Antelope Hunt
 

I am new to this forum and have a question about antelope hunting. Is there a place that I can antelope hunt this year without any preference points? I'm willing to travel to any state, but first choice would be anywhere that is driving distance from Rapid City SD. Would prefer a DIY hunt on public land but am not against paying a fair price to hunt private or trespass fee. I am OK with bow hunt or gun hunt either one. I have never hunted antelope before but the desire has just hit me the last few weeks.
Thanks in advance.

WY always has a lot of leftover tags. You can get them online or just drive over to WY and pick them up. They are unit specific and some units are better than others but they always put out a list ahead of time so you can do some research.

Wyoming is probably your best option. Take a few minutes to look over the draw results from previous years and find a unit that is possible to draw with no points. There is a second draw this year for the tags leftover from the first draw so trying to buy them OTC is not the best idea.

https://wgfd.wyo.gov/Hunting/Drawing...6-Drawing-Odds

Most of the easily drawn units will have difficult public access, so look for units with legal access to BLM land, walk-in areas, or state lands. In the no-points-required units the public land will have quite a few hunters but there are a lot of pronghorns. You might want to consider a doe/fawn tag or two also. A doe/fawn tag costs only $48 each for a nonresident and can often be had in addition to a buck tag.

I am not very good at WY units, but last October I was in Rapid City being a tourist prior to driving to Buffalo WY for antelope/deer. Just head htat way, you'll get sick of counting them in the fields along the highway (unless you're like my wife, it never got old for her!)

We hunted just east of Buffalo and there were left over tags for that unit. I'd have to dig up which it was, but public land access might ben an issue. There are at least 3 outfitters in Buffalo and they probably tie up a lot of the private ranches via leases.


Figure out the units and go from there

Thanks for the info. How about South Dakota, Is it hard to get drawn for that state?

I also just joined this forum and I am trying to learn about doing a DIY Wyoming antelope hunt. I live in New Hampshire looks like there's a good number of eastern hunters on here to talk to and learn from if anyone has tips for first time western hunters i'd love to hear them.

I believe the best thing you can do is to have a few preference points in your favor when the time comes to consider applying for a license. The antelope point will cost you $30 and the time to buy is July 31 - October 31. It is easy to register and buy a point, and the fellows with the most points get licenses for the better units. Simply looking over the draw odds for each unit will tell you which units are considered the most desirable. Antelope hunting can be good in easily drawn units but it is generally better in units that take three or four points to draw.

The WG&F site ( https://wgfd.wyo.gov/hunting ) has a good bit of valuable information.

Once you have found legally accessed land inhabited by antelope, the actual hunt is fairly straightforward. Spot and stalk is how it is normally done, and BLM land is where it is normally done. Most BLM land rented by ranchers is cut up with two track roads that can be driven by a four wheel drive vehicle which is how most spotting is accomplished. There are also state lands that are open to hunting, and Walk In areas which are sections of private land that allow access.

As it is physically not challenging at all, does not require any special skills or knowledge, and has a high success rate it can be an enjoyable experience for everyone. You will find no end of internet experts willing to tell you all about it!

I'm doing it for the 1st time. I'm going with an outfitter.

The PP only buying period is 7/1-10/31 and it's a waste of money to pay big bucks for an outfitted hunt with all the public land there is to hunt in Wyoming doing it yourself. Go on the G&F website and plan on spending a lot of time going over everything and if anyone has questions send me a PM, as I haven't missed a season hunting deer, elk, or antelope since 1997 out there and will be out there again for two months this year!

Thank you very much for the info. If a farmer is renting the land do you need to get permission to hunt the BLM land from them??