New to the west

[Preacher shaner]

I have taken one prong horn and that has been a few years ago. I want to hunt prong horn,mule deer and elk. I am not looking for the record book hunts. But i have no idea where to start. I am just duying points this year. I wouod like to go after antelope next year or the year after. I will be going to CO for otc tags for elk. So colud yall help point me in the right. Direction. Thank you.

 

[Zim]

As far as starting on points, you are jumping in at one of the worst moments. The states are really jacking up nonrefundable fees simply for applying. None of them have anywhere near the number of tags available to profit from tag sales, so lately the rage has been profiting from all those hunters who don't draw. There's many, many more of these! So now the longer you wait to draw, the more expensive it will be. Easy call is to just target a few states and pick hunts that take 3-5 points. Go early to scout and put time in to these lower tier units and you can have just as good a hunt as a premier unit. Best states to invest currently IMHO in this order are Wyoming, Colorado & Arizona. Of course the application games are in constant motion, so this could change. Strongly recommend you avoid Oregon, Utah & Nevada. Too late in the game to join these.

Good luck.

 

[Fitzwho]

If you have a couple hundred bucks to buy points in states that you could actually hunt in the next couple years, I would stick with Wyoming, Montana, and South Dakota. SD and MT sell points until the end of September, Wyoming until the end of October.

It’s relatively cheap to get points for Elk, deer and Pronghorn in Colorado as well.

You can buy points in AZ and UT as well, but getting tags will take 5-20+ years depending on what you are looking for (very slight chance because of the addition of a random element of the draw a couple years ago) and you have to buy non refundable licenses to build points. Though there are Coues deer tags you can draw with 0-2 points and still have a good hunt in AZ.

I have no more than 3 points anywhere going into this application season and am having trouble pairing down and deciding which tags to shoot for vs which ones I know I can draw.