Antelope Archery

Planning a future bow hunt for Antelope, input on locations, units and experiences would be appreciated. Leaning into Wyoming as the location but open to other areas, the preference point system by unit is something I need to investigate for more for clarity. Thanks in advance.

I’ve bird hunted north of Rawlins Wy for sage grouse a few times. Most goats and quality bucks of any place I’ve hunted. Im sure there are guys on here that can contribute a lot more. Not sure on how their point system is set up. Good luck that’s all I’ve got.

My experience, easiest and least expensive big game adventure you can ever take when hunting over water. Beautiful animals and plenty of them when I hunted Wyoming but it's been a while. I'll go ahead and start the meat argument: I don't flip what you do to the meat or how you handle it, it's nasty! But then again, some people can eat things like liver and pickles and are still alive lol.....

Antelope is by far my favorite big game meat,they have to be skinned within the first 30 minutes.

I hunted pronghorn in Wy in 2016 and again in 2018 and 2019. A buddy and I planned to hunt this year but the lottery system got blown up by a drastic increase in applicants and reduced quotas in some areas. The odds of drawing a tag (w/o pref pts) for the unit I hunt was over 80% in 2018 and 2019 but dropped to below 10% in 2020. In general, the units with lots of public land have the most applicants thereby lowering your odds of drawing a tag. Units with good odds have little to no public land. By doing a lot of homework I was able to find a unit with good odds and enough public land for a fun hunt despite competition from other hunters. At this point I have no idea what the next few years will bring. A lot of hunts that folks had booked with outfitters got pushed into future years. I think this put them looking for other options for their annual western hunt and pronghorn became the back-up plan of choice. Combined with herd reduction from winter kill in some units the odds of drawing a tag changed drastically.

I will second what WN Danimal said about it being a whole lot of fun and not particularly expensive compared with other western hunts. Very practical to do DIY also. He is completely wrong about the meat though. It is excellent if handled properly and cooled quickly. I hunt small public land parcels and my kills have been less than a mile from my truck. The animal is promptly field dressed before I go for my deer cart. I bring a bag or two of ice back with the cart and put them in the body cavity for the haul back to the truck. The carcass is cooling down via ice in less than an hour after the shot. Once back at the truck the animal is skinned and broken down right there on the side of the road (a hitch mounted hoist helps) and put in a cooler with more ice. Treat the meat right and you will have the best meat the west has to offer.

Good luck with the draw and your hunt!

x2 we always dress skin and quarter on ice pack in coolers..... dont take long on a antelope.

Agree with all of the above. As far as timing mid sept is a great time to decoy rutting bucks. It is kind of a two man deal if you will have a partner at all. Much more exciting than a blind though that is effective too. Ive been guiding this way a bit in SE MT and i can usually count on 3-5 good encounters a day. Be forewarned. Ranging is weird in the prairie. They arent as big as they appear. And if they come in they will be there in the blink of an eye. They are a riot to chase

I will start by EdP has it corrrect, thought we were hunting this fall and nope on the lope's. As far as meat they are just fine, we have ours boned out and on ice in about an hour or two, boned out in the field if too far from truck.

I have never hunted antelope but need to relate a story by a guy I knew who did...

He was archery hunting from a ground blind near a waterhole. He had a really nice buck come in, but stayed out of range. It was pretty much a stand-off. He finally decided to stay in the pop-up blind but picked it up and moved it, Wiley E. Coyote style, until he got in range of the antelope buck which stood there the whole time. He killed it.

Not sure if it was an "ACME Movable Antelope Blind" but his tactic worked!

Moosetrot

More antelope in Wy then people.

You have until the end of the month to buy a point so grab one now. Look into other states Montana, new Mexico not sure which others might offer enough tags to make it worth while to apply. States like Nevada take several years worth of points but if you apply for 1 species apply for all .

I have a friend who says DIY antelope hunts are the way to go so long as you find a rancher who will let you hunt under his wind mill.

Wyoming and hunt a unit that has a season that allows hunting in mid Oct the bucks are in full rut this last week and if you can get close to a herd with a decoy and pop it up your in business. You will be competing with rifle hunters but most have all ready harvested their antelope and are now chasing elk and deer.

If it's a scorcher it can be a rough one to sit in an oven blind all day. Even worse I think is when my friend sat all day on a little board atop a windmill in the open sun. Typically I am wearing heavy jacket and shivering before dawn and then in my underwear in the blind by 8:30 am. Practice shooting out of a blind well before you go. My friend shot through the side of my blind (under the window) but still killed his buck. Nearly all the bucks looked the same size to me and I am happy with the one's I've taken. Difficult to judge for a whitetail hillbilly. The potential is there to really fill a freezer if you wanted and the population is good. On one place, the rancher was nearly begging for us to shoot all the doe we could but we only took one each after we got our bucks. I believe we could've gotten 3 doe tags over the counter then.

Good binos and a good book are a must for the sake of maintaining your sanity on long sits. I always carry a small radio with earbuds, battery operated fan and small cooler in the blind as well. Lazy man style!

CACTUS! Learned that WY has lots of them! Little ones that you don't notice until you set a knee down.

Times have changed, it will take you a few years of points to draw just about any unit now.


Except unit 23 in wy, probably still leftover tags there now, but its almost all private land.



Even doe tags sold out on the first draw this year.



The hardest part of antelope hunting is getting a tag.



Some of the finest game meat on the planet.

As always- really good dialogue and information gentlemen and appreciated. I just put in for a preference point and looks like I'll have some time to research.
Should I be thinking of a combined hunt? Deer and Antelope or other?

I bow hunted pronghorns in the Thunder Basin Nat'l Grasslands around Bill, WY for many years in the 80's, 90' and early 2000's. Except for one of those hunts when there was a big thunderstorm and a pretty severe cold front, it was always very hot during bow season. Instead of hunting from blinds over a waterhole, I preferred going mano y mano with them wherever I found them. I killed my last buck perched on a limb of a big, solitary cottonwood where he and a couple of does had been loitering in the shade most of the day. When they left for the waterhole late in the afternoon, I climbed up into the tree. Got the buck when they returned.
I always found the meat delicious except in extremely dry years when they had to resort to eating sage. Then, the meat had a distinct, but not necessarily disagreeable, sage flavor. (It made some rather tasty sausage patties). As related above, field dressing and cooling ASAP was a must. But then, I treat all my big game carcasses in that fashion.

What Marty B said. The point system in WY can be a PITA until you understand it. I have 5 points now and may be able to draw one of my choices next year. There were no leftover tags this year for many units, all sold during the regular draw. You may want to contact WY F&G and ask about the private ranches that participate in the walk in program that allows hunters to access private land. Or get lucky and maybe pay a reasonable per day trespass fee to hunt private round. Your phone may be your best friend. Antelope are fun to hunt. And yes, tasty.

The Wy F&G site has all the info you need on the Walk In Areas. It's a bit hard to find (not particularly intuitively obvious) but it's there on the site. Where they are located, what species they are open for, what dates they are open, whether or not you can use blinds, etc. The WIA's are numbered sequentially according to the county they are in. The maps on the site also show other public land such as State Trust land, BLM land, National Forest land. Some counties have websites showing the public road system right down to county right of ways that have no road yet.

Note that some of the Walk In Areas don't open until opening day of the season so you can't scout ahead of time on those parcels. They take trespassing very serious in Wy so it pays to be sure of the dates.

These are two that my son an I got this last August. Public land in Oregon but the draw sucks big time. Lucky to hunt once every ten years in a good unit.

Second this ^^^^^
Times a thousand on skin and quarter and on ice within the hour. They have a very mild liver better than calf liver IMO. Leave it pink in the middle very tasty. I wonder about archery though, they have some of the largest adrenal glands for their size of any animal. I have always disconnected their coil wire at the base of the skull so the signal never got sent. No adrenaline no problem.

I’d happily trade an elk for 5-6 PROPERLY handled antelope!

Much better eating than deer and elk, I don’t care if they’ve been on alfalfa or sage.

Where most guys screw up is treating em like deer.

Antelope have different microflora in them and they break down FAST. I can drag a fresh goat and deer into a spot, come back a couple days later, the goat will be a puddle. The deer will still be edible if you’re hungry enough.

Interesting I see a bunch of road kill and they last as long as the scavengers let them I’ve seen a bunch actually mummified. Eyes and tongue and bung gone of course but the skin dried up around the skeleton just like the mummies. Maybe the 9% relative humidity and heat from the pavement killed the microfauna before decay could kick in.