Unit 100 (Julesburg / Sedgwick Plains)

CPW's material on unit 100 stops at the boundary — there is no agency account of where its pronghorn live. Every place named below sits inside the unit line. Which of them holds animals in your season is for you to find out. The unit lies in Washington and Morgan counties. It runs to about 1,059 square miles.

The lines of the unit: U.S. 34, Colo. 61 and U.S. 36

CPW has unit 100 bounded on the north by U.S. 34; on the east by Colo. 61; on the south by U.S. 36; on the west by Colo. 71. That is a legal description, not a habitat map. What it does give you is the way in: the rivers and highways you cross, and the divides that decide which drainage you end up in.

Holding ground: Dry Gulch and Shears Draw

Below them sit Dry Gulch at 4,627 feet and Shears Draw at 4,420 feet. Those are the basins, parks and bottoms this unit has, and they are what you glass into from above. Work out which of them you can see from one position before you pick a camp.

Water in this unit

The water inside the unit line comes to 26 mapped stream reaches, 1 lakes and 37 stock tanks. Nothing in the data says which of them run in autumn, so a scouting trip earns its fuel.

The herd this unit belongs to: A-2

CPW does not manage pronghorn unit by unit. It manages them as data analysis unit A-2, and unit 100 is one piece of it. The rest of A-2 is unit 99. That matters twice over: the population objective and the licence numbers are set for the whole area, and the animals move across unit lines inside it without noticing them.

What is published about unit 100, and what is not

The public datasets name only 2 features inside this unit, and no agency access property at all. That is the finding. Ground this size held privately is farmed and grazed rather than mapped, and the hunt starts as a conversation with a landowner rather than a route. Work out who owns the ground first, then ask. What the unit does have is 1,059 square miles of it, and the pronghorn living on it are there whether or not anyone has mapped a name onto the ground. Pronghorn live in the open and trust their eyes, which is the whole problem.

Reading the land status

Our ownership read for this unit is approximate — it comes out as Private / Other 85% and BLM 15%, so treat it as a starting point and check a current land-status layer before you plan a route. A grid sample of the unit reads 4,432 to 4,936 feet, averaging 4,670 — a sample rather than a survey, so read the ends as approximate. There is not much relief, so the animals move laterally rather than up and down.

CPW's own harvest estimates put pronghorn success in unit 100 at 53% across all manners of take. A number like that comes from few tags and a short season, not from easy hunting. The plan: spot from a vehicle or a rise at distance, then plan a stalk that uses the only cover there is — the curve of the ground.

Finding a view in unit 100

No named high ground falls inside this unit, which changes the method rather than ruling it out. On flat country ten feet of relief is a glassing position: a tank bank, a terrace above a creek, the shoulder of a county road. Pronghorn live in the open and trust their eyes, which is the whole problem. Cover ground slowly and stop more often than feels sensible.

Water against feed

There are 26 mapped stream reaches and 37 tanks inside the unit, so water is rarely the limiting factor. Where water is everywhere, feed is what concentrates animals, so hunt the feed and treat water as a convenience. Sitting water works where you can see fresh tracks going in, and nowhere else.

Timing the season: Sep, Oct, Nov

Season normals here run Sep 79/48°F, Oct 65/35°F and Nov 52/23°F. Warm afternoons compress the hunting into the first and last hour, and make meat care the day's real problem rather than the shot. Precipitation runs about 1.3 in. in Sep, 1 in. in Oct and 0.5 in. in Nov, and the graded gravel in this unit turns greasy wet.

Getting past the roads: County Road 26 and County Road 17

US 34, US 36 and CO 71 are the paved frame, which is also where everyone else starts. There is little true four-wheel-drive road here, so distance from the gravel is the only thing separating you from the next hunter. 17 mapped public entry points fall inside the unit, so decide which one you take before the morning you take it.

Where unit 100 sits inside A-2

Across A-2, CPW's 2023 pronghorn success runs 65% in unit 99 and 53% in unit 100. Unit 100 is the lowest of them, so whatever drives success in this herd is happening somewhere else in it. If the draw lets you choose, unit 99 carried the better number in the same herd — check its tag count before you read that as an easier hunt.

A first plan from the pins on this page

The map above marks Dry Gulch, Shears Draw, Walk-In Access 1 — C_W and Walk-In Access 88 — G as ground to watch. Each pin is a named feature verified to fall inside the unit line, not a spot anyone has hunted. Walk between two of them rather than driving between four, and you will learn more in a day.

What a day here costs you

1,059 square miles is more country than a week will cover, so pick one drainage and learn it rather than driving the unit. The nearest services are at Akron, about 14 miles out, which is an hour of your morning each way if you sleep there. The ground is gentle enough that the pack-out is a distance problem rather than a climbing one. One good position held through the whole of first light beats three visited in a hurry.