What Happens If You Stop Buying Preference Points?

A lot of guys think skipping a year on points is harmless. Like they can step away, come back later, and pick up right where they left off.

That’s not how it works.

The system doesn’t wait on you. It keeps moving. Every year you’re out, everyone else is still building points, still applying, still stacking up in front of you.

You didn’t pause—you gave up ground.

At first, it doesn’t feel like much. You miss a year, your points stay the same, nothing dramatic happens. But behind the scenes, things are shifting. More hunters enter the system, more people stay in it longer, and the number it takes to draw keeps climbing.

That’s where the gap starts.

Give it a couple years, and you’re not just one point behind—you’re further out than you were before you stopped. That’s the part that catches people off guard. They come back thinking they’re close, and they’re not.

Point creep is what makes this worse. The target isn’t standing still. What used to take five points now takes seven, eight, sometimes more. If you stepped out during that time, you didn’t just hold your position—you lost it.

And catching back up isn’t easy.

In preference point states, it hits the hardest. That system is a line. Every year you’re not in it, you’re getting passed. Everyone who stayed consistent is now ahead of you, and that line doesn’t move backward.

It only gets longer.

Bonus point states don’t punish you as directly, but you still lose something. You lose a year of chances. A year where your name could’ve been in the draw. Over time, that adds up more than people think.

Consistency is what keeps you in the game.

There are times where stepping out makes sense. If you’ve decided you’re not hunting a state anymore, there’s no reason to keep spending money there. Or if the system changes and no longer fits what you’re trying to do, it’s fine to move on.

But that needs to be a decision—not something random.

Where guys mess this up is going halfway. Buying points some years, skipping others, never really committing to a direction. That’s how time disappears without anything to show for it.

You’re not building, and you’re not hunting.

A better way to think about it is simple—either you’re in, or you’re out. If a state fits your plan, stay consistent and keep building. If it doesn’t, stop and move on.

Anything in between just drags things out.

Most hunters don’t realize how close they actually are before they quit. They get frustrated, skip a couple years, and when they come back, they’ve lost more ground than they expected.

Others stay in too long with no plan at all. Just buying points every year, thinking they’ll figure it out later.

That doesn’t work either.

At some point, those points need to turn into a hunt.

At the end of the day, these systems reward consistency. Not perfection, not luck—just staying in it and making intentional decisions.

If you’re in, stay in.

If you’re out, be done with it.

Because anything in between is where most people lose years without realizing it.