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Ten Sleep WY

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Just spent a few days exploring the public south of Ten Sleep and Worland, WY. Was really surprised at the lack of antelope. We only saw 30-50 antelope on the public in probably 8 hours of cruising gravel. A couple nice bucks but not much to brag about. Lots of water and feed but most water holes didn’t even have tracks.

G&F still has over a hundred buck tags for that area. I feel for those folks that burned 8 points for that hunt. There will be a lot of disappointed hunters this year unless they have pivot access. I talked to some locals and they were positive about the antelope numbers. Maybe a bunch migrate later in the year but for now it is mostly desolate on the public.
 
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I find that hard to believe. Pretty serious lope country.
It is awesome country devoid of antelope. You are welcome to burn your own fuel and time. I won’t be applying there. There are several better units for less points I would absolutely go to before 114-115.
 
Headed to the NE of the state mid-October. Curious to see what numbers will be in my area.

I managed to get some additional private access so that might help...
We headed out that way today and from a highway perspective we didn’t see much. It’s like that whole I90 area is still recovering from the bad winter 2 years ago.
 
I feel for the folks that are willing to save up and build 8 antelope points in Wyoming
I had seven and burned them last year. Had a great hunt that we repeated this year with a buddy. It was worth the wait. We saw 2-300 antelope and found several really nice bucks in a different area from this thread.

Building points and hunting second choice / die tags kept the freezer full. Not sure that is doable anymore since the winter kill.
 
Climb there 1-2x / year. I have seen them in the high meadows/plains off the canyon road to the N. DM and I can tell you where we spotted em exactly - that said my spot is easily accessible to the brap-brappers.
 
Climb there 1-2x / year. I have seen them in the high meadows/plains off the canyon road to the N. DM and I can tell you where we spotted em exactly - that said my spot is easily accessible to the brap-brappers.
Very cool spots out there that would have been fun to hike into or climb up to. I couldn’t help but wonder what we would have found in some of those random cave openings we saw on some faces.
 
We headed out that way today and from a highway perspective we didn’t see much. It’s like that whole I90 area is still recovering from the bad winter 2 years ago.
I don't know why that's a surprise. The population took a major dump in 22. What few lived, had a handful of fawns in the spring of 23. Those few fawns that survived will be having fawns in the spring of 25. The only recruitment for the past 2 years is from the survivors of the 22 winter. Simple math, they don't recover over night. The game and fish has the same math problem.

Severe die offs take a long time to recover.
 
I don't know why that's a surprise. The population took a major dump in 22. What few lived, had a handful of fawns in the spring of 23. Those few fawns that survived will be having fawns in the spring of 25. The only recruitment for the past 2 years is from the survivors of the 22 winter. Simple math, they don't recover over night. The game and fish has the same math problem.

Severe die offs take a long time to recover.
There were so few bucks and the groups were so geographically spread out that taking the buck out has herd consequences. Genetically some of the bucks need to go but for the recovery those does are likely not getting bred. We were not seeing lone young bucks that could have taken their place. I’m not sure what the range of a antelope is out there but when small groups are 10 miles apart, it doesn’t seem logical that these groups are going to get much diversity for a while.
 
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Damn shame. That winter had no mercy on anything. WY pronghorn hunting will be tough for awhile few years.
 
Did you go up over past the ski hill to the east? Saw quite a few nice bucks up there.
 
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