Montana Bonus Points, Explained (and Why They're Squared)
You know a hunter who has chased the same moose permit for eighteen straight years and never drawn it. You also know — or you have read about — a hunter who put his name in once and pulled the tag his first season. Both stories are true, and both happen every spring in Montana, and together they make the whole system look like luck.
It is not luck. It is arithmetic, and the arithmetic is squared, which is the single fact that explains almost everything else about how Montana's drawings behave. This page walks through the mechanic and the math. It covers how a bonus point is bought, what the square actually does, how parties and preference points fit around it, and where a pile of points still fails you. If you are new to the term itself, the short definition lives in our glossary entry on the bonus point. What follows here is the working detail.
The short version
| What it does | Adds entries to a drawing — extra tickets, in effect. |
| The core rule | Points are squared before the draw: FWP's own example, 10 points = (10 × 10) + 1 = 101 entries. |
| How you get one | One bonus point per license year, per permit type. |
| When they end | Points accumulate until you draw. |
| Do not confuse | Preference points are a separate system, used only for the nonresident Combination. |
Let's take those in order.
What a bonus point is, and how you buy one
A bonus point is not a purchase you make at the counter, and it is not a membership you hold. It is something you acquire by applying for a limited-entry permit and not drawing one. The mechanics are narrow, and the narrowness matters.
You may acquire one bonus point per license year, per permit type. That word — type — is doing real work. A bonus point in the elk-permit category does nothing for your deer-permit application next year. Points do not transfer across permit types, and they do not pool. If you build five years in one category and then decide to chase something else, you start that chase at zero.
From there, the rule is simple, and it is also the reason people misunderstand the system: points accumulate until you draw. You are not spending them, and you are not cashing them in. You are stacking tickets in a barrel that stays closed until the year your name comes out.
If you are mapping this onto a specific hunt, the practical version of it lives in our guide to applying for a Montana elk tag. Elk is where most applicants meet the system for the first time.
The squared mechanic — and why it changes everything
Here is where Montana separates itself from the states that hand out a single preference point a year.
Montana squares your bonus points before the draw. The formula FWP publishes is your points multiplied by themselves, plus one base entry. FWP's own worked example is ten points:
10 points = (10 × 10) + 1 = 101 entries.
That "+1" is you — the one entry every applicant holds no matter what. Everything above one is your points, multiplied.
Why does squaring change everything? Because it turns a straight line into a curve. A preference-point system climbs by addition: two points is twice the weight of one, and ten points is ten times the weight of one. Montana climbs by multiplication, and multiplication is where small differences stop being small.
| Bonus points | Entries (points × points + 1) |
|---|---|
| 1 | 2 |
| 5 | 26 |
| 10 | 101 |
| 18 | 325 |
Run FWP's own formula and the shape becomes obvious. Five points is not five times a single point; it is thirteen times two entries. Ten points is not double five; it is 101 entries against 26, not quite four times the pull. By the time you reach the eighteen-point level that shows up in real draw data, a single applicant is holding 325 entries against the two held by a first-timer.
That is the whole design. Squaring rewards patience steeply, and it does so without ever promising you anything. You are not climbing a ladder toward a guaranteed permit. You are buying more tickets in a barrel — exponentially more — and then the barrel is shaken.
Bonus points across species — and the seven-year wait
Different permit types run on their own draws, and each carries its own pool of points. Deer permits, elk permits, Deer B, Elk B, antelope, moose, sheep, goat, and bison are all separate applications. A point earned in one is a point you do not have in another.
Some of those categories carry a rule that resets your position entirely. Draw a moose permit and the successful applicant is ineligible for seven years. The same seven-year wait applies to mountain goat. You did not use up a small thing. You stepped out of the game for most of a decade, and if you want back in, you begin again at zero.
This is why the honest way to think about a moose or goat point is as a decade-long commitment, not a seasonal purchase. A hunter who draws one of those tags at year eight has not won a lottery so much as finished a long apprenticeship. The bighorn sheep drawings run on their own rules and their own timelines. They are worth reading on their own terms before you start stacking points toward one.
Preference points — a genuinely different animal
If you take one thing from this page, make it this: bonus points and preference points are not two names for the same idea. They are two separate systems, and only one of them is a ladder.
Preference points apply only to the nonresident Combination drawing. Nothing else. Not deer permits, not elk permits, not antelope. If you are a Montana resident, this section does not concern you at all.
Where they do apply, they work by order rather than by chance:
- 75% of those licenses go in preference-point order — highest points first. This is a true queue.
- 25% go to a random draw among zero-point applicants.
- Points max out at 3, at $100 each.
- They are lost if you skip a year, and used up if you draw.
Read that list again and you will see three consequences the outfitter brochures leave out. Because the ceiling is three, the top of the queue is reachable in three years — this is not a twenty-year wait. Because skipping a year forfeits them, you cannot build preference points casually; you build them or you lose them. And because drawing consumes them, the queue drains constantly at the front, which is what keeps it from clogging forever.
For the money side of the nonresident draw — what the Combination actually costs and when it must be filed — see our breakdown of nonresident license costs.
Parties: the average that can cost you
You may apply as a party of up to five, and FWP resolves the party as a single unit. The party uses the average of its members' points, and it draws as one entry.
That average is the trap. Suppose four of your group are brand new and one has been building for twelve years. The party does not draw at twelve points. It draws at the average — 2.4 — and it draws once, not five times. Your most committed hunter just diluted a decade of work to carry four people who have barely started.
A party is a fine tool when everyone's points are roughly even, or when the point of the trip is to be together rather than to draw fast. It is a poor tool when one person's whole advantage is the reason you are applying. If that advantage is the reason, apply alone.
The honest picture
Everything above is neutral. This part is not, and it is the part you came for.
Bonus points are not a loyalty ladder, and FWP is not rewarding your tenure. The system squares chances; it does not rank people. That distinction has consequences, and you should sit with them before you commit a decade.
Points get wasted in predictable ways. Hunters split their effort across so many categories that none of them ever climbs. A hunter with two points in six different draws is weaker everywhere than a hunter with twelve points in one. Some hunters apply for units they would never actually hunt if they drew, which is a strange way to spend years of arithmetic. Others let preference points lapse by skipping a spring, not realizing that the queue they were building is simply gone.
Then there is the reality of the marquee tags. For many of Montana's lotteries, the odds of being drawn are greater than 100 to 1. The West Garnet moose permit sits near 2%. The North Clark Fork bighorn drawing pulled 1,234 applicants in 2020 and 463 in 2021. That swing matters. Your odds moved more in one year because of who else applied than they would in several years of your own point-building. Points tilt the math. They do not control it.
So there is an honest fork in the road, and only you can pick it. If what you want is the dream tag — the once-in-a-lifetime animal — then build your points, accept the century-long odds, and make peace with a hunt that may never come. If what you want is to hunt Montana, and to hunt it soon, the odds live somewhere else entirely.
Many pronghorn either-sex drawings and Elk B antlerless drawings run at double-digit success rates — ten times better or more than the marquee permits. And roughly 80% of the state is open to general-tag hunting (FWP Montana Outdoors, 2022). A general tag does not require a wild stroke of luck. It requires a license, a map, and a plan, and it will put you in the field this season instead of a decade from now. If you are still deciding which kind of hunter you are, our trip-planning guide is a good place to sort it out.
A worked example: the East Fork Bitterroot mule deer permit, 2021
Abstractions are easy to nod at and hard to feel. Here is the real thing.
In 2021, the East Fork Bitterroot mule deer buck permit handed out 4 permits. Look at who applied, and split the pool into its two extremes.
- 80 residents at the maximum point level — 18 points — giving those top-tier applicants about 1-in-20 odds.
- 1,334 residents at zero points, of whom exactly 1 drew — about 1-in-1,334 odds.
Both halves of that story matter, and the mule deer are the animal behind the numbers.
Start with the top. Eighty hunters had maxed out a decade and a half of points, and between them they were competing for four permits. The very best odds available to the most patient applicants in the pool were 1-in-20. Points had done real work — 1-in-20 is dramatically better than 1-in-1,334 — and yet nobody at eighteen points could call himself a favorite, because four permits divided among eighty maximum-point applicants is still four permits divided among eighty people.
Now the bottom. Somebody walked in cold, at zero points, and drew. That hunter was not blessed and he was not cheating; he held one entry in a barrel that happened to be shaken his way. The zero-point draw is the proof of the design, not a flaw in it. The draw is a draw.
Put the two together and you have the entire system in one line: more points gives you more tickets, and more tickets never promises you the tag. The man with eighteen points was far likelier to draw, and the man with none still could. Both of them are you, in some future spring, depending on choices you make now.
FAQ
Do Montana bonus points guarantee a permit? No. They add entries to a draw, and more entries raise your odds. Nothing in the system guarantees an outcome, and the marquee permits stay long shots even at the maximum point level.
How many bonus points can I get in a year? One per license year, per permit type. A point in one permit type does not carry over into another.
Do bonus points expire? Bonus points accumulate until you draw — that is the rule FWP publishes. Note that this differs from preference points, which are lost if you skip a year and used up if you draw.
Does a party combine everyone's points? Not by adding them. A party of up to five uses the average of its members' points and draws as a single entry, so a high-point hunter inside a low-point group is diluted rather than multiplied.
What happens after I draw a moose or mountain goat permit? The successful applicant is ineligible for seven years. Moose and mountain goat both carry the seven-year wait.
Is there a preference-point system for deer and elk permits? No. Preference points apply only to the nonresident Combination drawing — 75% in point order, 25% at random among zero-point applicants, capped at three points.
Where to go next
The mechanic is now in your hands, and the math behind it is only as useful as the numbers you feed into it. Two tools do that work for you.
The Draw Odds & Deadline Calendar puts every 2026 deadline and drawing date on one page. You get the March 1 to April 1 window for the nonresident Combination and the deer and elk permits. You get the May 1 deadline for moose, bighorn sheep, mountain goat, and bison. You get the June 1 date for Deer B, Elk B, antelope, and Antelope B. You will not miss a spring because you were guessing at a date.
And the Nonresident Draw-Odds Calculator lets you test the squared mechanic against the draws you actually care about. Run your real numbers and you can see what your current points are worth before you spend another season on them.
Build the points if the dream tag is worth the wait. Hunt the general season if the season is what you want. Either way, stop guessing at the arithmetic — it is published, and now you know how to read it.