Unit 67 antelope

3404barrel

Active Member
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I noticed harvest success has dropped off about 20% in the past couple years. Is this just a result of heavy winter kill in the past and fewer bucks or is there other problems??? The tag still remains in high regard according to the points it takes to draw.
 
In my opinion its because the quality has dropped. Guys are drawing that tag and expecting to see big antelope. They hold out and never find what they are looking for. I've hunted it 3 times over the past 15 years. The quantity and quality have slipped significantly. Still a good public land hunt but not what it once was.
 
Some years ago,my wife had the 67 tag & we hunted it very hard for 2 weeks plus 1 week before season recon. Best buck I found was an 80 " Net B C & my wife took it. The overall quality was disappointing plus the numbers were not great either from what I had been led to expect based on history. Good unit still but not top trophy unit like it used to be say 15-20 years ago. Why ? Who knows !! A mystery.
Jerry Gold
Fort Collins, Co
 
When I drive through 67 to hunt antelope in other units it makes me wish I had a tag there. Last time I did this was 2 years ago and it is a quality unit for sure. Better than its surrounding units.
 
LAST EDITED ON Mar-24-18 AT 02:39PM (MST)[p]I think 67 has fallen victim to the same thing a lot of top units fall victim too. Previously it was not in the top 5 or maybe even 10 units when discussing trophy antelope in Wyoming. The hyped units were all the red desert units. Some good bucks get killed, forum chatter starts popping up regarding 67, the mags start pimping it, no tag cuts come, but the serious trophy hunters do come. They wack the top off of the unit every year for over 5 years now and you get what you see currently. It will take much longer for the decline in quality to reverse the hype train than it did to get the hype train moving full speed ahead.

For a similar story you need to look no further than a unit just east of Casper that the mags pimped to no end after a couple good years of bucks being harvested. The unit went from 1-2 points to draw all the way up to 7-8. A couple years later the unit was a shadow of its former self but the hype has taken much longer to vanish than the quality bucks did. It took 6 points to get that unit in the special last year which is laughable when you look at what other units at that point level are.

My advice, good, bad, or indifferent is to use the mags, paid web experts, instahunters, that are making a living off what they tell you, as a guide of where NOT to apply. By the time they start pimping a unit as the newest, latest, greatest, its too late. Absent tag cuts or some change, the unit will likely never be what it was before all the publicity.
 
That last paragraph Marburg made in his post was about as good a description of why and what happens to good units, especially for antelope that are easier to hunt than elk or deer.
 
I don't entirely agree. While it is a shame what's happened in the last 10-15 years with hunting area publicity and I won't deny it's effect on draw odds, I think it's had comparatively less of an effect on trophy quality than other things that effect trophy quality such as drought and other weather-related phenomena that affects animals from birth and impact what people see in a herd on a given year. These hunts are limited quota with really pretty low tag numbers. Some years are just better than others. For antelope bucks, pay attention to what happened in that area during fawning 3,4,5 years ago as well as the prior year's horn growth season.
 
I think what you stated also plays a big part in it Jon, especially your statement about looking back a few years when that buck is born and the previous year along with current weather conditions leading to the season a person plans to apply for.
 

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