California’s most valuable hunting tags do not go through the state’s general drawing. They go through nonprofit auctions, and the state just opened the application window that decides which organizations get to sell them for the 2027-28 season. Nonprofits have until 3 p.m. on October 20, 2026, to apply for up to 18 special big-game tags covering bighorn sheep, deer, elk, and pronghorn antelope, according to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife call for applications.
Auction proceeds return to CDFW and fund projects for the same four species — bighorn sheep, deer, elk and pronghorn. The 2026-27 round raised more than $1 million, with the money funneled into habitat conservation, post-wildfire forest restoration, wildlife population studies, and artificial watering devices for wildlife during drought. Tags can only be purchased through the nonprofit auctions themselves; they are not sold to the public directly.
California’s numbers are small next to the two national programs that made premium-tag auctions a mainstream conservation-funding model. The Wild Sheep Foundation has raised and helped direct almost $100 million toward the conservation and management of wild sheep and their habitats in almost 40 years, and state, provincial, territorial, tribal, and First Nation fish and game agencies that allocate sheep tags to WSF for auction receive 85 to 100 percent of the proceeds. The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation has conserved or enhanced more than 9.2 million acres and opened 1.6 million acres to public access since 1984, financed in large part by its own auction operation.
Where CDFW’s program differs is scope and access. Eighteen tags is a small annual pool, but each tag is a rare shot at a species — a desert or Sierra bighorn ram, a premium tule elk bull, a top-tier mule deer, or a pronghorn buck — that a general lottery hunter almost never draws in a lifetime. That scarcity is what drives the auction dollars back to CDFW, and it is the mechanism California is asking nonprofits to help run for the third decade in a row.
