Wyoming Antelope... to "opening day" or not ...?

[Pathfinder101]

Never hunted Wyoming before.  My 21 year old (PathfinderJR) and my 13 year old (Little Pathfinder) drew Unit 17 buck antelope tags.  It will be LP's first out of state hunt and first time antelope hunting for all of us (I'm only guiding, I didn't put in). 
 
I know the unit doesn't have a lot of available public land.  Mostly bits and pieces of BLM that some county roads accidentally run through, and two Walk In Areas.  There were 600 tags available.  I spent a bit of time on Google Earth before applying for the tags, and obviously we'll have OnX Maps pulled up on our phones.  But I have a couple of questions for any of you that have hunted that area (including the neighboring units)

1.  Should we hunt opening day (1 Oct), or wait until the following weekend?  I am a teacher, so hunting Monday through Wednesday won't be an option, the earliest we could have boots on the ground would be a Thursday. 
2.  Does anyone know a place in Area 17 that charges a trespass fee to hunt that isn't too outlandish?
3.  Any other info about Unit 17 (feel free to PM me if you don't want it public)?

[opdinkslayer]

Can’t really help ya with suggestions for your unit & hunt beings I never saw another Hunter when I hunted 96 two years ago. But congrats on the draw & im sure you guys will have a blast picking through bucks finding the ones ya like. It’s a blast!

[Bob33]

There's a pretty large Hunter Management Area in 17 you might look into. I would opt for the 2nd weekend if everything else is equal. Good luck.

[idahohuntr]

I hunted 16 for antelope about 15 years ago...first time WY antelope hunting...stayed in Buffalo and didn't realize we had to buy a habitat stamp, so rather than hunting opening morning we had to wait until a store opened up.  At about 4am opening morning I swear someone fired a starter pistol and every jacked up truck in town roared out of town at 3x the speed limit. I was pretty discouraged.

We ended up filling our tags by 2pm that day using paper maps to find public land...animals were everywhere and hunters seemed to thin out rapidly by noon. 

So, from my experience in that general area - I think hunting anytime after noon of opening day will mean about 85% fewer hunters in the field...and given how many pronghorn are around I don't think I'd be too worried about animals getting pushed all onto private or anything like a guy might be concerned for an elk hunt.  If I lived local and knew where a big one was hanging, I might try and hunt opener, but otherwise going later seems like the quality of the experience might be higher and I doubt you see any fewer pronghorn.   

[andrew_in_idaho]

There's a pretty large Hunter Management Area in 17 you might look into. I would opt for the 2nd weekend if everything else is equal. Good luck.

That HMA is only for elk


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[Pathfinder101]

Thanks for the replies gentlemen.   

Does anyone else have an opinion?  With all the guys on this site that hunt Wyoming, I thought I would have a lot more feedback.  Either "I hunted opening day and I'll never do that again", or "Nah, you'll be fine, go for it"...

 

[Stein]

I'm not much of an opening day guy, if you can even wait until Sunday the crowd will be down a bit.  Sunday afternoon is nice and then Monday is golden.  It all depends on what your work schedule looks like though.  If the option was the opener or not hunting, I would be at the opener.

[Pathfinder101]

I'm not much of an opening day guy, if you can even wait until Sunday the crowd will be down a bit.  Sunday afternoon is nice and then Monday is golden.  It all depends on what your work schedule looks like though.  If the option was the opener or not hunting, I would be at the opener.

Thanks Stein.  Like I said in my opening post, Mondays aren't an option, because I'm a teacher.  Looks like Opening day is on a Thursday (Oct 1st).  I can take two personal days plus the weekend (that's all I get), so taking off from Walla Walla after work on Wednesday, whether I hunt the opener or the week following it's going to be a Thurs-Sunday morning hunt either way we do it.  So, you would vote for the second weekend?

[ShaneTyTrey]

From my experience, opening day is no big deal to the locals.  They hunt weekends and don't use time off.  Given that opening day Oct 1 is a Thursday this year, I would say if you can hunt Thursday and Friday of the opener I would do it.  If you are stuck with weekends, I would avoid that opening weekend and opt for the following one.

[Pathfinder101]

From my experience, opening day is no big deal to the locals.  They hunt weekends and don't use time off.  Given that opening day Oct 1 is a Thursday this year, I would say if you can hunt Thursday and Friday of the opener I would do it.  If you are stuck with weekends, I would avoid that opening weekend and opt for the following one.

Thanks Shane.  I'm kind of leaning that way right now, since the opener is on a Thursday and if we pull an all nighter, we can be there by opening morning.  We are planning to scout the area this summer, so hopefully we'll have Plan A, Plan B, Plan C all mapped out beforehand...

[Widgeondeke]

The last time I hunted WY was 2011.  In '10 & '11 we hunted opening day in 72. It wasn't bad, but as mentioned the weekdays were better. 

This year with getting tags for 2 neighboring units with different start dates we will be hunting does a week after the opener and buck on opening day(Friday).


I'd go later in the season if my brother was available, but he guides bear/deer/elk/antelope professionally and is very busy in early Sept and Oct/Nov. Go figure 

[DOUBLELUNG]

I'm not much of an opening day guy, if you can even wait until Sunday the crowd will be down a bit.  Sunday afternoon is nice and then Monday is golden.  It all depends on what your work schedule looks like though.  If the option was the opener or not hunting, I would be at the opener.

This would be my advice too.  After the opening weekend, there will be a few more hunters on the subsequent weekends.  My experience with always running check stations opening weekends for antelope were most would come through Saturday, Sunday was half as many, and I might as well pack up and leave by mid-afternoon.  Later, running elk and deer check stations, i'd be lucky to see 1-2 antelope even though the season was still open. 

[DOUBLELUNG]

From my experience, opening day is no big deal to the locals.  They hunt weekends and don't use time off.  Given that opening day Oct 1 is a Thursday this year, I would say if you can hunt Thursday and Friday of the opener I would do it.  If you are stuck with weekends, I would avoid that opening weekend and opt for the following one.

This too.