Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting Wyoming ATV usage maps

Planning a trip to southern Wyoming for 2017. Will be going the last 2 weeks of September archery hunting. Have been trying to find an ATV usage map online. Unlike most we are not looking for somewhere to ride into, but trying to make sure we can get away from em! Being from Virginia and not familiar with how the road systems work there, just looking for a lil help. Thanks in advance.

Go the US Forest Svc and look for travel maps. They have them for all Nat forests. They aren't the easiest to read but they do show all the trails and roads.

Thanks rock chuck...the maps I looked at show one of the roads where we will be hunting to be a closed/gated road. When looking at it on Google Earth it sure looks like it is a traveled road/trail. Just don't wanna drive 1700 miles and hike in only to have 4 wheelers drive right in there with us and be crowded. How's the hunting pressure in the general units during the end of September in southern Wyoming.

I can't speak to southern WY, but CO has more hunting pressure and it's not bad then. You just have to be willing to move around some on your first trip out, to find what you're looking for.

Seriously, if you can drive a ATV to a spot, so can 10,000 other ATV drivers. Of course, if you are willing to walk from there, then that's where your advantage is.

USFS maps have all designated roads/motorized trails on their maps. That would be a place to start.

Casey

It's also important to note there are seasonal closures of some roads/trails. Generally the closures begin Sept 1 or Oct 1.


Casey

The travel maps are made specifically to show what roads and trails are open. They don't show much of anything else. You need to use them in conjunction with good maps. They update them every year as closures change so you can't rely on last year's being accurate.
You might have to call the headquarters for the NF you plan to hunt to get the ones for that area.

One thing the maps won't show are the gates and trails the ATV boys drive around. I see this in Colorado as well. If you're referring to the 'southern WY' units in Medicine Bow, I hunted there last fall in general season. We camped along a gated road and had at least 2 4-wheelers drive around the gate. It pisses me off as the road was only 1 mile long and they couldn't get off their ATV to walk that extra mile. I may have called the local warden. I despise 4-wheelers in hunting country. Do yourself a big favor and find an area without roads; that way you won't have to deal with them.

All of this.

Another tip; many of the Travel Maps can be viewed on a smartphone using the Avenza pdf app that shows your location on the map as it works with your GPS.

When the road ends, use the quads GOD gave you

No map can show you where lawbreakers operate.

Agree. As a non-resident that frequents Wyoming, signage and regulations do little to affect the ATV crowd. Simply frequent ground that they cannot navigate.

Thanks for the replies guys. This may be the case in the area we have been looking at. All the maps we look at show the roads to be closed, but when looking at them on Google Earth it sure looks like the 4wheelers have been wearing them out. Guess there is just so much land out there wardens can't patrol it all. Looking forward to the trip regardless. Will be our first year trying Wyoming, have been hunting northern CO. in the past and had a blast. Hopefully the crowds won't be bad and the elk will cooperate.

My experience in southern Wyoming elk hunting was that all the roads in the NF that were open to trucks were open to ATVs. So you could pretty much use your ATV anywhere a truck could drive legally. There were very few ATV only roads, if any, where we hunted that ATVs could go and trucks were not allowed. This was much different than where we hunted in CO before. Also there were a lot of gated roads visible on GE that were gated to both ATVs and trucks. These were roads used to access the water supply running from the creek and mountains to Cheyenne but it seemed like the key was handed out to quite a few. We never used our ATVs as it was more comfortable using the truck since the NF dirt roads were in very good shape. I am sure it is probably different in other areas as far as road conditions.

Idaho has a program called Access Yes where the IDFG pays landowners to allow hunting/fishing. The landowner sets the rules and almost invariably, it's walk in only with no camping. That's a joke in many cases because it's too far to walk in and out in a day, let alone have time to hunt or to pack out something large. The landowners patrol it and you really don't want to get caught sneaking in on an atv.

However...in some cases, the land is patchwork with public and private land interspersed. In those cases, if you have a good GPS that shows land ownership, you can pack in and just make sure you camp on the public land portions. That can make for some good hunting with very little competition.

http://wyotrails.state.wy.us/Maps/ORVMaps.aspx


Is this what ur looking for? Orv maps?