I've lived in SE Wyoming for >20 years and hunted here for ~30. I primarily archery hunt elk/deer (to the point where i'll hunt all September and if I don't have meat then I'll spend a day or two to fill the freezer with a rifle). I personally feel like things have changed a lot with regards to pressure.
Last year archery season there were more people in the mountain, i felt (subjective though I do have some notes and data i write down), than any other season or even over the fourth of July. I use that metric because it is always a zoo in the mountain on the 4th. It also seemed far busier than the rifle opener throughout a lot of archery season. I would say that the
vast majority were non-residents as I only saw 2-3 camps out of the 40+ (yes really) that were residents.
Now, tag allocations haven't really changed, at least not over the past few years for general tags. I can also tell you, for certain, that the pressure swings extremely hard from year to year but last year was just a miserable hunting experience (still was able to fill tags with a bow but some large portion of my enjoyment elk hunting is derived
elk hunting and not running in to people every time I'm out and every few miles.
What I would suggest to you as a non-resident, is look at the entire region you are going to get a tag for. A few things I would keep in mind:
- it is my personal opinion that non-residents will look for the mountain range closest to them on the road they'd come out on and that is where they will go. If you look at the Region maps it is easy to identify the mountain ranges where, I think, a majority of non-residents will hit.
- While all of elk hunting social media tells you that all elk live up high in the mountains, that is absolutely not the case. Look at BLM, look at state land, etc.
- You need many, many plans for where you will hunt if something like pressure is important. I'm not talking 1 or 2. You need 10 options and I'm not talking in a 5 mile area. Looking at, say, Region W, I would find all the areas that I could legally hunt (i would just do this with GIS software but I'm sure that you can do this with OnX and just create "Hunt Areas" or whatever software you use. That means you need to find the areas that are open to general and are not wilderness. Then after that you can see what your "real" options are because Region West isn't actually your option because the vast majority you can't hunt. Then make a plan for 10 (arbitrary but make far more plans than you think you need) different areas and make sure some of those areas are 10s, maybe 50-100 miles apart.
- All of the software that "helps you find elk", that is now where everyone is and the elk really are not (again, my opinion). Past 3 years with the rise of AI coding apps for people, I've witnessed an increase in people in the honestly good elk spots. Spots where the elk are all summer but then they get blown out from there the first few days of season and don't come back (yes really) due to pressure. If you are e-scouting and you find little patches of roadless areas or you are using one of the 50 new apps that will tell you where elk are, those are the areas I wouldn't go. That is where people are now, not elk (in areas that have pressure; if you find a general area or a limited quota area without pressure, this opinion won't hold).
- Think about coming out of "peak rut". With the increases of pressure, in general units, elk vocalization is changing and how they behave during the rut has been changing. Beyond that, pre-rut can be a great time in the elk woods. Elk behave differently and in many ways bulls are more killable during this time than when many more sets of eyes will be there to find you. It'll be hot and there will be other challenges.
Lastly, I actually think that a solution I would want as a non-resident would be smaller general regions. I'm not talking one unit general regions but I think that one issue we are seeing
could be due to the inability to force dispersion on the General Regions. Just a seed to plant that I'm sure will have passionate views. I'm not sure I believe that could fix some of the concentrated pressure but I think it could with fewer downsides. I mention because if I was a non-resident, honestly, I would be somewhat unhappy with the kind of pressure/hunter density I've seen.
Now, back to Archery or Rifle. It has been a long time since I've hunted more than 3 days of rifle season. Also, if it gets to rifle season I just want meat so I will shoot the first legal (adult) elk I find. Meaning I don't spend near as much time in the mountain for rifle season. But, from the small sample size, archery season has seemed far busier but the overall
stats don't necessarily support that. The stats are about success rates though and less so about hunter density, though, you can get to hunter density proximally; they have stats on "harvest" weapon not on "hunted" weapon, meaning, you can't get at density since most type 1s allow you to hunt archery with an archery stamp.
So...what the hell did I just summarize? I'm not entirely sure. I have a lived experience that suggests to find areas where you think others might not be (don't use the apps to tell you that because others are so they'll point you to the same place) and go early in September. Be mobile and willing to move (have a LOT of plans). I'd probably still go archery because I think that statistically, even though some of my recent experiences haven't lined up with this, there have to be fewer people.
