Wyoming Unit 31 Pronghorn Antelope Hunting Guide

Wyoming Unit 31 is a limited-quota pronghorn unit that consistently produces high success rates for hunters who manage to draw a tag. With no general season option, every hunter pursuing pronghorn in this unit — resident or nonresident — goes through Wyoming's draw system. For hunters researching where to apply, Unit 31 deserves a close look based on recent harvest trends, herd composition data, and a trophy history tied to the surrounding counties.

Covering 202,635 acres with elevations ranging from 4,967 to 8,748 feet, Unit 31 offers a mix of lower sagebrush basins and higher terrain within the same boundary. Public land makes up 34% of the unit, which means the majority of the acreage is privately held. That's an important detail for any hunter planning a DIY approach — access will require more legwork, whether that's identifying walk-in areas, securing landowner permission, or focusing scouting efforts tightly on the public parcels that do exist.

This article breaks down what the data shows about Unit 31: harvest success over the past four years, buck:doe ratios from recent wildlife surveys, what the trophy record history suggests about buck quality, and how the application structure works for hunters weighing whether to put in for this unit.

HuntPilot Analysis: Is Unit 31 Worth Applying For?

Based on the data pulled together on HuntPilot, Unit 31 is a strong candidate for hunters who want a realistic shot at filling a pronghorn tag. Harvest success has been consistently high across the last four recorded seasons — 80% in 2025, 87% in 2024, 77% in 2023, and 83% in 2022. That's a tight band of outcomes, with success never dropping below 77% in any of the four years reviewed. For a species often associated with wide-open, visible terrain, these numbers reflect a unit where drawn hunters are finding and connecting with pronghorn at a high rate.

The caveat is access. With only 34% public land, this is not a unit where hunters can count on wandering freely across the landscape. The majority of Unit 31 sits in private hands, so DIY hunters need to identify the public blocks early, understand where those parcels sit relative to roads and terrain features, and build a scouting plan around them rather than assuming open access across the whole unit. Hunters without a plan for private land access — whether through walk-in programs or other arrangements — should expect their huntable ground to be meaningfully smaller than the total acreage suggests.

The trophy angle adds another layer of appeal. The counties overlapping Unit 31 carry an extensive history of trophy-class pronghorn entries, which signals that this part of Wyoming has produced genuinely good bucks over time. Because record-book entries are logged by county rather than by unit, that trophy history is shared with neighboring units that fall in the same counties — it's not exclusive to Unit 31, but it does mean hunters drawing tags here are hunting in a region with a demonstrated track record of quality bucks, not just a unit with decent harvest numbers.

Taken together: high success rates, a legitimate trophy pedigree at the county level, and a buck:doe ratio that — while on the lower side — has been tracked consistently across four survey years. This is a unit worth prioritizing for hunters who can work around the public land constraint.

Harvest Success Rates

Unit 31's harvest numbers are a clear strength. Over the four most recently recorded seasons:

• 2025: 90 hunters, 72 harvested — 80% success
• 2024: 63 hunters, 55 harvested — 87% success
• 2023: 70 hunters, 54 harvested — 77% success
• 2022: 71 hunters, 59 harvested — 83% success

Hunter numbers have fluctuated somewhat, with 2025 seeing the largest group of hunters afield at 90, up from the low-to-mid 60s and 70s in the prior three years. Despite that increase in hunting pressure, success held at 80%, suggesting the unit's pronghorn population and huntability weren't meaningfully strained by the larger hunter count. The 2024 season stands out with an 87% success rate on a smaller pool of 63 hunters, the strongest single-year mark in this four-year window.

These numbers point to a unit where hunters who draw tags are, more often than not, going home with an animal. For a species that depends heavily on open sightlines and the ability to stalk or intercept across flat-to-rolling terrain, an 80%-plus average success rate across most of these years reflects favorable hunting conditions and a population dense enough to locate animals reliably.

Trophy Quality

Trophy data for the region surrounding Unit 31 points to an extensive history of trophy-class pronghorn entries in the overlapping counties. This is a meaningful signal — pronghorn trophy quality varies significantly across Wyoming, and not every unit sits inside a county with a strong entry history. Unit 31's location puts it among the units sharing credit for that trophy production, alongside its neighbors in the same county boundaries.

It's worth being precise about what this means. Record-book entries are attributed to the county where the animal was taken, not the specific hunt unit, so the trophy history associated with Unit 31 is shared with adjacent units that fall within the same counties. A hunter drawing a tag in Unit 31 isn't guaranteed to be hunting the exact ground where record-book bucks have come from, but they are hunting within a broader area that has proven capable of producing them repeatedly over time.

For hunters whose primary goal is a shot at a genuinely good buck rather than simply filling a tag, this trophy history — combined with the unit's strong harvest success — makes Unit 31 a reasonable place to concentrate scouting and glassing effort on mature bucks rather than settling for the first legal animal spotted.

Herd Health & Population Trends

Wildlife survey data collected across four years (2021–2024) shows an average buck:doe ratio of 45:100 for Unit 31. This is a healthy, biologically normal ratio for pronghorn — well within the range expected for a stable, well-managed herd, and notably it does not show the kind of inflated single-year spike that would suggest an unreliable sample. A 45:100 ratio sustained across multiple survey years is a good sign of herd stability and indicates there are enough mature bucks in the population to support a quality hunt, not just a herd skewed heavily toward does and fawns.

This ratio, paired with the high harvest success rates noted above, suggests Unit 31 is carrying a population that's both huntable and structurally sound. Hunters shouldn't read 45:100 as a "trophy ratio" on its own, but combined with the county-level trophy history, it supports the idea that the age structure in this herd is healthy enough to let some bucks reach maturity.

Access & Terrain

Unit 31 spans a wide elevation range — 4,967 to 8,748 feet — within its 202,635 total acres. That's a substantial spread for a pronghorn unit, and it suggests hunters may encounter everything from lower sagebrush flats typical of classic pronghorn country to higher benches and ridgelines at the unit's upper elevations. Pronghorn generally favor the more open, lower-to-mid elevation terrain within a unit like this, so hunters should expect most sightings and hunting activity to concentrate in the lower sagebrush basins rather than the highest terrain the unit offers.

Public land accounts for 34% of the unit, meaning the majority — 66% — is privately held. This is below the threshold where a unit can be called DIY-friendly without qualification. Hunters planning an unguided trip need to identify exactly where the public parcels sit before applying, and build their entire game plan — scouting, glassing locations, access routes — around those specific blocks of public ground. Walking farther from access points to reach huntable public land is a realistic expectation in a unit with this public land percentage, and hunters should factor that into their physical preparation and time budget for a hunt.

There is no wilderness acreage in Unit 31 (0%), so the usual concerns about wilderness travel restrictions or additional guide requirements for nonresidents don't apply here. Access difficulty in this unit is a function of land ownership patterns, not backcountry remoteness.

How to Apply

Every pronghorn hunt in Unit 31 runs through Wyoming's limited-quota draw system — there is no general season option here. That means both residents and nonresidents must apply and be drawn to hunt this unit; there's no over-the-counter fallback tag available for Unit 31 pronghorn.

Wyoming residents accumulate preference points for pronghorn when they apply and don't draw, and those points carry weight in future draws. Nonresidents also build preference points under a system where a portion of tags go to the highest point holders first, with the remainder allocated through a separate points-blind random draw — meaning nonresident applicants without points still have a chance at a tag through that random pool, not just those who've waited years. It's worth noting that drawing a tag through the preference pool consumes the points a hunter has accumulated, so successful applicants rebuild from a lower point level afterward.

Because this is a limited-quota unit with no general-season alternative, hunters serious about pursuing Unit 31 pronghorn should check current draw odds and point requirements before committing an application choice to this specific unit. Application dates, fees, and draw odds change every cycle — for the most current numbers, see HuntPilot's Wyoming page at /states/wy.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the terrain like in Wyoming Unit 31? Unit 31 covers a wide elevation band from 4,967 to 8,748 feet across 202,635 acres, likely ranging from open sagebrush basins at lower elevations to higher benches and ridgelines toward the top of that range. Most pronghorn activity is expected in the lower, more open terrain typical of the species' habitat preferences. With only 34% public land, hunters need to plan their scouting around specific accessible parcels rather than assuming unrestricted access across the unit.

What is harvest success like in Unit 31? Harvest success has been strong and consistent, ranging from 77% to 87% across the last four recorded seasons (2022–2025). The 2024 season posted the highest success rate at 87% on 63 hunters, while 2025 saw a larger pool of 90 hunters still achieve an 80% success rate. These are above-average numbers for pronghorn hunting generally, indicating drawn hunters have a good chance of connecting.

How big are the pronghorn in Unit 31? The counties overlapping Unit 31 carry an extensive history of trophy-class pronghorn entries, suggesting this region has a genuine track record of producing quality bucks. Since trophy records are attributed at the county level rather than by specific unit, this history is shared with neighboring units in the same counties — but it still reflects positively on the broader area's potential to hold mature, well-developed bucks.

Is Unit 31 worth applying for? Based on the available data, yes — Unit 31 stands out for its consistently high harvest success, a stable buck:doe ratio tracked across four survey years, and a trophy history tied to its surrounding counties. The main consideration is access: with 66% of the unit in private hands, hunters need a clear plan for reaching public parcels or securing other access before applying.

Does Unit 31 have a general season for pronghorn? No. Every pronghorn hunt in Unit 31 is limited-quota and allocated through Wyoming's draw system. There is no over-the-counter or general-season option for this unit, so both residents and nonresidents must apply and draw a tag to hunt pronghorn here.