Unit 106 (Lincoln / Elbert Plains)

What CPW publishes for unit 106 is a boundary, not a pronghorn map. 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 Arapahoe, Elbert, Washington and Lincoln counties. It runs to about 598 square miles.

The lines of the unit: U.S. 36 and Colo. 71

CPW has unit 106 bounded on the north by U.S. 36; on the east by Colo. 71; on the south and west by I-70. It tells you the shape of the unit and nothing about its inhabitants. Its value is practical — those are the features you will navigate by, and the ridges that separate one day's country from another's.

High ground inside the line: Cedar Point, Cheyenne Lookout and Flat Top

Named high points inside the unit include Cedar Point at 5,990 feet, Cheyenne Lookout at 5,759 feet and Flat Top at 5,402 feet. Several carry a public-land flag in our data, which makes them the first places to try for a view. Pronghorn live in the open and trust their eyes, which is the whole problem.

Holding ground: T Draw, Devil Canyon and Bouldin Gulch

Below them sit T Draw at 5,342 feet, Devil Canyon at 5,256 feet, Bouldin Gulch at 5,001 feet, Cottonwood Valley at 4,773 feet and Bobcat Canyon at 4,757 feet. Those are the basins, parks and bottoms this unit has, and they are what you glass into from above. Reaching the edge of one before light beats reaching its middle at noon.

Water: Barking Dog Spring and Picnic Springs

The water inside the unit line comes to 135 mapped stream reaches, 3 lakes and 146 stock tanks. Named sources include Barking Dog Spring and Picnic Springs. On ground with that many tanks, knowing which two or three hold water in your season is the most useful thing a scouting trip can tell you.

The herd this unit belongs to: A-19

CPW does not manage pronghorn unit by unit. It manages them as data analysis unit A-19, and unit 106 is one piece of it. The rest of A-19 is unit 103, unit 107 and unit 109. So the objective behind your tag was written for that whole area, and a neighbouring unit in the same herd is a fairer comparison than the statewide figure.

Reading the land status

Our ownership read for this unit is approximate — it comes out as Private / Other 100%, 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 4,773 to 5,721 feet, and named ground inside the line runs 4,757 to 5,990 feet — take 4,773 to 5,990 as the spread, because the sample is a grid and walks past summits. With 1,217 feet between the two ends, 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 106 at 60% 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.

Glassing from Cedar Point, Cheyenne Lookout and Flat Top

Take a position on one of Cedar Point (5,990 ft), Cheyenne Lookout (5,759 ft) and Flat Top (5,402 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, early-season bucks hold does and can be decoyed where the law allows it.

Water against feed

There are 135 mapped stream reaches and 146 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. Check the ground around it before you commit an evening to it.

Timing the season: Sep, Oct, Nov

Season normals here run Sep 79/47°F, Oct 66/34°F and Nov 53/23°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 1.1 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: I 70 and US 36

I 70, 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.

Where unit 106 sits inside A-19

Across A-19, CPW's 2023 pronghorn success runs 62% in unit 107, 60% in unit 106 and 51% in unit 109. That puts unit 106 behind 1 of the 2 other units in the herd. If the draw lets you choose, unit 107 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 Flat Top, Cedar Point and Cheyenne Lookout as places to see from, and T Draw, Devil Canyon, Barking Dog Spring and Picnic Springs 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 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.