If you are hoping to hunt bighorn sheep in the lower 48, you have no choice but to tolerate some extremely difficult draw odds. Here are how the the numbers ended up for New Mexico sheep in 2023:

Historical #s from 2022 (2023 data unavailable)

The drawing for sheep in New Mexico is a bit unique in that there is a single hunt code for Bighorn rams (BHS-1-201), a single hunt code for Desert rams (BHS-1-204) and one each for the Ewe hunts (BHS-1-202 & BHS-2-203). And then within each of these hunt codes you are allowed to choose up to 3 specific sheep hunting areas. So if you are lucky enough to be drawn, they will then look at the specific areas on your application, in order, to see if any remaining tags are available in the areas you applied for.

We requested and were able to obtain the applicant area choice information from the New Mexico Game and Fish Department. Here is how applicants used their area choices in 2022:

Part of the reason we obtain the area information details is that it allows us to look closer to see if your choice of areas per hunt code had any material impact on your overall draw odds. For nonresidents and outfitters the answer is mostly no. Unfortunately with so few tags available in the nonresident and outfitter pools you've generally won or lost the battle before area choices become any factor. But you should still be sure to use all of your 3 area choices per hunt code when you apply.

But for residents it did make a very slight but noticeable difference. In every simulated draw that we ran there would be a handful of resident apps pulled - with ram tags still left to give somewhere - that would be unsuccessful because the area choices they specified were all of higher demand. As always, residents should make their 3rd area choice per hunt code a reasonable one (ie less popular) to avoid this scenario. It may well be the difference between getting a chance to harvest a ram in your lifetime - and not.