The Winds of Change Coming to Wyoming

The Winds of Change Coming to Wyoming

By Guy Eastman

Coming off of the worst winter in possibly 75 years, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department seems to be taking the opportunity to make some fairly major changes to their big game hunt and draw structures for 2024. 

For starters, the state has moved the draw application deadline for sheep, moose, Rocky Mountain goat and bison from the historic date of February 28 to a new later date of April 30th for all four species. This is obviously an effort to gather more data before setting season dates and hunt quota numbers. This is a smart move in my opinion and will give the big game managers in each region more information from winter conditions and herd counts to make better decisions before setting the ever-important hunt quotas. For this reason, we will be moving the MRS sections for these species to the next issue of EBJ (March/April 2024) to better represent more accurate data as it is released by the state at a later date. Better data is key to better management in my opinion, a good move. 

The next change the state legislature made was to increase the pricing on many of the non-resident hunt tags in Wyoming. All resident pricing will remain in place without increase as will the “regular-draw” big game pricing for elk, deer and antelope. All pricing will increase for nonresident sheep, moose, goat and bison while the “special draw” pricing for elk, deer and antelope will increase somewhat drastically. Although a real cause for heartburn, this was also a necessary change that needed to be made to make the split draw system in Wyoming continue to make sense.

As time has gone on, the more expensive, “special draw” has not continued to offer better drawing odds in many cases as was intended from the beginning of the design of the system. Some areas actually had worse draw odds for the more expensive tag than the less expensive regular option. This should correct this problem by nearly doubling the price of the more expensive tag option. I’m not sure what the appetite is out there for a $1,200 antelope tag at this point. 

The final major change that we know of at this point is the regionalization of the general elk tags in Wyoming for nonresident hunters starting this year. The state has broken down the general elk hunts into three regions similar to the general deer regions, but much larger. It also appears that the state has also increased the nonresident general quota by over 900 total elk tags which represents a near 30% increase over last year’s quota. With the new higher special elk tag price and the 30% increase in quota, I think the nonresident general elk tag will be easier to draw this year for most applicants. 

These are just the changes we know about at this point in time and I will be combing the state channels for any further changes going forward. We will keep you posted. 

In this episode Brian and Dan sit down for a conversation all about western applications. They talk over their own strategy and how they get quality tags. They also answer listener questions all about applications. They talk about 0 point or OTC tags, low point tags and the tough to draw lotto tags. They dive into research and tools you can use to find the right tag that fits your wants and criteria. A great conversation between the two and another long episode as they had so much to cover.