Wyoming Whitetail Deer

Unit D149 (Targhee)

Wyoming Hunting Guide — Whitetail Deer

Deer Hunt Area 149, which Wyoming Game and Fish names Targhee, covers about 382 square miles in Teton County. WGFD's 2025 harvest survey put white-tailed deer success here at 38.5%, with 26 hunters taking 10 white-tailed deer at about 27.3 days of hunting per animal. Check land status on a current map before you plan a route.

View Draw Odds Wyoming Hunting Guide

Build your own PDF hunt guide for Unit D149

Answer a few questions about your tag, your season and your rig, and the Field Intelligence Report builds a print-ready Wyoming Unit D149 guide around your hunt: three ranked spots with morning, afternoon and evening plays, a day-by-day plan, topo maps with every pin numbered, a camp and access plan, the legal and retrieval rules for this unit, shot discipline, a meat-care and pack-out plan, and a pre-trip checklist. Every coordinate sits on land recorded as public.

Whitetail Deer guide

Free accounts get one report a year with the top spot unlocked. ProHunt Pro includes unlimited reports, all three spots, the full camp plan, and GPX/KML downloads for onX and Google Earth. Prefer to see one first? Open the builder and pick any unit.

Whitetail Deer Hunting in Unit D149

Where to Find White-Tailed Deer in Deer Hunt Area 149

The Wyoming Game and Fish Commission names deer hunt area 149 "Targhee". It runs to about 382 square miles, entirely in Teton County. The boundary and the harvest figures are WGFD's. The read of the country inside them is ours, and it says so where it starts.

Where deer hunt area 149 begins and ends

WGFD's 2026 Chapter 6 walks the line around deer hunt area 149 corner by corner. It starts where Wyoming Highway 22 crosses the Wyoming-Idaho state line. On the way round it follows Wyoming Highway 22, and Teton Pass. That is a legal description, not a habitat map, and it is the text a warden reads you against. The full text is in Section 7 of that chapter, with this year's season dates and license limitations in Section 2.

Ground WGFD opens: Public Access Areas

Public Access Areas such as Coco Belle Van Meerendonk (43 acres) are public ways onto water and land; check what each allows before you count on it for hunting.

Wilderness inside the line: Jedediah Smith Wilderness and Winegar Hole Wilderness

About 51% of deer hunt area 149 lies in the Jedediah Smith Wilderness and 4% of deer hunt area 149 lies in the Winegar Hole Wilderness. WGFD's 2026 regulations print the rule that matters there: no nonresident may hunt big game in a designated wilderness area unless accompanied by a licensed professional guide or a resident guide, with at least one guide for every two nonresident hunters. Inside the wilderness there are no roads, so every animal there comes out on your back or on a horse.

High ground inside the line: Mount Bannon, Fossil Mountain and Mount Meek

Named high points inside deer hunt area 149 include Mount Bannon at 10,968 feet, Fossil Mountain at 10,896 feet, Mount Meek at 10,685 feet, Littles Peak at 10,675 feet and Mount Jedediah Smith at 10,614 feet. Several carry a public-land flag in our data, which makes them the first places to try for a view. White-tailed deer hold to cover — river bottoms, brushy draws and timber edges — and rarely stray far from it.

Holding ground: Granite Basin, Taylor Basin and Phillips Pass

Below them sit Granite Basin at 9,090 feet, Taylor Basin at 8,968 feet, Phillips Pass at 8,922 feet, Carrot Knoll at 8,818 feet and Conant Pass at 8,754 feet. These are the folds worth watching, and the ones other hunters walk past.

Water: Badger Spring, Nelson Spring and Crystal Spring

Named water inside the line includes Badger Spring, Nelson Spring and Crystal Spring. Nothing in the data says which of it runs in autumn, so a scouting trip earns its fuel.

Reading the land status

Named ground inside deer hunt area 149 runs from 6,425 feet to 10,968 feet — more than 4,000 feet between the named features alone, so the season you draw decides which part of it you hunt.

Unit D149 terrain and land status

Measured from the unit boundary, not from the agency write-up

Named features inside the unit

Glass from: Mount Bannon (10,968 ft), Littles Peak (10,675 ft), Battleship Mountain (10,593 ft), Housetop Mountain (10,517 ft)

Holding ground: Mount Meek Pass (9,728 ft), Fox Creek Pass (9,563 ft), Nord Pass (9,378 ft), Badger Spring

Every one of these was tested against the unit polygon before it went on the map. They are starting points, not agency recommendations.

How to Hunt White-Tailed Deer in Deer Hunt Area 149

Wyoming Game and Fish's 2025 harvest survey estimates 26 hunters took 10 white-tailed deer in deer hunt area 149 — 38.5% success, at about 27.3 days of hunting for every animal taken. Residents ran 40% and nonresidents 33.3% that year. Fewer than half the hunters here filled a license, which makes scouting time the difference between the two groups. The plan: find the trails between bedding cover and feed, then sit downwind of them at first and last light.

License types WGFD reported in deer hunt area 149 for 2025

WGFD's 2025 survey breaks the white-tailed deer harvest in deer hunt area 149 down by license type.

Type 3 — 15 licenses in use, 20% success, 31 days per animal
Type 8 — 14 licenses in use, 28.6% success, 26.8 days per animal
General — 8 licenses in use, 37.5% success, 24.3 days per animal

What each type allows — antlered, antlerless, archery-only, where it is valid — and this year's dates are set area by area in Section 2 of WGFD's 2026 Chapter 6, so read the line for the license you hold rather than assume it matches another area's.

Glassing from The Wedge, The Wigwams and Rammell Mountain

Take a position on one of The Wedge (10,270 ft), The Wigwams (10,255 ft), Rammell Mountain (10,072 ft) and Spearhead Peak (10,060 ft) and be on it before light. In the dark the air runs downhill. Pick an approach that doesn't send it into the country you want to see, and plan to move once the slope warms. November bucks travel and check doe groups in daylight, which is when a stand on a travel route pays.

A first plan from the pins on this page

The map above marks Mount Bannon, Littles Peak and Battleship Mountain as places to see from, and Mount Meek Pass, Fox Creek Pass and Nord Pass as ground to work. Each pin is a named feature or a WGFD access property placed inside the area line, not a spot anyone has hunted. Take the pair you can reach on one road and treat the rest as a second trip.

What a day here costs you

382 square miles is more country than a season will cover, so pick one drainage and learn it rather than driving the area. WGFD's figure of 27.3 days of hunting per animal is the one to budget against. With 4,543 feet between the lowest and highest named ground, plan the walk back out of a kill site before the shot. One good position held through the whole of first light beats three visited in a hurry.

What we can't tell you

We have no verified road, campground or town inventory for deer hunt area 149, so the logistics below come from WGFD's own text and the map pins rather than a survey of the ground. Some named ground above carries no land-status flag we trust, so check ownership on a current layer before you hunt it.

Wyoming rules that decide your day

Summarised from WGFD regulations. They change — read the current regulations and your permit-tag before you hunt.

Legal shooting hours

Big game may be taken from half an hour before sunrise to half an hour after sunset.

Motorized retrieval

Wyoming has no general off-road retrieval allowance on federal ground. Travel stays on designated routes.

Tagging

Attach the carcass coupon to the animal before it is moved, and keep evidence of sex attached.

Leaving meat

Wanton waste of edible meat is a serious offence in Wyoming.

Where you may not shoot

Occupied structures — No shooting from or across a public road, and no shooting toward an occupied dwelling.

Whitetail Deer: where to put the shot

Broadside or quartering away, on the back edge of the front leg about a third of the way up the body.

Shots to refuse

Nothing behind or overlapping the animal you picked.
Your maximum range is the farthest you have shot a three-shot group into a paper plate from the rest you are carrying.
Pass the shot you are talking yourself into.

Plan the carry: roughly 40– 120 lb of boned-out meat, before head and hide — two large coolers. ProHunt planning estimate, not an agency figure.

Pro Members Only

Unlock tactics for Area 149

Upgrade to Pro — $49/yr

Whitetail Deer Success Rates

Wyoming Game and Fish's 2025 harvest report estimates 38.5% white-tailed deer success in deer hunt area 149: 10 animals taken by 26 active hunters over 273 days of hunting, or 27.3 days per animal. By residency, residents 40% (8 taken by 20) and nonresidents 33.3% (2 taken by 6).

These are WGFD's own estimates from its hunter survey, for this hunt area and season only — not a statewide average. One season isn't a trend, so check the current report before you read one into it.

Whitetail Deer Draw Odds

Season	Tags	Applicants	Draw %	Pts (n/p)
Rifle — General either sex (resident)	20	19	100.0%	—
Rifle — General either sex (nonresident)	3	5	60.0%	—

Data from 2025 draw results. Each row is one residency pool — read the label before the number. This agency publishes no point thresholds, so the Pts column stays blank and these are pool odds, not what a point total draws.

Open in Draw Odds Engine

The white-tailed deer draw figures we hold for Wyoming have not been checked against WGFD's demand reports, so none are printed here. WGFD's draw results and odds page has the demand report for every hunt area and license type.

Unit Logistics & Expectations

Planning Notes

💧

Water

3 named water sources inside the hunt area in our water layer, including Badger Spring, Nelson Spring and Crystal Spring. Which of them run in autumn is something only a scouting trip will tell you.

🛣️

Road Conditions

WGFD's boundary for the hunt area follows Wyoming Highway 22. That is the edge, not a promise of access inside — check a current motor-vehicle-use map before you drive in.

🥾

Terrain Difficulty

Named features inside the hunt area run from 6,425 to 10,968 ft. More than 4,000 feet between them alone, so plan the pack-out before the shot.

👥

Hunting Pressure

WGFD's 2025 survey counted about 26 white-tailed deer hunters spending 273 days here.

📋

Permit Notes

Season dates and license limitations: WGFD 2026 Chapter 6, Section 2. Nonresidents need a licensed or resident guide in designated wilderness.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where is Wyoming deer hunt area 149?

Deer Hunt Area 149 (Targhee) covers about 382 square miles in Teton County. WGFD's 2026 Chapter 6 walks the line around deer hunt area 149 corner by corner. It starts where Wyoming Highway 22 crosses the Wyoming-Idaho state line. On the way round it follows Wyoming Highway 22, and Teton Pass.

What is the white-tailed deer success rate in deer hunt area 149?

Wyoming Game and Fish's 2025 harvest report estimates 38.5% white-tailed deer success in deer hunt area 149, with 26 hunters taking 10 white-tailed deer at about 27.3 days of hunting per animal. That is WGFD's figure for this hunt area, not a statewide average.

What do you need besides a license to hunt deer hunt area 149?

Beyond the license, deer hunt area 149 calls for a licensed professional or resident guide if you are a nonresident hunting the wilderness part of the area. Season dates and license limitations are in Section 2 of WGFD's 2026 Chapter 6.

Free Hunt Planning Tools

🎰 Wyoming Draw Odds Unit-level tag success rates 📅 Application Timeline Deadlines for all 9 states 🦌 Rut Forecast Peak rut timing by species 💰 Hunt Cost Calculator Budget your entire hunt

Plan Your Hunt with ProHunt Pro

Unlock advanced tactics, the Tag-to-Trail Planner, AI hunt strategy assistant, and personalized camp and trip execution plans.