Wyoming antelope on wide open public land without fences is a great time for entire families. You putter around on two track dirt roads glassing every group you see in the distance and multiple stalks are typical every day.
Beginner mule deer hunts are often poking around the foothills on BLM or Forest Service land where the sage and trees meet either on vehicle, or walking less accessible drainages, and often both. If you haven’t done it before it’s quite an adventure just to crawl along two track roads with a cooler full of drinks, maybe a sub sandwich and always lots of chips, jerky and other snacks. Sometimes the rocks get too rough and you’ll turn around, sometimes dirt roads are washed out, and most times it’s a lot of driving for not much other than the adventure of driving. The smell of the sage and dirt always brings back a lot of good memories. It sounds strange at first, but don’t ever park on top of tall grass or sage - fires from catalytic converters are a real thing.
With any hunting the biggest piece of advice when just getting started is learn from the locals what works for that area. If everyone you talk to says the best hunting is on the certain side of a certain area or road, that’s good to know. Eventually you’ll find pockets of good hunting that may or may not be on other peoples’ radar, but local knowledge is low hanging fruit.
When I was about your age, just moved to Laramie and didn’t have a clue where to hunt, but a lot of locals suggested a certain Forest Service road takes you into good elk hunting. Driving that road a number of local trucks were parked alongside a certain section, so I looked at a topo map to see what was in this area and some big prominent benches were just down the hill. Don’t park next to people that’s rude, but I pulled off a mile down wind, went down into the trees, quickly got into elk and had an elk on the ground by nightfall. Beginners luck, but I knew the locals knew more than I did and it worked out.
Along those same lines, if you are interested in an area and didn’t draw a tag, go there anyway during the season and drive roads to see what’s what, where camps are set up, what kind of animals are hanging next to camp, which trailheads are more for horse hunters and backpackers, where day hunters seem to be parking. Even how elk quarters look tells you if they were killed on an atv trail, or hauled back to camp on someone’s back. I think it’s fun to take everything learned from maps about a random hunt area and see how well it matches the place in person. For every vehicle that might be a serious hunter I look over a topo of the area to guess where they are hunting. Over time you’ll get good at guessing pretty close. 20% of the hunters are killing 80% of the animals.
Colorado is a great place to get into western backpacking, hiking and hunting - try to explore something fun outdoors every weekend. I’ve known guys who moved to Colorado/Wyoming and in one year just on weekends have camped overnight sleeping in the car or tent over 60 nights in different places and know more about the state than many residents born there. Check out the trail databases and forums to get the skinny on trails all over the state, complete with tons of photos people take. It’s one of my favorite scouting tools for hunting new areas.
