Caribou Gear

When to apply in WY for antelope?

pikeman1

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So do most of you antelope hunters wait until quotas are out for the units in April-May to apply? Or do you just apply right away in Jan? Looking at doing our first hunt this year, and would like to get a buck(0 points) and 2 doe tags. Want to make sure I pick units with the highest odds of drawing. Thanks for the help.
 
I personally am gonna wait for the quotas. I've got my application plan completely ironed out, but wanna make sure I don't get blindsided by weird quota shifts, cause they do happen. In that case I can make some adjustments, because it's certainly not unrealistic for NR's to stack up all 3 antelope tags every other year if not every year if you choose wisely.
 
I never apply for anything until about a week or two before the end of the application period, as I figure there is no sense giving them any money way ahead of time and it also allows you to check the final quotas after the Commission has their Spring meeting. However, if you want to apply early you can still go in and modify your application later, but you can't change from Regular to Special Draw or vice versa because of the money difference. If you want to do that you have to withdraw your application and start over and you don't get that initial money back, minus the application fee for it, until after the draw.
 
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The final big game license quotas will be voted on by the Wyoming Game and Fish Commission at their meeting in Lander the last full week of April - I believe the meeting dates are April 25 and 26. The license quotas should be posted on the G&F website by May 1; that gives a person the entire month of May to get their application in.

ClearCreek
 
So do most of you antelope hunters wait until quotas are out for the units in April-May to apply? Or do you just apply right away in Jan? Looking at doing our first hunt this year, and would like to get a buck(0 points) and 2 doe tags. Want to make sure I pick units with the highest odds of drawing. Thanks for the help.

If you plan to hunt public make sure you have enough access as units with higher draw odds could be mostly private.
 
Thanks for posting this question. I kept thinking I was misunderstanding the open period for applications and didn't want to get burned by changing quotas. Thinking of finally burning my points this year (7).
 
It’s also good to wait and see how bad winter really is in the area you want to hunt or CWD or anything else that effects tag quotas
 
It’s also good to wait and see how bad winter really is in the area you want to hunt or CWD or anything else that effects tag quotas

If you are interested in antelope tags only, you do not have to worry about CWD as antelope are not susceptible to CWD. Late winter/early spring snow storms that would kill antelope would be more of a worry.

ClearCreek
 
Your draw odds do not increase by applying early. I wait until a few weeks before the deadline.
 
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