Iowa's 2026 Nonresident Deer Draw: Gun Beat Bow in All 10 Zones

IGun versus bow

All 10 zones gave gun applicants better odds than bow applicants

For the 2026 drawing, gun applicants succeeded at a higher rate than bow applicants across Iowa's 10 nonresident zones. Zone 10 had the narrowest difference: the success rate was 60.2% for gun applicants versus 53.8% for bow applicants. Zone 3 had the widest gap, a percentage point spread of 43.2. Its entire gun pool of 362 received licenses, compared with 196 successful bow applicants out of 345. Across the 10 zones, the average difference was 20.4 points, with each zone weighted equally regardless of applicant count.

We use "Odds" for the number of licenses awarded divided by the number of drawing applicants. Quotas were filled for both seasons across the zones, with one exception: the gun drawing for Zone 3. The official results list 364 licenses available and 362 applicants, leaving two licenses unclaimed when the drawing ended.

IIHow points work

Iowa starts with hunters holding the highest point totals

Nonresidents select a single zone and season when they apply. Preference points determine their place in Iowa's drawing order. The application instructions for 2026 say an unsuccessful applicant receives one point and pays a fee of $60.50 that cannot be refunded. Hunters who do not submit an application can instead purchase one point for that year. According to Iowa's answers for nonresident hunters, points can be purchased only within the application period, with a limit of one each year. The points belong to the hunter and transfer between seasons and zones: earning one through a bow application lets you use it for a later gun application. Iowa draws first from the group with the highest point total, then moves to groups with progressively fewer points. It stops once all licenses are awarded or all applicants receive one. Receiving a general deer tag resets a hunter's point balance to zero. The note accompanying the draw results describes a constraint on the data. Hunters who purchased only a point, without applying, are excluded from the tables. The state says it cannot account for their effect on drawing odds because their points are tied to neither a particular zone nor a particular season.

IIIThe wait

Guaranteed draws required bow totals of 2 to 6 points versus gun totals of 0 to 2

The state reports successful hunters at each point total, along with the overall applicant count. It does not report the size of the applicant pool at each total. Iowa awards tags in descending point order, so all applicants at levels above the lowest successful level received licenses. This lets us show the most useful column, "points for a sure draw". It identifies a point total that guaranteed success, one point higher than the lowest total at which anyone received a tag. The actual minimum could sit one point below that figure if everyone in the lowest successful group also received a license.

Bow's point requirement exceeded gun's throughout the 10 zones, with differences of 1 to 4 points. The highest requirements for each season belonged to Zones 4 and 5, along with 6: bow required 6 points, gun 2. For Zones 2 and 7, as well as 9, the totals were 4 bow points and 1 gun point. The bow requirement for Zones 1 and 3, plus 8 and 10, was 2 points. Even Zone 10, which had the narrowest difference in success rates, required an extra point for bow (2) compared with gun (1).

Ranking zones by the overall success percentage gives a different order than ranking them by points. For bow, Zone 2 finished last among the 10 zones at 33.7%, and guaranteed success required 4 points. Zone 4 posted 51.4%, close to even odds, while a guaranteed license there required 6 points.

The results differ for hunters without points. No zero-point bow applicant received a license anywhere. Zero-point gun applicants succeeded in seven zones; none succeeded in Zones 4 or 5, or in 6. Their gun success rates ranged from 13.4% for Zone 7 to 100.0% for Zone 3. We calculated those rates using the state's totals.

IVThe bow ceiling

Each zone limits bow's license share to 35%

The application instructions for 2026 allocate 6,000 general deer tags across 10 zones. For any zone, the share available to bow hunters cannot exceed 35 percent. The state lists bow quotas at that maximum throughout the zones, with fractions rounded down to whole tags. In Zone 4, for instance, 448 bow tags come from a total of 1,280. The applicant mix differed from the license mix. Zone 5 had 1,431 applicants seeking 560 bow tags, compared with 1,703 seeking 1,040 gun tags. Across all 10 zones, bow's share of applicants exceeded its share of available licenses. The reason so many hunters chose bow cannot be determined from these tables.

VMethod and limits

What these counts cover, and what they leave unanswered

Our source is nonresident deer draw results for 2026 from Iowa DNR. That single page contains separate Gun and Bow tables. For each zone, they give the successful applicants at point totals of 0 to 7 or higher, along with license quotas, application counts and awarded licenses. We reconstructed applicant totals, quotas and license awards across all 20 rows; those figures agree with the table shown above.

We derived "Points for 100%" from the state's totals, using the drawing sequence described in the application instructions. The lowest successful point group may have had some or all of its applicants receive licenses; the table cannot resolve that question. If that group held more than zero points, the reported totals do not separate its applicants from applicants with fewer points. Its drawing odds therefore cannot be calculated from the table. If that group held zero points, as happened for gun in seven zones, subtracting winners with higher point totals from all applicants gives the zero-point applicant count. Section III uses that calculation.

Hunters who purchased a point without applying are absent from applicant totals, but those points carry forward into future drawings. A later cutoff can therefore shift because of factors these totals cannot capture. The odds next year depend on who applies next year. Treat these point requirements as a snapshot of the drawing in 2026.

Muzzleloader is a separate season option in the application instructions, while the results show columns for Gun and Bow alone. That leaves us unable to identify where the muzzleloader applicants fall in the counts. These odds measure licenses relative to applicants; they reveal nothing about a zone's deer population or the quality of its deer.

VIWhat to do

Pick gun or bow, then weigh the point cost

We start by choosing gun or bow, then select a zone. In 2026, that season decision alone changed the required point total by 1 to 4 points across every zone. Hunters happy with either season should choose the shorter wait. The season schedule in Iowa's application instructions shows the tradeoff: bow hunting opens Oct. 1 and continues to Dec. 4, then returns Dec. 21 and lasts to Jan. 10, 2027. The two regular gun periods cover Dec. 5 to 9, followed by Dec. 12 to 20.

The 2026 window opened May 2 and ended June 7. It is now closed. According to Iowa DNR, the deer application window always starts on the first Saturday in May and ends on the first Sunday in June. Points are available for purchase during that period, making next spring the next opportunity. In 2026, two points guaranteed a successful draw for the chosen season: gun in any zone, or bow in the four zones that required 2 points (Zones 1, 3, 8 and 10). Gun hunters needed few points to guarantee a draw: zero in Zone 3, one in six zones and two in Zones 4, 5 and 6. Bow hunters face a longer wait. A hunter can gain one point each year, so someone beginning with zero would have 6 points after six years. If the 2026 requirements stay the same, that hunter would be guaranteed a bow draw in Zone 4, 5 or 6 on the seventh application.

For a group application, the group rules give all members the same point total: that of the hunter in the group who has the fewest points.

To pick a hunting location after you have a tag, read The Two Iowas. For a longer-term approach to accumulating points in Iowa and Kansas, read The Non-Resident Point Game.