Gillette WY
 

I heard Gillette Wyoming is the Antelope capital of the world. Most guides claim 100% success.

Anyone hunt there for Antelope ?

Wyoming is the antelope capitol of the world, not Gillette itself. I've hunted out in Wyoming for the last 25 years and haven't missed a season out there since 1998. It doesn't require a person to go on a guided hunt to have close to a 100% chance at killing one, as there are plenty of antelope to be had going DIY on public lands if a guy knows how to hunt and can shoot. Going guided just eliminates a lot of hunters since outfitters are mainly hunting large ranches they have leased to reduce hunter numbers to just those who go with them. The fees for a guided hunt are also comparatively high compared to guided elk and deer hunts.

x2 what Topgun said!! I don't remember how many times I've been to Wy, but if I had an antelope tag in my pocket it got filled!!

I live in WY. There are a lot of great pronghorn hunting places here. Gillette is great. You won't be disappointed.

Is Gillette a major city? Where I can buy a cooler & dry ice ?
and drop it off at a UPS store.

Yep, Gillette is one of the big cities in Wyoming. There is a main business district on the south side of the freeway (I-90) that goes south and there are big Walmarts, etc. on it. Walmart has both kinds of ice and it's on S. Douglas Hwy 59 on the west side of the street a few blocks south of I-90 going south out of Gillette.

You know you can answer your own question don't you? Ever heard of google? You can look up any town in the country. For instance when I punch it into google in less than 2 seconds I see it has a population of 31,797 on the last census and it is the county seat of Campbell County. I'm pretty sure they have a place you can get a cooler and ice.

I was told back in 2004 that the pronghorn were as thick as locusts around Gillette. I figured they were exaggerating. They were not. There are tons of pronghorn in the Gillette area. I hunted south of town in, I think, unit 23. There were a very large number of permits allocated for this unit -- maybe more than 1000. I noticed other parts of the state had much fewer numbers of permits allocated, implying a lower density of pronghorn.


I hunted on a 1200 acre ranch close to Gillette where we paid a modest trespassing fee to hunt for two days. My 14 year old son and I hunted. We both took a pronghorn. I could have shot a pronghorn while parked in the rancher's driveway, because a group of about 8 pronghorn walked up the road as we were pulling rifles from the trunk. I suggested my son shoot one. He pointed out there were methane wells in the background behind the pronghorn. "Just testin ya, son! Good work!"


As has been said, there is a place in town to get dry ice. Probably there are several such places.


I keep accumulating preference points for my son and I, but I have been going elk hunting every year since 2013, and I don't see my way clear to doing two separate Western hunts in the same year. Maybe I'll turn to pronghorn hunting when my knees give out and I can't chase elk at 11,500 feet elevation any longer.

There are a good number of them, but not like you mentioned, LOL! The reason unit 23 has so many tags allocated is because it's almost all private ranches that can control the number of hunters and animals. However, there will more than likely be cuts in tags in a good share of the units for them along with deer and possibly elk for the 2017 season because this winter is shaping up as the worst in quite a few years out west. In some areas animals have already died due to deep snows and many nights of -20 to -40 temperatures and with many weeks before Spring there will probably be many more animals that succumb. It's really a shame because things were really starting to look up as far as game numbers after several years of mild winters and good moisture during the year that provided good forage.

I hunted antelope for the first time last fall, in Buffalo. We drove from Rapid City SD, through Gillette to Buffalo. In the Rapid City airport we were talking to two other hunters from the area, who told us we'd be sick of seeing antelope well before we got to Buffalo. While "sick of" didn't happen, if you went 10 minutes driving down the highway without seeing them, it was strange.


there are lots. Getting on land is the trick. If you go outfitted (we did) then 100% is probable especially if you don't get "picky". You will see "lots" and learn to figure out if they are nice or not, antelope are hard to tell the difference between "ok" and "nice" until you get used to looking at them.