Buying Hunting Land in Johnson County, Wyoming

It's a hunt-area question, not just a county question

Wyoming manages big game by numbered hunt area, not by county line, and Johnson County land near Buffalo and the Bighorn foothills spans several of them: elk hunt area 36, mule deer hunt area 27, and antelope hunt area 102 are the ones most often cited for the general country along the eastern slope of the Bighorn Mountains north of Buffalo. Wyoming Game and Fish's licensing runs on two structures -- a general license valid in any hunt area that isn't fully limited, and a limited quota license valid only in a specific hunt area and capped in number -- and which structure applies, and whether a given area is drawing full quotas, changes from year to year. Hunt area 36 in particular carries its own quirks: archery-season any-elk hunting that applies unit-wide in most general units specifically does not apply in Area 36, and Type 6 seasons across Areas 34-37 have been restructured around cow/calf harvest on private land. None of that is a reason to avoid the area -- it's a reason to pull the current Wyoming Game and Fish hunt-area regulations for the specific area a parcel sits in before assuming what a "general elk tag" actually gets you there.

Wyoming's landowner license program: a real acquisition threshold, not a marketing term

A meaningful share of the value in Johnson County hunting-land listings traces back to Wyoming's landowner license program, and it has a specific, checkable threshold rather than being a vague perk of "owning enough land." Under Wyoming Game and Fish regulation, a landowner qualifies by holding at least 160 acres of contiguous deeded land that provides habitat for the species applied for, and by documenting at least 2,000 animal-use-days annually for that species on the property. Meeting the threshold does not hand you unlimited tags: state rule caps how many landowner licenses a single parcel or applicant can draw per species per year (generally one full-price license plus a limited number of reduced-price licenses, varying by species), and the application has to go in during the same online license-application window as everyone else's.

For a buyer, the practical implication is that "qualifies for landowner tags" is a claim worth verifying, not taking on faith from a listing. Ask the seller for the property's actual animal-use-day documentation (if any exists) and confirm the acreage is genuinely contiguous and deeded -- a 160-acre parcel split by a public road or another owner's land in the middle doesn't necessarily meet the contiguity requirement the same way one unbroken block does. Wyoming Game and Fish's Sheridan Regional Office, which covers Johnson County, is the right first call to confirm current landowner-license rules and caps for the specific species and hunt area involved.

Walk-In Areas and Access Yes: public hunting access that already runs through private land here

Separate from what you can do on your own land, Johnson County already has several Wyoming Game and Fish Walk-In Areas -- private or state parcels where the Department has leased public hunting or fishing access, open to anyone with a valid license for the listed species with no separate permission needed. These are numbered and mapped individually (Johnson County Walk-In Area 1, Area 7, and others), each with its own allowed species list and boundary, and they can sit directly adjacent to land you're considering. If a parcel borders or is near a Walk-In Area, expect foot traffic from licensed hunters during the relevant seasons as a real, ongoing feature of that location -- not a hypothetical.

Wyoming's Access Yes program works the other direction: it's the mechanism landowners actually use to open their own land to public hunting and fishing access, sometimes for a fee paid by the state, with the twofold goal of giving sportspeople more places to go and helping landowners manage game damage to crops and range through hunter harvest. If you're buying land partly for the income or wildlife-management side of hosting hunters, Access Yes enrollment is a real option worth asking Wyoming Game and Fish's Sheridan Regional Office about directly, alongside the landowner-tag program above -- the two serve different purposes and aren't mutually exclusive.

Corner-crossing is now legal in Wyoming -- worth knowing even though Johnson County isn't a checkerboard county

Wyoming has more "corner-locked" public land than any other state -- acreage that touches other public land only at a single shared corner, a legacy of 19th-century railroad land grants that produced a checkerboard ownership pattern mostly concentrated along the historic transcontinental railroad corridor in the southern part of the state (Carbon, Albany, Sweetwater, and Uinta counties), not the Bighorn foothills around Buffalo. Johnson County itself generally does not have that checkerboard pattern, so this is background rather than a parcel-specific concern here.

That said, it's worth knowing the legal landscape has genuinely changed: in March 2025 the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals held in Iron Bar Holdings v. Cape that stepping from one public parcel to an adjoining public parcel at a shared corner, without touching private land itself, does not violate a Wyoming landowner's property rights, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a further appeal in October 2025 -- leaving that ruling as settled law across the Tenth Circuit's six states, Wyoming included. For anyone weighing hunting-land purchases across the state generally (not specifically Johnson County), that ruling meaningfully expanded practical access to landlocked public parcels reachable only by corner-crossing; it just isn't the access issue that defines Johnson County itself, where the more relevant access question is simply where the Forest Service boundary sits relative to a specific parcel's legal road access.

What to actually check before buying

1. Confirm the specific hunt area(s) (elk, deer, antelope) the parcel sits in with Wyoming Game and Fish's Sheridan Regional Office, and whether those areas are general or limited-quota for the species you care about -- don't assume from a listing's description of "great elk hunting."
2. If landowner tags are part of the pitch, verify the parcel's deeded acreage is genuinely contiguous and ask for any existing animal-use-day documentation rather than assuming the 160-acre/2,000-animal-use-day threshold is automatically met.
3. Check the Wyoming Game and Fish Walk-In Area map for the parcel's immediate surroundings -- a bordering Walk-In Area means real public foot traffic in season, which cuts both ways depending on what you want from the land.
4. If you're planning to open the land to public access yourself, ask the Sheridan Regional Office about current Access Yes enrollment terms and payment structure before assuming what income or damage-control benefit it would provide.
5. For access to adjoining Bighorn National Forest land itself (not the corner-crossing question above), confirm current status directly with the Buffalo Ranger District -- national forest access, grazing allotments, and any special-use permits are federal, not county, matters.