I can only speak of colorado when it comes to preference point creep. enysse, don't get to upset about being excluded from Ranching for Wildlife tags, for every one good animal that gets killed there are probably 10 hunters who have a negative experience.
The preference points works fine for the tags that take 2 to 7 points. There are a lot of people that want premium unit tags and that drives up the points for those tags. Very few people bail out of the pref point chase untill they get too old and see the handwriting on the wall, but for every one person who bails about 10 people get in the chase. I started early and shot plenty of does and cows and now it is all starting to pay off, but i am a resident. I understand the beef that the NR have. When you limit tags to 20% and some units have less than 10 tags total then the creep will get way out of hand for those units. The only really fair way is too have a totally random draw but when do you start this, when someone has 18-20 points and then they get the rug yanked and are told it is now lottery?
I think the co div of wildlife would love to sell more NR tags ( more revenue )but there is too much instate pressure for the opposite to happen. The other thing that many haven't thought of is if more out of staters drew their tags then more outfitters would be out of work. The reason the draw happens so early here is so the out of staters get pissed off, book a hunt with an outfitter with guaranteed tags and spent a lot of money. Outfitting is big business and they are in the hip pockets of many who are in charge, I don't see NR tags getting any easier to draw.
I probably didn't solve anything but that is my 2 cents worth.