Please Explain BLM access

[Obligated]

Hello everyone,

I am new here and to forums in general. Most cant hold my interest, or have a bunch of trolls, so I haven't participated much before. But following this group has been completely different. There are many knowledgeable folks on here willing to help and more important it seems to be relatively "troll free"......Thank you all and to the moderators!

Here it is.....I am planning a Wyoming Antelope hunt and I have receive a ton of good info here, thanks again. I have learned that access to the BLM in some of the units in the north east of the state may pose some problems getting to them. What is the reality here? What is the best approach as I scout on line? How can I tell if a road is going to be something that I can use to access a piece of land or a gated road?

I have the maps and the OnX app (awesome by the way, everyone needs this). It seems pretty straight forward but looking at all the threads I am concerned I am missing something about access.

 

[NoWiser]

A call to the county will give you the information you are looking for. They will give you the roads you can travel and the OnX maps will take you from there. You should be able to plan a great hunt starting this early. What NE Wyoming lacks in access it makes up for in numbers of antelope.

 

[Obligated]

Thanks, that is a good idea. Do you or anyone have any info on National Grassland? Access, things to look out for ect. Is that something to consider or should I steer clear of those. I have hunted a lot of forest service and BLM in the past but never Natl. Grasslands. Given the info I have so far I am thinking hunting later in the season as well, sounds like I can miss the crowds if I wait a week.

 

[Mudranger1]

They are on the grasslands hunt away

 

[Topgun 30-06]

If you do a Google search for the county you are thinking about hunting in, many of them now have maps right on the internet showing all the roads that are pubic within their county that are taken care of by taxpayer money and matching that up with what you mentioned will show if a particular piece of land is legally accessible. Just make sure it is an updated version because some may not include every public road on them.

 

[WapitiBob]

Add a call to the local BLM as well. They can have public easements on roads that are not county roads. The County GIS that Gunner mentioned is an excellent reference.

 

[cpoplayer]

Having just returned from NE Wyoming for a deer hunt, I second the advice of calling the county road department. Several pieces of BLM or State land I tried to access had posted signs cleverly placed so as to make a public road appear private. I did see tons of antelope though.

 

[Mmixon33]

I did a NE Wyoming Antelope hunt this year. The unit I was in was lots of driving between small pieces of public land while looking at 100s of antelope that were on private land. I finally got a decent Antelope after 3 days of lots of driving and waiting for antelope to walk onto the public land.

The BLM office in Buffalo was helpful for us they let us know which roads were public.

I believe the national grassland is mainly in unit 18 which looked like it had decent public access however this was not the unit I was hunting so I did not look into it much.

I personally will not be headed back to the same unit I hunted this year. I am happy I did it because learned a lot about NE Wyoming and had a great time but it did not give me the experience I wanted. I am more into back country and huge sections of public land that do not require tons of driving.

 

[efw]

My experience matches mmixon's; there may be exceptions, but by & large the units one can draw without preference points have small pieces of accessible public land. Using the OnXMaps ap, information from the county as mentioned above, and walk in maps available on the state site, I have had good success driving around waiting for eligible candidate to mistakenly walk into my crosshairs.

As for Nat'l Grasslands I called the headquarters and they sold me a map.

Thing that really gets me out there is how much "public" land is inaccessible because of the lack of easement/public road. You can't base your decision upon a map like a Gazzetteer because it's deceiving.

Do your homework and hunt hard and it's a great experience, but like mmixon again I VASTLY prefer backcountry experiences but honestly I'm HOOKED on western hunting so I'll take what I can get!

Good luck on your hunt and welcome!

 

[Deleted member 18333]

Obligated,

The National Grasslands are actually managed by the Forest Service and not the BLM. If you are looking at NE Wyoming I assume you are looking at the Thunder Basin National Grassland and the areas south of Gillette, around Wright and Newcastle. Go to nationalforestmapstore.com and get yourself a map of the TBNG. I lived in Gillette for several years and can tell you that you will find good access and good numbers of antelope on FS land, BLM and State. With your Onxmap you should be able to figure things out nicely around the private. One thing to keep in mind are the coal mine leases in that area. Coal leases on public land are one area where the lease holder can prohibit access to that public land. This is due to safety concerns mainly with blasting. Getting the exact location of the lease can be a little tricky but the permit boundary should be posted where it crosses public roads. I would suggest if you find yourself close to active mining, try another spot. Even with that you will have plenty of country to hunt. When I lived in Gillette me and my friends hunted TBNG, BLM and State land exclusively and never had trouble finding goats we were happy with. Good luck and have a fun hunt.