Mountain Pursuit Proposes the 229,000 Acre, “Wyoming Mule Deer Wilderness”

Proposed Wyoming Mule Deer Wilderness

The Wyoming Mule Deer Wilderness will be located at the northern part of the Wyoming Range, and encompass the heart of the Sublette Mule Deer Herd summer range.

By Rob Shaul, Founder

Today, Mountain Pursuit announces the beginning of an aggressive campaign to create a new, 229,000 acre Wilderness area in western Wyoming, the “Wyoming Mule Deer Wilderness.”

The Wyoming Mule Deer Wilderness will be located just south of the existing Gros Ventre Wilderness and use Highway 189/191 and the Snake River as its northern border. 

The Upper Hoback River Road serves as the eastern border, and the Little Grays River Road as the northern western border and Middle Ridge Trail as its southern western border. 

The southern border on the east will be the Dry Beaver Road, and on the west, the road to the Blind Bull Trailhead.

Here is a link to the Wyoming Range Mule Deer Wilderness in Gaia GPS.

Click Here to download the Google Earth KML File. 

There's a reason a Hunting Nonprofit led by multi-generational Wyoming Residents is proposing this new Wilderness area. 

The Wyoming Range is world famous for producing huge high alpine mule deer bucks. In fact, entire hunting forums, websites and outfitting companies are dedicated to the mule deer that come out of the Hoback, Grays River, and the Wyoming Range. 

These mule deer are truly one of Wyoming's natural treasures - as beautiful and significant as our Devil's Tower, Tetons, bison, bighorn sheep, and rocky mountain elk. 

The new Wilderness Area would begin just south of Hoback Junction, in Teton County …

…. and encompass parts of Teton, Lincoln and Sublette Counties.

The proposed Wyoming Mule Deer Wilderness is the summer range for the Sublette Mule Deer Herd - the second largest in the state, and the herd with the second-longest migration route in North America. Some Sublette mule deer migrate all the way from summer range in the Hoback, 150 miles south, to winter range in the Red Desert. 

The Sublette Herd is in peril. According to the 2019 Wyoming Game & Fish Department 2019 Job Completion Report (most recent available) the current population of the Sublette Mule Deer Herd was estimated at 24,192 animals, a stunning 34.9% below the population objective of 32,000. A good portion of the Sublette Herd traditionally wintered on the Mesa south of Pinedale. This winter range was disturbed by the huge Pinedale Anticline Natural Gas Project beginning in the late 1990s, and upwards of 20% fewer deer winter on the Mesa today than before the project began.

Protecting the Sublette Mule Deer Herd's summer habitat via Wilderness designation will help protect this incredible resource from it's most significant current threat - Jackson-based industrial recreation, especially mountain biking. 

Jackson and its bedroom communities in Teton Valley, Idaho and Alpine, Wyoming, are exploding with growth driven by tourism marketing, real estate marketing, and COVID refugees.  As well, mountain biking in the area is growing fast, pushed by Jackson-based bike shops and an aggressive nonprofit. 

I served for three years on Teton County's Wyoming Public Lands Initiative (WPLI) Committee, along with a wide-array of stakeholders attempting to resolve the status of the Palisades and Shoal Creek Wilderness Study Areas. There I saw first hand that the Jackson-area mountain bike community had little regard for the environment, wildlife, other users or anything else which might inhibit their ability to bike in the backcountry. Following my service on WPLI, and after founding Mountain Pursuit, we sued the USFS over mountain biking and ORV use in Palisades and Shoal Creek. Our suit was tossed on a technical issue, and the resulting lesson is that we can't rely on the Forest Service to protect these wild places from the Jackson’s recreation industry.

Under Wyoming Law, nonresident hunters need a commercial or resident guide to hunt big game in Wilderness Areas. Designation of the Wyoming Mule Deer Wilderness will benefit both resident Wyoming hunters and outfitters guiding nonresidents by limiting the number of do-it-yourself nonresident hunters currently pursuing deer in these areas. 

We know this will be a fight. We expect immediate opposition from AMPL, a Texan-led, uncompromising, motorized-use organization based in Jackson, as well as the aggressive Jackson mountain bike, tourism and recreation industries.

The proposed Wyoming Range Mule Deer Wilderness area will close some roads - the most significant of which is the unmaintained Sandy Marshall road between Clark's Draw and the Cliff Creek Road.

Even though we feel Wyoming most resident hunters will benefit, we know some hunters will oppose the new Wilderness because of road closures. 

There's a change happening in Wyoming when it comes to protecting wildlife and our natural resources. Both James and I represent that change. We're both multi-generational Wyoming natives, and lifelong Republicans, who see the threat to these deer from Jackson-based industrial recreation and want them protected. Wilderness will do that.

Soon we’ll have up a Wyoming Mule Range Deer Wilderness website and we will reach out in earnest to Wyoming Senators Barrasso, Lummis, and Representative Cheney, and others for support. 

Wilderness is a big idea and Wyoming currently has 15 of them. The Bridger, Teton, North Absaroka and Washakie Wilderness were created with the passing of the original Wilderness Act in 1964. In 1984 Senators Alan Simpson, Malcolm Wallop and Dick Cheney lead the passage of the Wyoming Wilderness Act which created the Cloud Peak, Popo Agie, Fitzpatrick, Gros Ventre, Winger Hole, Huston Park, Encampment River, Platte River, Savage Run and Jedediah Smith Wilderness Areas.

Simpson, Wallop and Cheney - all conservative Republicans - realized and acted on the opportunity to protect large areas of Wyoming's wild landscape forever via Wilderness designation. 

It’s time the current generation of Wyoming leaders continue this legacy by working us and others to create Wyoming’s sixteenth wilderness area, the Wyoming Mule Deer Wilderness.