Colorado Mule Deer Pronghorn

Unit 101 (Phillips / Sedgwick Plains)

Colorado Hunting Guide — Mule Deer, Pronghorn

Unit 101 lies in Washington and Yuma counties and covers about 684 square miles. Ground runs from 3,656 to 4,468 feet. CPW bounds it by U.S. 34 and U.S. 385 among others. CPW's harvest estimates put mule deer success here as high as 39%. No federal land falls inside it, so every acre is a permission question. Check land status on a current map before you plan a route.

View Draw Odds Colorado Hunting Guide

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Public Land

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3,656–4,468 ft

Sampled elevation

Build your own PDF hunt guide for Unit 101

Answer a few questions about your tag, your season and your rig, and the Field Intelligence Report builds a print-ready Colorado Unit 101 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.

Mule Deer guide Pronghorn guide

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Mule Deer Hunting in Unit 101

Where to Find Mule Deer in Unit 101

CPW's material on unit 101 stops at the boundary — there is no agency account of where its mule deer 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 Yuma counties. It runs to about 684 square miles.

The lines of the unit: U.S. 34, U.S. 385 and Yuma CR 26

CPW has unit 101 bounded on the north by U.S. 34; on the east by U.S. 385, Yuma CR 26, Colo. 59, Yuma CRs 16, C & 9 (becomes Washington CR 9 at Co. line) and Washington CRs 9, YY & 7; on the south by U.S. 36; on the west by Colo. 61. It tells you the shape of the unit and nothing about its inhabitants. 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.

High ground inside the line: Mount Yuma

Named high points inside the unit include Mount Yuma at 4,157 feet. None carries a public-land flag we trust, so settle the ownership question before you plan to stand on one. Mule deer on open country use every fold and draw there is, and almost none of the flat.

Public ground to start from: Sandsage SWA and Snyder Prairie STL

CPW lists Sandsage SWA and Snyder Prairie STL inside this unit as ground open to public hunting. Each property sets its own restrictions, and the agency's page for it is where they are written down. Federal land covers about 0% of the unit on top of those.

Water in this unit

The water inside the unit line comes to 1 mapped stream reaches, 1 lakes and 17 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: D-55

CPW does not manage mule deer unit by unit. It manages them as data analysis unit D-55, and unit 101 is one piece of it. The rest of D-55 is unit 102. 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 101, and what is not

The public datasets name only 3 features inside this unit. 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 684 square miles of it, and the mule deer living on it are there whether or not anyone has mapped a name onto the ground.

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 3,656 to 4,468 feet, averaging 4,160 — 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.

Unit 101 terrain and land status

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

The lay of it

3,656–4,468 ft on a terrain sample , averaging 4,160 ft ; peaks can run higher.
684.2 sq mi inside the boundary.

Who owns the ground

BLM — 15%
Private / Other — 85%

Roughly 15% is public. Carry a land-status layer anyway — these are area percentages, not a map of where the boundaries fall.

Water on the ground

17 tanks
1 stream segments
1 lakes

Counts from mapping data, so this is how many exist, not how many hold water in a dry year. Sitting water only pays where you find fresh tracks.

Named features inside the unit

Glass from: Mount Yuma (4,157 ft)

Holding ground: Sandsage SWA, Snyder Prairie STL

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 Mule Deer in Unit 101

CPW's own harvest estimates put mule deer success in unit 101 at archery 11% and rifle 39%. That is an ordinary spread for this country, and it rewards whoever scouted. The plan: glass the broken edges at first light, then sit still and keep glassing the same ground.

Glassing from Mount Yuma

Take a position on Mount Yuma (4,157 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. Work the glass in strips and go back over ground you already covered — animals appear in country you looked at ten minutes ago. On the rut hunts, late-season hunts put bucks with doe groups and moving in daylight.

Water decides where you sit

With 17 tanks and only 1 mapped stream reaches, this is ground where standing water is made rather than found. Find the two or three holding water near a glassing position and you have found the only appointment the animals keep. Check the ground around it before you commit an evening to it.

Timing the season: Sep, Oct, Nov

Season normals here run Sep 80/50°F, Oct 66/37°F and Nov 53/26°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 1.4 in. in Sep, 1.2 in. in Oct and 0.5 in. in Nov, and the graded gravel in this unit turns greasy wet.

Getting past the roads: CO 59 and US 34

CO 59 and US 34 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. 3 mapped public entry points fall inside the unit, so decide which one you take before the morning you take it.

Where unit 101 sits inside D-55

Across D-55, CPW's 2023 mule deer success runs 36% in unit 102 and 35% in unit 101. Unit 101 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 102 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 Mount Yuma as places to see from, and Sandsage SWA, Snyder Prairie STL, Walk-In Access 15 — C and Yuma as ground to watch. Each pin is a named feature verified to fall inside the unit 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

684 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 Yuma, about 11 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.

Getting in and staying out: unit 101

Named routes and what they need

CO 59 — 19.5 mi · Paved (all rigs)
US 34 — 17.3 mi · Paved (all rigs)
County Road 28 — 14.5 mi · Graded gravel (2WD / small trailer)
County Road 26 — 13.3 mi · Graded gravel (2WD / small trailer)
County Road YY — 12.2 mi · Graded gravel (2WD / small trailer)
County Road U — 11 mi · Graded gravel (2WD / small trailer)

Ratings come from road data, not from a drive this season. Check current conditions with the managing office before you commit a trailer.

Nearest services

Yuma — 11.3 mi · no services listed
Eckley — 15.5 mi · no services listed
Otis — 18.8 mi · no services listed
Wray — 26.7 mi · fuel, groceries, lodging
Akron — 30.2 mi · no services listed

Season weather and signal

Jan43° / 17° · 0.3" precip
Aug88° / 59° · 2.5" precip
Sep80° / 50° · 1.4" precip
Oct66° / 37° · 1.2" precip
Nov53° / 26° · 0.5" precip
Dec43° / 17° · 0.5" precip

Best signal is Verizon at about 26% of the unit. Plan on being out of contact and tell someone your route.

Colorado rules that decide your day

Summarised from CPW 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

Colorado has no general off-road retrieval allowance. Travel stays on designated routes, so plan to pack every animal out on your back or with stock. Check the forest or BLM travel map for the roads that are actually open in hunting season.

Tagging

Validate and attach your carcass tag before the animal is moved, and keep evidence of sex attached until the carcass reaches your home or a processor.

Leaving meat

Abandoning edible meat is illegal. CPW counts the four quarters and the loins.

Where you may not shoot

Occupied structures — No discharging a firearm within 50 yards of a developed campsite, and never toward an occupied building.
Roads — No shooting from or across a public road, and no shooting from a motor vehicle.

Mule 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.

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Mule Deer Success Rates

All manners of take35%

Archery11%

Rifle39%

CPW's 2023 harvest estimates put mule deer success in unit 101 at 35% — 148 animals taken by 418 hunters. The hunter count is large enough for the percentage to mean something and small enough that a good or bad year still moves it.

Archery — 11% success, 5 taken by 46 hunters
Rifle — 39% success, 132 taken by 339 hunters

These are the agency's own printed figures for this unit, not a modelled estimate and not a state average. They describe one season, so check CPW's current harvest estimates before you read a trend into them.

Mule Deer Draw Odds

Season	Tags	Applicants	Draw %	Pts Req
Archery — 1st Season either sex (resident)	41	91	45.1%	—
Archery — 1st Season either sex (nonresident)	10	22	45.5%	—
Any Legal Method — 2nd Season either sex (resident)	109	183	59.6%	—
Any Legal Method — 2nd Season either sex (nonresident)	8	9	88.9%	—
Any Legal Method — 2nd Season doe only (resident)	21	87	24.1%	—
Any Legal Method — 2nd Season doe only (nonresident)	0	0	0.0%	—
Rifle — 1st Season doe only (resident)	11	45	24.4%	—
Rifle — 1st Season doe only (nonresident)	0	1	0.0%	—
Rifle — 1st Season doe only (resident)	8	21	38.1%	—
Rifle — 1st Season doe only (nonresident)	1	1	100.0%	—
Rifle — 1st Season buck only (resident)	23	48	47.9%	1
Rifle — 1st Season buck only (nonresident)	5	9	55.6%	1
Rifle — 1st Season buck only (resident)	16	70	22.9%	—
Rifle — 1st Season buck only (nonresident)	5	12	41.7%	1
Muzzleloader — 2nd Season doe only (resident)	4	11	36.4%	—
Muzzleloader — 2nd Season doe only (nonresident)	0	0	0.0%	—
Muzzleloader — 2nd Season buck only (resident)	21	49	42.9%	—
Muzzleloader — 2nd Season buck only (nonresident)	2	4	50.0%	—

Data from 2026 draw results. Each row is one residency pool — read the label before the number.

Open in Draw Odds Engine

CPW's 2026 draw recap for mule deer in unit 101, by hunt code, with resident and nonresident kept apart because the two draw from different licence pools:

DE101O2X — Any Legal Method, 2nd Season, Either Sex, resident: 183 applicants for 109 licences, 59.6% drawn, no preference points needed
DE101O1A — Archery, 1st Season, Either Sex, resident: 91 applicants for 41 licences, 45.1% drawn, no preference points needed
DF101O2X — Any Legal Method, 2nd Season, Doe Only, resident: 87 applicants for 21 licences, 24.1% drawn, no preference points needed
DM101O1R — Rifle, 1st Season, Buck Only, resident: 70 applicants for 16 licences, 22.9% drawn, no preference points needed

Colorado runs a pure preference-point draw, so the point figure above is the requirement the agency published for that code in that year, not a forecast for the next one. There are 12 further code-and-residency combinations in the recap for this unit. Figures checked against CPW's own statistics pages on 2026-06-09.

Pronghorn Hunting in Unit 101

Unit 101 lies in Washington and Yuma counties and covers about 684 square miles. Ground runs from 3,656 to 4,468 feet. CPW bounds it by U.S. 34 and U.S. 385 among others. CPW publishes no per-unit pronghorn success figure we can verify for this unit. No federal land falls inside it, so every acre is a permission question. Check land status on a current map before you plan a route.

Where to Find Pronghorn in Unit 101

CPW's material on unit 101 stops at the boundary — there is no agency account of where its pronghorn live. The country below is verified; where to begin in it is our judgement, not the agency's. The unit lies in Washington and Yuma counties. It runs to about 684 square miles.

The lines of the unit: U.S. 34, U.S. 385 and Yuma CR 26

High ground inside the line: Mount Yuma

Named high points inside the unit include Mount Yuma at 4,157 feet. None carries a public-land flag we trust, so settle the ownership question before you plan to stand on one. Pronghorn live in the open and trust their eyes, which is the whole problem.

Public ground to start from: Sandsage SWA and Snyder Prairie STL

Water in this unit

The water inside the unit line comes to 1 mapped stream reaches, 1 lakes and 17 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-4

CPW does not manage pronghorn unit by unit. It manages them as data analysis unit A-4, and unit 101 is one piece of it. The rest of A-4 is unit 93, unit 97, unit 98 and unit 102. 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 101, and what is not

The public datasets name only 3 features inside this unit. 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 684 square miles of it, and the pronghorn living on it are there whether or not anyone has mapped a name onto the ground.

Reading the land status

Unit 101 terrain and land status

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

The lay of it

3,656–4,468 ft on a terrain sample , averaging 4,160 ft ; peaks can run higher.
684.2 sq mi inside the boundary.

Who owns the ground

BLM — 15%
Private / Other — 85%

Roughly 15% is public. Carry a land-status layer anyway — these are area percentages, not a map of where the boundaries fall.

Water on the ground

17 tanks
1 stream segments
1 lakes

Counts from mapping data, so this is how many exist, not how many hold water in a dry year. Sitting water only pays where you find fresh tracks.

Named features inside the unit

Glass from: Mount Yuma (4,157 ft)

Holding ground: Sandsage SWA, Snyder Prairie STL

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 Pronghorn in Unit 101

CPW publishes no pronghorn success figure for unit 101 that we can tie to this unit alone, so we won't quote one. 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.

Glassing from Mount Yuma

Take a position on Mount Yuma (4,157 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. A tripod is worth more here than another hour of walking. On the rut hunts, early-season bucks hold does and can be decoyed where the law allows it.

Water decides where you sit

With 17 tanks and only 1 mapped stream reaches, this is ground where standing water is made rather than found. Find the two or three holding water near a glassing position and you have found the only appointment the animals keep. Sitting water works where you can see fresh tracks going in, and nowhere else.

Timing the season: Sep, Oct, Nov

Getting past the roads: CO 59 and US 34

A first plan from the pins on this page

The map above marks Mount Yuma as places to see from, and Sandsage SWA, Snyder Prairie STL, Walk-In Access 15 — C and Yuma as ground to watch. Each pin is a named feature verified to fall inside the unit line, not a spot anyone has hunted. Join two of them into a morning: be on the first before light, move to the second once the thermals turn.

What a day here costs you

What we can't tell you

Some of the ground named above carries no land-status flag we trust, so check ownership on a current layer before you hunt it. We have no pronghorn success figure for this unit that survives checking against CPW's own harvest and hunter counts, and we would rather say so than print a statewide average as though it were measured here.

Getting in and staying out: unit 101

Named routes and what they need

CO 59 — 19.5 mi · Paved (all rigs)
US 34 — 17.3 mi · Paved (all rigs)
County Road 28 — 14.5 mi · Graded gravel (2WD / small trailer)
County Road 26 — 13.3 mi · Graded gravel (2WD / small trailer)
County Road YY — 12.2 mi · Graded gravel (2WD / small trailer)
County Road U — 11 mi · Graded gravel (2WD / small trailer)

Ratings come from road data, not from a drive this season. Check current conditions with the managing office before you commit a trailer.

Nearest services

Yuma — 11.3 mi · no services listed
Eckley — 15.5 mi · no services listed
Otis — 18.8 mi · no services listed
Wray — 26.7 mi · fuel, groceries, lodging
Akron — 30.2 mi · no services listed

Season weather and signal

Jan43° / 17° · 0.3" precip
Aug88° / 59° · 2.5" precip
Sep80° / 50° · 1.4" precip
Oct66° / 37° · 1.2" precip
Nov53° / 26° · 0.5" precip
Dec43° / 17° · 0.5" precip

Best signal is Verizon at about 26% of the unit. Plan on being out of contact and tell someone your route.

Colorado rules that decide your day

Summarised from CPW 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

Tagging

Validate and attach your carcass tag before the animal is moved, and keep evidence of sex attached until the carcass reaches your home or a processor.

Leaving meat

Abandoning edible meat is illegal. CPW counts the four quarters and the loins.

Where you may not shoot

Occupied structures — No discharging a firearm within 50 yards of a developed campsite, and never toward an occupied building.
Roads — No shooting from or across a public road, and no shooting from a motor vehicle.

Pronghorn: where to put the shot

Broadside, straight up the front leg, a third of the way into the body. Pronghorn are shallow-chested and the lungs sit forward.

Shots to refuse

Range it, then range it again. Open country makes 400 yards look like 250.
Wait for the buck to stop. Nobody kills a running pronghorn cleanly on purpose.
Mind the backdrop. A miss carries a long way across a flat.

Plan the carry: roughly 30– 45 lb of boned-out meat, before head and hide — one large cooler with ice already in it. ProHunt planning estimate, not an agency figure.

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Pronghorn Success Rates

CPW's 2023 harvest estimates carry no pronghorn row for unit 101 that we can read back to this unit on its own. Where the agency reports a unit inside a grouping, or prints a table our parser cannot resolve to a single column, we leave the number out rather than publish a statewide average as though it had been measured here. CPW's current harvest estimates are the place to check before you apply.

Pronghorn Draw Odds

Season	Tags	Applicants	Draw %	Pts Req
Rifle — 1st Season doe only (resident)	6	59	10.2%	—
Rifle — 1st Season doe only (nonresident)	1	2	50.0%	3
Rifle — 1st Season buck only (resident)	8	109	7.3%	5
Rifle — 1st Season buck only (nonresident)	0	13	0.0%	—

Data from 2026 draw results. Each row is one residency pool — read the label before the number.

Open in Draw Odds Engine

CPW's 2026 draw recap for pronghorn in unit 101, by hunt code, with resident and nonresident kept apart because the two draw from different licence pools:

AM101O1R — Rifle, 1st Season, Buck Only, resident: 109 applicants for 8 licences, 7.3% drawn, 5 preference points needed
AF101O1R — Rifle, 1st Season, Doe Only, resident: 59 applicants for 6 licences, 10.2% drawn, no preference points needed
AM101O1R — Rifle, 1st Season, Buck Only, nonresident: 13 applicants for 0 licences, 0% drawn, no preference points needed
AF101O1R — Rifle, 1st Season, Doe Only, nonresident: 2 applicants for 1 licences, 50% drawn, 3 preference points needed

Colorado runs a pure preference-point draw, so the point figure above is the requirement the agency published for that code in that year, not a forecast for the next one. Figures checked against CPW's own statistics pages on 2026-06-09.

Unit Logistics & Expectations

Planning Notes

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Camp Sites

No developed campground falls inside the unit in our data — plan on dispersed camping and check the land status first.

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Road Conditions

CO 59, US 34 and County Road 28 are the named routes in the unit. Roughly 68 mi paved, 236 mi gravel and 0 mi four-wheel-drive.

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Terrain Difficulty

3,656–4,468 ft, averaging 4,160. Gentle ground — distance rather than climbing is the day's cost.

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Hunting Pressure

Our land-status read for this unit is approximate, so treat any pressure estimate from it with suspicion and check a current ownership layer.

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Weather

Season normals: Sep 80/50°F, 1.4 in.; Oct 66/37°F, 1.2 in.; Nov 53/26°F, 0.5 in..

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Cell Service

Verizon 26%, AT&T 17%, T-Mobile 9% of the unit area — modelled coverage, not measured. Assume no signal off the paved road.

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Nearest Town

Yuma (11 mi), Eckley (16 mi), Otis (19 mi)

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Frequently Asked Questions

Where is Colorado unit 101?

Unit 101 lies in Washington and Yuma counties, and CPW has it bounded on the north by U.S. 34; on the east by U.S. 385, Yuma CR 26, Colo. 59, Yuma CRs 16, C & 9 (becomes Washington CR 9 at Co. line) and Washington CRs 9, YY & 7; on the south by U.S. 36; on the west by Colo. 61. It covers about 684 square miles.

What is the mule deer success rate in unit 101?

CPW's 2023 harvest estimates put mule deer success in unit 101 at 35% across all manners of take, and archery 11% and rifle 39% by weapon. Those are the agency's own figures for this unit, not a statewide average.

Where do you stay and resupply for a unit 101 hunt?

The nearest services our logistics pipeline finds for unit 101 are at Yuma, about 11 miles from the unit's centre, with Eckley at about 16 miles. No developed campground falls inside the unit in our data, so plan on dispersed camping.

What is the pronghorn success rate in unit 101?

CPW publishes no pronghorn success figure we can tie to unit 101 on its own — the 2023 harvest tables either omit the unit or report it in a grouping we could not read back to it reliably. Rather than quote a statewide average as though it were measured here, we say so. Check CPW's current harvest estimates before you apply.

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Sources & Verification

Every fact on this page is tied to a primary source below. Last fact-checked 2026-10-23.

Colorado Big Game Hunting Brochure — Game Management Unit (GMU) Descriptions (pp. 79-80-81-82) — Colorado Parks and Wildlife · supports: GMU boundary description, Counties the unit lies in, Data analysis unit (DAU) the unit belongs to · accessed 2026-10-22
2023 Colorado Deer Harvest Estimates — Colorado Parks and Wildlife · supports: Percent success for mule deer in unit 101, Hunters and harvest by weapon and season · accessed 2026-10-22
CPW CPWAdminData feature service — GMU and sheep/goat unit boundaries — Colorado Parks and Wildlife GIS Unit · supports: Mapped extent of the unit, Which named ground falls inside the unit line · accessed 2026-10-22