January 26

Western Big Game Hunting-Part 2

After our unsuccessful first trip to Wyoming, we wanted to stack the odds better in our favor for our 2012 trip.  We carefully studied the Wyoming Game and Fish website to learn about the draw process and draw odds.  We made numerous calls to private land owners to see if they were accepting of hunters.  We found a landowner that had room for us for a very reasonable trespass fee. Paying a trespass fee is very common in Wyoming to hunt on private land and we decided to go that route since we still didn't have any preference points accumulated that would allow us to draw some of the better public land units.  When we arrived at the ranch we quickly realized we had hit the jackpot.  The number of pronghorn roaming the open range was astounding.  We had a successful hunt and met some great people who have since become life-long friends.

There were plenty of tags available in the unit that we hunted in 2012.  We decided to take our chances and apply for a harder to draw unit in order to accumulate some preference points if we were unsuccessful in the draw and then just purchase left-over tags later.  Unfortunately, Wyoming Game and Fish drastically decreased the number of available tags.  We were unable to hunt the ranch that we had made such great connections with the previous year.  It was back to square one, this time last minute, calling landowners to see if they had hunting availability.  We found another landowner that had availability for private land access.  Our hunt was successful, with all hunters tagging out in less than a half-day of hunting.  My pronghorn was just short of making minimum score for the Boone and Crockett record book, but the hunting experience was not near as fulfilling as the prior year. (We were a little rushed and pressed for time as a major winter storm was tracking right for our hunting area).


While hunting pronghorn, another iconic species of the west started to catch our eye. Mule deer.  Those long ears and wide,tall, forked-racks became very intriguing to a bunch of Midwest whitetail fanatics.  It was determined that our next hunt would be for Muleys.