There are limited-entry tags in the West that exist for management purposes. Then there are tags that exist because the state is sitting on something extraordinary and can only hand it out to a handful of people per year. Wyoming Hunt Area 105, tucked into the Clarks Fork drainage and the broken ridgelines that spill south off the Beartooth Plateau, is the second kind.

The mule deer in this country are not famous because of a single photo or a single hunt. They are famous because the terrain, the genetics, the elevation, and the limited harvest pressure have been working in the same direction for decades. Hunters who have spent time in this country describe it as some of the last real wilderness mule deer hunting in North America. That assessment is not an exaggeration.

Ready to dig into the details? Go to the Area 105 unit page for draw history, access maps, and hunter reports. Or browse all Wyoming units to compare options across the state.

The Country, the People, and How It Got This Way

The Clarks Fork of the Yellowstone is one of the only rivers in the contiguous United States designated as a Wild and Scenic River from its headwaters. It drains southeast off the Beartooth Plateau, dropping nearly 2,000 feet through a canyon that early explorers called impassable. The Shoshone National Forest, which covers the core of Hunt Area 105, was the first national forest established in the United States, signed into existence by President Grover Cleveland in 1891 as the Yellowstone Forest Reserve.

The Eastern Shoshone and Crow nations both used this country for centuries before federal management arrived. The Clark's Fork corridor was a travel route, a hunting ground, and a cultural boundary. When the U.S. Army established Camp Brown, later Fort Washakie, in 1871, the region's role as a contested, managed landscape was formalized in ways that continue to shape access today.

Mule deer management in northwest Wyoming has historically been conservative. Harvest pressure stayed low relative to the herd because the terrain simply kept most hunters out. The combination of roadless wilderness, extreme vertical relief, and reliable grizzly bear presence made spot-and-stalk mule deer hunting in this drainage a serious undertaking, not a weekend trip. That self-selection filter, as much as any formal management decision, is why the deer are what they are today.

The Wyoming Game and Fish Department shifted Area 105 to a limited-entry structure in the mid-1990s as biologists recognized that the country's deer population, while healthy, was not large enough to absorb general-season pressure without degrading the quality that made it exceptional. The tag quotas have remained deliberately small ever since.

What It Actually Takes to Get a Tag

This is where most hunters stop reading and start doing math. Hunt Area 105 is one of the hardest limited-entry mule deer tags to draw in Wyoming, and Wyoming is not a state known for fast draws.

Typical tag allocation in recent years: 6 to 8 resident tags and 2 to 4 nonresident tags issued annually. Nonresident hunters have needed 15 or more preference points to be competitive in recent draw cycles, and the resident draw floor has been running at 10 or more points. These numbers shift year to year, and you should verify current draw statistics directly at wgfd.wyo.gov.

Wyoming uses a pure preference point system. The hunter with the most points draws first, and ties are broken randomly. There is no point guarantee and no residual luck draw at the end. If you do not have enough points, you do not draw.

For nonresidents, the preference point cost to be competitive has been climbing. Hunters who started accumulating points in the early 2010s are now at or near the draw threshold. New applicants starting today are looking at 15 to 20 years of annual applications before reaching the minimum, assuming the floor does not continue rising.

Zero-point strategy: Wyoming allocates a small number of tags via a random draw from all applicants regardless of points. The statistical probability in Area 105 is extremely low, but it costs the same to apply with zero points as it does with twenty. If you are hunting Wyoming at all, you should be applying for Area 105 every year. You accumulate a point on any unsuccessful draw, so each year you lose is also a year you gain.

The practical advice: start accumulating now, apply every year, and plan on this being a 15-to-20-year project. Some hunters pair a Wyoming Area 105 mule deer application with other high-point western deer tags, treating them as a portfolio of long-odds hunts that might pay out in different decades. That is not pessimism. That is how the best limited-entry deer hunting in the West works.

Terrain, Access, and Why the Deer Are What They Are

Hunt Area 105 covers country that ranges from roughly 6,500 feet in the valley bottoms to above 11,000 feet on the plateau edges. The Clarks Fork canyon itself is a geological feature with no parallel in Wyoming: sheer walls dropping hundreds of feet, carved by one of the most powerful waterways in the region. The deer do not live in the canyon. They live above it, on the wide benches and broken rimrock that overlook the drainages feeding in from the south and east.

The Sunlight Basin corridor, accessible via Wyoming Highway 296 (the Chief Joseph Scenic Byway), provides the primary trailhead access for most of the unit's huntable country. Once you leave the pavement, you are in roadless terrain that requires horses or serious backcountry fitness. Distances from trailheads to core mule deer habitat commonly run 8 to 12 miles one way. The elevation change is relentless.

Private land is not the dominant access problem here the way it is in some other Wyoming units. The issue is wilderness designation and the physical reality of the terrain. Motorized access is prohibited in the North Absaroka Wilderness, which covers a significant portion of the unit. If you do not ride horses or are not willing to go completely on foot for multiple days, you are hunting a fraction of the available country.

Early season hunting in September during the archery window puts deer in high alpine basins that require significant effort to reach but offer exceptional spotting conditions. Rifle season in October and November corresponds with breeding activity that moves big bucks lower and more predictably, but the weather in this country in late October is not negotiable. Snow, wind, and temperatures well below zero are routine.

What Makes Area 105 Different

The most honest answer to why the bucks here are exceptional is that very few of them die before they get old. In a unit with fewer than a dozen tags per year over a landscape measured in hundreds of thousands of acres, the ratio of mature deer to hunting pressure is unlike almost anywhere else in the lower 48. Bucks here routinely reach 7 to 10 years old. At that age, in this country, with the forage available at high elevation, the antler development reflects it.

The genetics in the Clarks Fork drainage are also notable. This is a relatively isolated population with limited interchange with the large wintering herds that move through other parts of northwest Wyoming. The deer that summer in this country are largely the deer that winter nearby, which has maintained a degree of genetic continuity contributing to consistent antler characteristics across generations.

Success rates in limited-entry units with this level of difficulty typically run 60 to 75 percent, lower than high-success general tags but reflecting the terrain's reality. A tag for Area 105 is not a guarantee. It is access to a place where a great mule deer is possible if you are willing to do the work.

Full Species Card

Mule deer may be the headline, but Hunt Area 105 is legitimately one of the most complete big game landscapes in North America. The unit holds:

  • Mule Deer (limited entry): The target species. Trophy-class bucks. 10+ points for nonresidents to be competitive.
  • Rocky Mountain Elk (limited and general): Strong population, with both limited and general-season tags available in overlapping areas.
  • Bighorn Sheep (limited entry): Rocky Mountain bighorns. Decades-level draw in Region 1.
  • Mountain Goat (limited entry): Extreme limited quota, often 1 to 2 tags statewide for this drainage. Once-in-a-lifetime for most hunters.
  • Shiras Moose (limited entry): Present in riparian corridors and willow flats. High draw difficulty.
  • Black Bear (general): Over-the-counter tag. Good population. Spring and fall seasons.
  • Mountain Lion (limited entry): Unit quota. Requires hound hunting or significant snow-tracking skill.
  • Gray Wolf (general, trophy zone): Verify current regulations at wgfd.wyo.gov before applying.

Grizzly bears are present and active throughout this country. This is not a species note, it is a safety and logistics reality. Any hunter entering Area 105 should carry bear spray, travel in groups when possible, and understand how to manage camp in grizzly country. The Yellowstone ecosystem grizzly population has expanded significantly throughout this region, and encounters are not uncommon.

CWD Status

Chronic Wasting Disease has been detected in portions of Wyoming, but as of the most recent WGFD survey data available, the Clarks Fork drainage and core Area 105 country remain in low-prevalence or no-detection zones. This is one of the reasons the mule deer population here is considered so important from a conservation standpoint: it represents one of the last large, high-quality mule deer herds in Wyoming with minimal CWD exposure.

Hunters should verify current CWD zone designations at wgfd.wyo.gov before their season, as the disease's distribution is not static. Tag holders are required to submit harvest data supporting ongoing surveillance, and this monitoring effort is directly tied to the long-term health of the population.

Outfitter Considerations

Wilderness mule deer hunting of this depth is, practically speaking, an outfitted hunt for most nonresidents. The investment in horses, pack strings, and backcountry camp infrastructure that the best country in Area 105 requires is significant. Several outfitters operating in the Shoshone National Forest and North Absaroka Wilderness have multi-decade relationships with this country and specific knowledge of where the deer summer and winter, where the access corridors are, and how to hunt the terrain in October conditions.

Outfitter costs for this type of hunt typically run $8,000 to $18,000 for a fully outfitted 7- to 10-day wilderness pack trip, not including the tag itself. The hunters who get the most out of it are those who arrive physically prepared, with realistic expectations about weather and daily physical demands, and with genuine interest in the country rather than just the antlers.

If you draw this tag as a do-it-yourself hunter, plan a scouting trip in the summer before your season. Get into the country on foot or horseback, understand the drainage systems, and identify where the high-country basins are relative to trailhead access. Hunting this unit cold without prior scouting is not a recipe for success.

Conservation Funding

The premium license fees for limited-entry tags in Wyoming feed directly into Game and Fish's habitat programs, predator management, and herd monitoring. For Area 105 specifically, those funds support the telemetry work tracking migration corridor use, the winter range assessments informing grazing allotment negotiations on the National Forest, and the grizzly-elk-deer interaction research that is genuinely important for long-term management of one of the most complex predator-prey systems in North America.

The Pittman-Robertson Act excise tax on firearms and ammunition provides additional federal matching funds tied to license sale revenues. Every application fee you pay into this system, whether you draw or not, contributes to the management of the resource you are trying to hunt.

How to Position Yourself

If you have never applied for Area 105, apply this year. The preference point system means every year you delay is a year you cannot recover. The application window for Wyoming big game typically opens in January and closes in May. Tag costs and application fees are listed at wgfd.wyo.gov.

If you are a resident hunter with fewer than eight points, you are likely looking at five to ten more years of accumulation before you are consistently in the draw pool. If you are a nonresident starting from zero, fifteen to twenty years is a realistic estimate, and that assumes the point floor does not continue climbing as the herd's reputation attracts more applicants.

The hunters who draw this tag and make the most of it are not necessarily those with the most money or the most trophy hunting experience. They are the ones who spent the waiting period getting into serious backcountry shape, learning the region's topography from maps and summer trips, and building the camp and horsemanship skills the country demands. The tag is the beginning of the work, not the end of it.

Have you hunted Area 105 or scouted the Clarks Fork drainage? Post a report on the Area 105 unit page and help the next hunter get into this country. Browse all Wyoming units to see the full picture of what the state offers.