Wy. unit

[mixed bag]

I'm looking to use my 16 year old sons points for a unit 41 elk tag in Wy.Wanted to see if anyone has hunted the unit and their thoughts on if its worth the points required.Looks to have decent access to public ground,and success rates.I want his first elk hunt to be a good one and not real concerned with trophy quality.Hoping someone with past experience could give me a little insight into the unit.Curious about the elk populations and hunting pressure
Thanks

 

[MAT]

Most of the elk in 41 are in the wilderness areas so unless you are a resident or a plan to hire a guide it's not the best unit to burn points in. The only access for most of the unit is from one dirt road that runs along the bottom so what little non-wilderness areas there are tend to get hit pretty hard from road hunters. There are better units if you have points. If you are looking at going with a bow 41 is also one of those units that let gun hunters (with cow tags too) bowhunt after 9/15. On the west slope 38, 39 and 40 don't allow this so you can hunt the rut, and there's more non-wilderness NF lands.

 

[wyodan]

I'm looking to use my 16 year old sons points for a unit 41 elk tag in Wy.Wanted to see if anyone has hunted the unit and their thoughts on if its worth the points required.Looks to have decent access to public ground,and success rates.I want his first elk hunt to be a good one and not real concerned with trophy quality.Hoping someone with past experience could give me a little insight into the unit.Curious about the elk populations and hunting pressure
Thanks

You'll be fine in this area. It's been a few years since I hunted that mountain range, but there's plenty of elk outside of the wilderness area.

 

[MAT]

Easy for a resident to say, especially when you are not paying over $1000 for a tag (and points). Keeping NR out of wilderness areas is BS considering we are paying 20x more than resident but we can only hunt less than 1/2 of the elk habitat in units like this one. I wish WY would also get with the program and realize they can sell more tags if they go with separate seasons for gun and bow (aka choose a weapon). It all depends on what you want to spend your money on as not every unit allows bowhunting with a type 1 tag or has the same % of wilderness areas.

 

[204guy]

Easy for a resident to say, especially when you are not paying over $1000 for a tag (and points). Keeping NR out of wilderness areas is BS considering we are paying 20x more than resident but we can only hunt less than 1/2 of the elk habitat in units like this one. I wish WY would also get with the program and realize they can sell more tags if they go with separate seasons for gun and bow (aka choose a weapon). It all depends on what you want to spend your money on as not every unit allows bowhunting with a type 1 tag or has the same % of wilderness areas.

Well you know what they say, you can wish in 1 hand and......

As to 41 never hunted that unit but have hunted 45 and it's similar. My understanding of 41 is that it's going to be very weather dependent on snow to get the elk moving down. Most of the elk are in the wilderness but certainly not all of them and they will move down with snow. I believe there is also a very big ranch that the elk migrate onto below 41 that doesn't allow any hunting so you need to catch them as they come through. As to pressure it's going to be the same as everywhere else, especially if there's snow on the ground 60% of the guys won't leave their atv/truck, and 35% won't make it more than a mile from there truck.

 

[mixed bag]

So do you think hunting later in the season is better??Or,is there usually snow by the opener

 

[204guy]

Depends, I understand that doesn't help when you're trying to plan an out of state hunt but, there's no cut and dry answer. When I hunted 45 in 2013 we got a big snow in late Sept, then it warmed and crusted and then snowed some more, by rifle opener they were lower, probably not an elk left in the wilderness. The last two years we haven't had hardly anything for early snow, there's probably some elk still in the wilderness, right now this year.

 

[MAT]

I'm not a big fan of naming units (for obvious reasons) but there are too many NRs that put in for tags based on internet advise, success rates or drawing odds only to find out later they should have used those points elsewhere. If you look at 41 on a topo map you'll see it's part of western face of the Bighorns, and the face is fairly steep. The only access road (FS 17) is at the bottom of the NF, there's about a mile of public land below which is wide open for the most part, so all the elk habitat is up slope. In most areas along FS 17 it's less than mile to the wilderness boundary (some places much less), so the only NR hunting areas are close to the access. There's really no backpacking hunting opportunities for NRs in 41 as you’ll always be in reach of road campers. Most of the residents hunt just off the road as they do everywhere else, and with only 1 access road it gets crowded. Camping sites along FS 17 are hard to find even during the early bow season.

The OP was asking if 41 was worth the points. There are other nearby units that have more access and more non-wilderness hunting areas and even backpacking opportunities so depending on how soon you need to burn those points it might be worth it to look at them more closely, or perhaps get another point or two for the more popular units. There’s a reason why they require more points for a NR to get. Points are valuable so taking a chance on an area with limited options for access will only mean waiting even longer for an area you wish you had applied for. And yes I’ve hunted 41 in addition to 45, 38, 37, 50 and 51 but I have friends in WY so I can hunt the wilderness areas but only when they can hunt them too, so resident drawing odds are more important to me since w/o a PP system they never know when they will draw a tag.

 

[huntabsarokee]

How is the wilderness in 41 on type 9?

 

[hunting307]

I'm looking to use my 16 year old sons points for a unit 41 elk tag in Wy.Wanted to see if anyone has hunted the unit and their thoughts on if its worth the points required.Looks to have decent access to public ground,and success rates.I want his first elk hunt to be a good one and not real concerned with trophy quality.Hoping someone with past experience could give me a little insight into the unit.Curious about the elk populations and hunting pressure
Thanks

I hunted this unit and was successful. We saw plenty of elk outside the wilderness boundary. Pressure wasn't bad bc its a draw unit. How did you hunt with your boy go?

 

[Laramie]

I hunted this unit and was successful. We saw plenty of elk outside the wilderness boundary. Pressure wasn't bad bc its a draw unit. How did you hunt with your boy go?

6 year old thread and the OP has less than 30 total messages - don't hold your breath for a response.

 

[realunlucky]

Are you a NR or do you live in WY? Did you come in on the south end road called out above? This is the first time we've ever gone out of state for anything and we pulled tags for 41. Excited to head out there but nervous going in blind!

Rokslide has adjusted the rules.

Now unfortunately we aren't letting FNG's (new guys) post up unit specific questions. Any unit question/answers remain out in the world wide webs forever, which can doom some really great spots.

Rokslide's administrations expectation is that all long standing Rokslide members will understand and support this concept and take all such conversations to private message.

Yes it's a hassle to join and be part of this community but the rewards are worth the effort including the ability to send and receive private messages.

Hope to see you active in the forums, and good luck on your hunt, that's a really good tag.

Sent from my SM-G996U using Tapatalk

 

[Lil-Rokslider]

Man this thread is the poster child for how a post naming a unit stays in the internet forever, but the guy who posted it disappears without contributing to the community he got his info from. Now anybody who's got 6 or 7 years worth of points and wants to start researching how to spend them is going to be considering the named unit. Point Creep takes over, and the OP and anyone else who used to enjoy the chance to hunt it every few years might never hunt it again. Stop it with the unit naming. DMing is a thing.

 

[Lil-Rokslider]

Rokslide has adjusted the rules.

Now unfortunately we aren't letting FNG's (new guys) post up unit specific questions. Any unit question/answers remain out in the world wide webs forever, which can doom some really great spots.

Rokslide's administrations expectation is that all long standing Rokslide members will understand and support this concept and take all such conversations to private message.

Yes it's a hassle to join and be part of this community but the rewards are worth the effort including the ability to send and receive private messages.

Hope to see you active in the forums, and good luck on your hunt, that's a really good tag.

Sent from my SM-G996U using Tapatalk

Beat me to it!

 

[MNDeerHunter 52]

Didn’t think of the ripple effect! But totally get it, deleted my post on the thread

 

[wapitibob]

And yet the thread is still alive.

 

[MNDeerHunter 52]

Well I’m quoted in the administrative post but the effort was there haha

 

[bdan68]

How would someone know who to private message regarding a specific unit if we're not allowed to post about specific units?

 

[realunlucky]

How would someone know who to private message regarding a specific unit if we're not allowed to post about specific units?

So members in good standing are allowed to post unit numbers, with the expectation all unit specific information shared will be done by private message

Sent from my SM-G996U using Tapatalk