place a unit on the map before you read a single regulation, and District 700, for example, is the Missouri Breaks–Prairie unit out in Region 7. Learning to read the number saves you an hour of scrolling, and the district reading guide teaches the rest.
Block Management Area
A Block Management Area is private land opened to free public hunting through a voluntary FWP program. Landowners enroll, FWP pays them, and you gain access to ground that would otherwise stay locked, usually with a sign-in or a permission step at a check station. In 2025 the program ran 1,326 cooperators across 6.81 million acres, and FWP paid out $12.5 million. Those numbers move every year, so check the current season's figures. FWP publishes the Hunter Access Guide by August 15, and the Block Management page explains how to use it.
Draw and leftover ("surplus") license
The draw is the application process itself, and a leftover license — also called a surplus license — is what remains after the drawing closes. Surplus licenses follow a sign-up window, and anything still unsold after that goes over the counter. This is the second-chance channel, and it is where a lot of out-of-state hunters actually end up hunting. The bonus points page covers how a draw resolves and what to do when it does not.
Landowner sponsor license
A landowner sponsor license is a nonresident Deer Combination license set aside for hunters sponsored by a qualifying landowner. FWP reserves 2,000 of them, and a landowner holding 640 or more acres may sponsor up to two hunters. It is a real path, but it depends on a relationship you either have or you do not, and no application deadline will create one. The nonresident license costs page lays out the rest of the reserved categories.
Come Home to Hunt license
Come Home to Hunt is a reduced-price license for former Montana residents, and a resident family member must sponsor the applicant. The quota is 500 for each of the three license types, and the application window runs March 1 to April 1, the same window as the main nonresident draw. Prices sit well under the standard Combination rate. A separate Nonresident Native License exists for people born in Montana, and that one is unlimited and sold over the counter. Both are detailed on the nonresident license costs page.
FAQ
How many bonus points can I buy a year? One bonus point per license year, per permit type. Apply for an elk permit and a deer permit in the same year and you may buy a point for each, but you cannot buy two for the same permit type in one year.
Do bonus points expire? No. Bonus points accumulate until you draw. Preference points are the fragile ones, and they are lost if you skip a year of applying.
Do I need a preference point or a bonus point? Only the nonresident Combination drawing uses preference points. Every other drawing in Montana runs on bonus points, so most applicants never touch the preference system at all.
Can I apply as a group? Yes. Up to five people may apply as a party, and the party uses the average of its members' points. The whole party gets one entry, which is a real tradeoff worth understanding before you file.
What happens if I don't draw? You wait for the surplus list. The sign-up window for leftover licenses runs June 15 to July 15, and anything still unsold after that is sold over the counter. It may not be the tag you wanted, but it is often a tag you can hunt.
Here is the honest part, and it is worth more than the definitions above. None of this vocabulary will rescue a bad application. Reading the terms correctly only tells you what you are entering, not whether you should enter it. Plenty of hunters learn every word on this page, apply with confidence, and still burn a decade of points on a unit they never should have picked. Whether the district is worth your vacation days, and whether you should be spending points there at all, is a different question, and it is the one that costs you a season when you get it wrong.
Get the dates and the odds in one place
The definitions are the easy half. The hard half is knowing when to apply, what the draw odds look like, and which units deserve your points this year. The Draw Odds & Deadline Calendar puts every application window, drawing date, and season opener on one page, with the odds behind each unit.
Get the full Draw Odds & Deadline Calendar and stop guessing at the phone book.