Isn't the Department missing out on important data by not sampling everyone?

No. Under a probabilistic sampling design, the Department does not need to collect everybody’s hunting activity, because it is assumed that the portion of hunters in the sample are representative to the rest of the hunters across North Dakota (this assumption is evaluated every couple of years). This allows the Department to estimate harvest for unsampled hunters based on harvest statistics from hunters who returned questionnaires. However, in order to ensure accurate estimates with low variability, more than 20,000 hunters are sampled each year, or about 40% of North Dakota deer hunters (2018).