Arizona Bighorn Sheep

Unit 46BW (Tule and Cabeza Prieta Mountains, unit 46B west)

Arizona Hunting Guide — Bighorn Sheep

46BW is the western bighorn hunt area within GMU 46B — the Tule, Cabeza Prieta and Sierra Pinta ranges of Yuma County, inside the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge and the Barry M. Goldwater Range, with El Camino del Diablo as the one graded road through it. AZGFD publishes one guide for the parent unit rather than one per half, so the detail here is the 46B material and the east/west line comes from your tag's hunt-area description. Rams have scored between 125 and 170 and carry the red-stained horns this country is known for. There is effectively no water, four-wheel drive is required, a BMGR permit is required, and most of the refuge is wilderness.

View Draw Odds Arizona Hunting Guide

🏔️

Public Land

Build your own PDF hunt guide for Unit 46BW

Answer a few questions about your tag, your season and your rig, and the Field Intelligence Report builds a print-ready Arizona Unit 46BW 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.

Bighorn Sheep 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.

Bighorn Sheep Hunting in Unit 46BW

Where the rams are in 46B West: the Tules, Cabeza Prietas and the Bryan Mountains

The point of order first: AZGFD publishes a single guide for GMU 46B with no east/west split in its area notes. Read this alongside your tag's hunt-area description and load that boundary into your GPS before you hunt.

The ranges

Bighorn are found throughout the Sierra Pinta, the Cabeza Prieta Mountains and the Tule Mountains. On the western side the Tule Mountains at 2,287 feet, Cabeza Prieta Peak at 2,506, the Cabeza Prieta Mountains at 2,796, Tordillo Mountain at 2,159 and the Bryan Mountains at 1,729 are the ground to work, with Sierra Pinta at 2,921 to the east of them.

Rams

Past rams from this unit have scored 125 and 170, with a local reputation for red-stained horns and for horn size. The spread in those numbers is worth noting before you set your standard.

Low crossings and small hills

Cabeza Prieta Pass at 1,505 feet, Sunday Pass at 1,250, Surprise Canyon at 1,221, A-one Basin at 1,216, Chia Canyon at 1,114, Hummingbird Canyon at 1,095 and Paradise Canyon at 1,080 are the named low ground. Mature rams travel alone or in small bachelor groups, and the guide tells you plainly not to overlook the small hills beside the big mountains.

What September tells you, and what it doesn't

Late August and September is the rut — several rams in a small area, excellent for counting and judging. It is not a forecast of December. Scout to learn the country and the quality, then hunt the ground that holds rams when your season opens.

El Camino del Diablo, and the permits

The one graded road through this country is called the Devil's Highway and it earns the name. Four-wheel drive is required. A Barry M. Goldwater Range permit is required because of military overflights, and the refuge is primarily wilderness. Contact the Cabeza Prieta refuge on 520-387-6483, at 1611 N. Second Avenue in Ajo, 40 miles south of Gila Bend on SR 85, for the welcome packet and the current rules.

Unit 46BW terrain and land status

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

Named features inside the unit

Glass from: Sierra Pinta (2,921 ft), Cabeza Prieta Mountains (2,796 ft), Buck Peak (2,588 ft)

Holding ground: Cabeza Prieta Pass (1,505 ft), Halfway Tank (1,426 ft)

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

Pro Members Only

Unlock bighorn tactics for Unit 46BW

Upgrade to Pro — $49/yr

How to hunt 46B West: base-up glassing, an indirect approach, and total self-sufficiency

Rifle success on these tags runs about 75 percent. The agency calls this hunt not for the meek and the weak, and the limiting factor is the country rather than the sheep.

Glass from the base before you climb

Ten or 20 power from the bottom of the mountain. Sheep that still have the top third of the hill above them will often stand and watch you. Walking straight up at them does the opposite.

Approach indirectly

No eye contact, no straight line — the guide's image of someone searching for dropped keys is exactly right. Curious sheep will let you close ground that way, and it's a skill worth practising during your scouting trips.

Lower two-thirds, and listen

Stay in the lower two-thirds of the mountain once you're on it. Stop regularly, sit, and glass while listening — in these ranges you'll frequently hear a rock come loose before you see the animal that moved it.

Plan for no water and no help

Eleven tanks and no springs across the unit. Conditions are extremely primitive and harsh. Carry all your water plus a reserve, carry recovery gear and two spares, and tell someone exactly where you're going. Monsoon-season scouting adds flooded washes to the list of things that strand people out here.

Eyes, stock and discretion

Round up friends to scout; more eyes find more sheep. Hunters have used horses to cover the distances on this refuge. And take the guide's security note seriously — migrant and drug-trafficking traffic is a reality in this corner of Arizona, so use good judgement about where you hunt and where you camp.

Arizona rules that decide your day

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

Legal shooting hours

Big game may be taken only during daylight hours — from sunrise to sunset. Check the sunrise and sunset times for your unit, not for Phoenix.

Motorized retrieval

Arizona permits motorized big-game retrieval only where the unit's travel-management decision allows it, and in several units only for elk. Where it is allowed it means one vehicle, one trip, within one mile of a road shown open on the Motor Vehicle Use Map — never inside a quiet area, a wilderness or a closed area. Pull the MVUM for your ranger district and confirm before you shoot somewhere you cannot carry an animal out of.

Tagging

Sign your tag before you go afield and attach it to the animal immediately after the kill. Hunters aged 10–13 must carry their Hunter Education card with the licence and tag.

Leaving meat

Leaving edible meat in the field is illegal. Edible meat means the four quarters and the loins at a minimum.

Where you may not shoot

Occupied structures — No shooting within a quarter mile of an occupied farmhouse, cabin, lodge or building without the owner's permission. That rules out shooting toward most lakeside cabin tracts.
Campsites and developed areas — Forest Service rules prohibit discharging a firearm within 150 yards of a residence, building, campsite, developed recreation site or occupied area.
Roads and water — No shooting from a vehicle, and no shooting on, across or into a road. No shooting across a body of water adjacent to a Forest road.

Bighorn Sheep: 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 bighorn tactics for Unit 46BW

Upgrade to Pro — $49/yr

Bighorn Sheep Success Rates

Rifle75%

Unit 46BW bighorn hunts run extremely high success rates — typically 90-100% on rifle hunts given the limited tag count, quality population, and extensive pre-hunt scouting most tag holders complete. Ram quality is premier-tier, with mature rams in the 160-170 class possible and occasional record-book animals.

Bighorn Sheep Draw Odds

Season	Tags	Applicants	Draw %	Pts (n/p)
Rifle — General Rifle bull/buck only (combined pool)	4	156	0.6%	—
Rifle — Late Rifle Dec bull/buck only (combined pool)	4	345	1.2%	—

Data from 2023 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

Unit 46BW bighorn is a premier Arizona desert bighorn tag. Most successful applicants hold 25+ bonus points. Arizona's bighorn tag is a once-in-a-lifetime rule — once drawn, you cannot apply for another bighorn tag in Arizona. The 20% set-aside for 0-point applicants provides a remote long-shot for new hunters. This is a lifetime application commitment.

Unit Logistics & Expectations

Planning Notes

🚐

RV Sites

Dispersed RV camping on BLM land around the Kofa NWR boundary. RV parks in Quartzsite.

⛺

Camp Sites

Dispersed camping on BLM and (where allowed) refuge land. Confirm refuge camping rules before entering Kofa NWR.

🛻

Trailer Access

Highway 95 is paved. Refuge and BLM roads vary — most are rough desert tracks requiring high-clearance 4WD.

💧

Water

Carry all water. Quartzsite or Yuma for resupply. Absolutely no reliable natural water for human use.

🛣️

Road Conditions

Rough. Refuge roads are signed and maintained but require high-clearance. Many interior roads are primitive.

🥾

Terrain Difficulty

Extreme. Vertical escarpments, loose rock, and cactus-choked canyons. This is the hardest Arizona terrain for big-game hunting.

👥

Hunting Pressure

Very low. Very limited tags keep pressure near zero.

🌦️

Weather

Late-season bighorn hunts run November-December with 50-80°F days and cool nights. Hydration is still critical — desert dehydration is a year-round risk.

📱

Cell Service

None in the backcountry. Satellite communicator is non-negotiable on this hunt.

🏘️

Nearest Town

Quartzsite (basic services — fuel, groceries). Yuma (90 min southwest, full urban services).

Pro Members Only

Unlock logistics for Unit 46BW

Upgrade to Pro — $49/yr

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Arizona bighorn a once-in-a-lifetime tag?

Yes. Once you draw an Arizona bighorn sheep tag, you cannot apply for another Arizona bighorn tag for the rest of your life. This is a lifetime commitment — plan accordingly.

How many bonus points for Unit 46BW bighorn?

Most successful applicants hold 25+ bonus points. Arizona's weighted bonus draw rewards maximum points but does not guarantee selection — the random component and the 20% 0-point set-aside create variability.

Should I hire a guide for Unit 46BW?

Most drawn hunters do. The terrain is punishing, trophy judgment matters enormously on a once-in-a-lifetime tag, and experienced Kofa guides significantly improve both success rate and ram quality.

Free Hunt Planning Tools

🎰 Arizona 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.

Upgrade to Pro — $49/yr

Sources & Verification

Every fact on this page is tied to a primary source below. Last fact-checked 2026-04-17.

GMU 46 — Unit Landing Page — Arizona Game and Fish Department · supports: Canonical unit info page, Kofa/Castle Dome boundary notes, Desert bighorn habitat · accessed 2026-04-17
2025-26 Arizona Hunting Regulations — Arizona Game and Fish Department · supports: Bighorn sheep season structure, Tag quotas for 46BW, Legal weapons and tag conditions · accessed 2026-04-17
AZGFD Draw Portal — Hunt Drawing Information — Arizona Game and Fish Department · supports: Weighted bonus point bighorn draw, Once-in-a-lifetime tag rule, 20% set-aside for 0-point applicants · accessed 2026-04-17
Kofa National Wildlife Refuge — U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service · supports: Refuge boundaries, Road access and wilderness areas, Desert bighorn management · accessed 2026-04-17