Record Wyoming Elk Harvest in 2023

By Todd Helms

“Wyoming hunters harvested a record number of elk during the most recent season, spending nearly 500,000 days in the field and taking nearly 29,000 elk, according to the Wyoming Game and Fish Department.”

Sounds great right? More elk equals more opportunities for Wyoming elk hunters; or not! Before we throw our collective arms out of socket patting ourselves on the back we need to look more closely at this. WYFG added a caveat to the record elk harvest claim… “the record-breaking harvest comes at a time when elk populations in some parts of the state are over-objective.”

I’ve written in the past how the bulk of elk population growth has taken place in the central and southeastern portions of Wyoming and that remains true. This is also a part of the state where game managers struggle to strike a balance between public access to a burgeoning elk population and the animal’s affinity for private property. This remains the case as elk populations across the Cowboy State aren’t all fairing the same.

Recent season setting meetings in my corner of the state revealed a reduction in elk hunting opportunity, especially for bowhunters who are actually facing cuts to Type-9 (archery only) tags in areas 39, 41 & 53 (a loss of 10 tags due to combining 53 with 54). This is not to mention tag reductions in some of the popular Bighorn Mountain areas for certain cow/calf tags as well. That is just for my corner of Wyoming where elk have to contend with year round predation from wolves and massive calf recruitment struggles thanks to bears.

It is no surprise that the areas of Wyoming where grizzly bears and wolves don’t exist have thriving elk herds regardless of the propaganda spewing forth about how wolves have improved the ecosystem in Yellowstone thanks to a “trophic cascade.” Just click the highlighted text if you don’t believe me. In those areas elk herds are indeed over objective and WYGFD is proposing unlimited cow/calf tags in certain areas to stem the rising tide of elk.

Meanwhile in the western and southwestern portions of Wyoming elk are facing both opportunity and challenges. The challenges come in the form of increased feed ground regulation thanks to pressure on Wyoming Game and Fish by federal agencies and special interest groups aiming for the closure of these feed grounds. The WYGFD Commission recently approved a feed ground plan . “This is not a plan to shut down elk feedgrounds…,” says Game and Fish Director Brian Nesvik.

Good thing too since the folks gunning to shut down these feedgrounds either weren’t around for or have forgotten the reason they were implemented in the first place… thousands of starving elk in Jackson Hole destroying rancher’s haystacks and perishing in numbers so large the stench of rotting carcasses filled the air all summer long. By the way, it was the ranchers themselves who started those feedgrounds to keep the elk away from cattle and provide them a safe haven to survive harsh winters.

What about the opportunity for elk in western Wyoming? Well, nature abhors a vacuum and with mule deer numbers falling south of historic lows in the Wyoming and Salt River ranges elk have been and will continue to fill that gap from the Grey’s River to the state line south of Lyman.

In short, the elk situation across the Cowboy State varies by degrees and remains a shifting landscape where opportunity abounds in one place and is quite limited in another. While it is too late for nonresidents to change their elk applications, residents of Wyoming looking to fill freezers and tack antlers on the wall have lots of options and would be advised to weigh them all when making choices for next fall’s elk hunt.

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