By Hunt Smart NM · September 23, 2026

No Scope, Less Competition: What Changed in New Mexico’s Muzzleloader Draw

Fewer resident applicants. Better draw rates. Lower reported success. Eight years of New Mexico draw data, and seven of harvest data, on what the scope ban actually changed.

In 2022, the New Mexico State Game Commission voted to ban scopes on muzzleloaders. The ban officially went into effect for the 2023 season and has remained in place. Following the scope ban, fewer resident hunters selected muzzleloader hunts as their first choice—and demand stayed lower. For hunters willing to use open or peep sights, some elk and deer hunts deserve another look.

So did the tags actually get easier to draw? Hunt Smart NM went through the official draw reports for 2019 through 2026, and the harvest reports for 2019 through 2025, hunt by hunt. For residents, yes—most muzzleloader hunts became easier to draw, but that is only half the story.

The field thinned out fast, and stayed thin

The drop was immediate. From the 2022 draw to the 2023 draw — the first one held under the ban — resident first-choice applicants fell 23.0% for elk and 28.6% for deer.

Nothing similar happened to the other weapons. In that same year, resident first-choice applicants rose 7.8% for elk and 5.1% for deer in rifle hunts, and 4.4% and 5.4% in archery hunts. Hunters were not leaving the draw. They were leaving muzzleloader hunts.

Two qualifications belong here. Muzzleloader applications had already slipped from 2021 to 2022, so the decline did not begin with the ban. And the number of tags available to applicants barely moved: included elk hunts offered 4,210 licenses in 2022 and 4,171 in 2023, while deer went from 4,755 to 4,845. A supply cut cannot explain a quarter of the field disappearing.

The field has not come back. By 2026 — four draws under the ban — resident first-choice applicants totaled 8,069 for elk and 4,055 for deer, still 25.8% and 32.8% below the 2022 pre-ban levels.

Fewer applicants, better odds

Fewer people chasing roughly the same number of tags is exactly what it sounds like. Comparing the four draws before the ban with the four draws under it, the share of residents who drew the muzzleloader hunt they listed first rose for both species.

Residents were more likely to draw their first-choice muzzleloader hunt after the ban. The draw rate rose 4.28 percentage points for elk and 5.50 for deer. Archery and rifle moved the other way in both species over the same period. That contrast is the strongest evidence in this analysis that something specific to muzzleloader hunts changed in 2023.

The tags got easier to draw. They did not get easier to fill.

This is the part worth slowing down for, because it cuts against the headline. Across the same hunts, average reported harvest success went down after the ban. Hunt Smart NM compared 2019–2022 with 2023–2025, using the 45 elk and 54 deer hunts with published results in both periods. Completed 2026-season results are not yet available. ^[10]

Success was lower in 33 of the 45 elk hunts and 40 of the 54 deer hunts. That includes the hunts where drawing got easier: of the 82 hunts whose resident draw rate improved, reported success still fell in 61.

The two species then part company. Elk success fell hard in 2023, to 25.6%, and has largely recovered — 29.3% in 2025, close to its pre-ban level. That pattern looks like a learning curve: a weapon got harder to shoot well, and hunters adjusted. Deer has not recovered. It ran 28.9% in 2023 and 23.2% in 2025, its lowest year in the series. But deer success was already sliding before the ban — 34.0% and 34.5% in 2019 and 2020, then 29.1% and 30.2% in 2021 and 2022 — so read the deer decline with more caution than the elk one.

These are averages of the department’s published hunt success rates, each hunt weighted equally, and they combine applicant pools — they are not resident-only. Changes are calculated before rounding, so they will not always match the difference between the two displayed figures. Weather, herd conditions, access and season changes all move harvest numbers, so this comparison cannot tell you how much of the decline the ban caused. What it does tell you is practical: a better draw rate is not the same thing as a better season.

Where the change actually helped

Statewide averages hide a lot. Three hunts show the range.

The Unit 16E mature bull elk hunt is the clearest win. Average annual first-choice applicants fell from about 87 to 58, and the resident draw rate went from 21.8% to 42.0% — from a long shot to close to a coin flip.

The Unit 34 either-sex elk hunt shows the limit. Applicants fell from roughly 1,492 to 1,067 and the draw rate rose from 11.1% to 14.0%. A real improvement, and most hunters who put it first still did not draw it. Easing competition on a very popular hunt does not make it an easy hunt.

The Unit 15 deer hunt went the other way entirely. It drew 6.6% more resident first-choice applicants after the ban, and its draw rate fell from 38.0% to 35.4%.

Unit 15 is not alone. Of the 99 hunts with records in all eight years, 91 had lower average resident first-choice demand after the ban and 8 had higher. The full tables below cover all 46 elk and 54 deer histories included in this analysis, including hunts with noted season, bag or license changes. One of them — a Unit 37 mature bull elk hunt — was discontinued after 2022, which is why some comparisons here count 99 hunts rather than 100, and 45 elk hunts rather than 46.

Nonresidents got a different deal

The exodus was mostly a resident phenomenon. In the nonresident pool outside the outfitter pool, average first-choice applicants fell only 3.0% for elk and 9.0% for deer.

The results split. The nonresident deer rate improved from 29.08% to 36.61%. The nonresident elk rate slipped from 3.49% to 3.25% — it did not improve at all. If you apply as a nonresident for elk, the resident headline does not describe your odds. The outfitter pool, which can include residents and nonresidents, is reported separately in the downloadable tables.

Putting this to work

The timing and the contrast with rifle and archery support the idea that the ban drove down muzzleloader demand. Other rules, seasons and license numbers changed too, so this cannot measure how much of the decline the ban caused. ^{[1, 3, 6]}

If you are willing to hunt with open or peep sights, the practical move is to reopen hunts you wrote off when they looked hopeless. Three questions will tell you whether a hunt is worth an application:

1. Did its draw rate actually move? Some hunts gained twenty points. Some lost ground. The draw-rate column in the tables below shows the before and after side by side.
2. Is it attainable now, or just less impossible? A rate that went from 11% to 14% is still a long shot. One that went from 22% to 42% is a different decision.
3. Can you fill the tag? Check the hunt’s reported success, not just its draw rate. Those are separate questions, and this analysis says they moved in opposite directions.

Then confirm the dates, bag limit and eligibility for your own applicant pool before you apply. Use Hunt Explorer to compare individual hunts, and Draw Strategy to test all three of your choices together through its separate experimental simulation. Historical draw rates for individual choices cannot simply be added to calculate your chance of drawing a tag.

Explore the elk and deer muzzleloader hunts

All 100 elk and deer hunt histories are below, including discontinued hunts recorded during 2019–2026. These tables show the resident pool; download the calculations for the nonresident and outfitter pools. Private-land-only deer hunts, hunts where scopes were already prohibited, hunts added after the ban, and the three Marquez/L-Bar elk histories are excluded throughout — see Sources and methodology for why.

Before: 2019–2022. After: 2023–2026. Applicants are annual averages across the years actually reported; rates divide total first-choice awards by total first-choice entries. Missing years are identified. A dash means there is no comparison or no entries from which to calculate a rate.