Unit 126 (La Junta / Arkansas River Plains)

CPW draws an exact line around unit 126 and says nothing about where the mule deer stand inside it. So the ground below is the unit's own and the read on where to start is ours, labelled as such. The unit lies in Kiowa, Bent and Prowers counties.

The lines of the unit: Colo. 96, U.S. 287 and Arkansas River

CPW has unit 126 bounded on the north by Colo. 96; on the east by U.S. 287; on the south by Arkansas River; on the west by Kiowa CR 19 and Bent CR 14 to Bent CR HH, S on Bent CR 15 to Arkansas River. Read it as a frame, not as a hint about animals. Its value is practical — those are the features you will navigate by, and the ridges that separate one day's country from another's.

Holding ground: John Donlon Draw

Below them sit John Donlon Draw at 3,900 feet. Those are the basins, parks and bottoms this unit has, and they are what you glass into from above. Pick the one with the least road on its upwind side.

Public ground to start from: Karney Ranch SWA, Karney STL and Sweetwater STL

CPW lists Karney Ranch SWA, Karney STL, Sweetwater STL and Treetop 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: Kiow Spring, Verhoeff Spring and Government Spring

Named sources include Kiow Spring, Verhoeff Spring and Government Spring. 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-28

CPW does not manage mule deer unit by unit. It manages them as data analysis unit D-28, and unit 126 is one piece of it. The rest of D-28 is unit 122, unit 125, unit 127, unit 129, unit 130, unit 132, unit 139 and unit 145 and 1 more. 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.

CPW's own harvest estimates put mule deer success in unit 126 at archery 18% and rifle 51%. A number like that comes from few tags and a short season, not from easy hunting. The plan: glass the broken edges at first light, then sit still and keep glassing the same ground.

Finding a view in unit 126

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. Mule deer on open country use every fold and draw there is, and almost none of the flat. Cover ground slowly and stop more often than feels sensible.

Getting past the roads

There is little true four-wheel-drive road here, so distance from the gravel is the only thing separating you from the next hunter. 12 mapped public entry points fall inside the unit, so decide which one you take before the morning you take it.

Where unit 126 sits inside D-28

Across D-28, CPW's 2023 mule deer success runs 47% in unit 129, 43% in unit 126, 42% in unit 139, 40% in unit 130 and 40% in unit 145. That puts unit 126 behind 1 of the 8 other units in the herd. If the draw lets you choose, unit 129 carried the better number in the same herd — check its tag count before you read that as an easier hunt.

The way in: Colo. 96, U.S. 287 and Kiowa CR 19

We have no road inventory for this unit, so the only routes we can name are the ones CPW draws the boundary with: Colo. 96, U.S. 287, Kiowa CR 19, Bent CR 14 and Bent CR 15. Those are its edges, not its interior — useful because they are where you leave the pavement, and useless for telling you what the inside is like. Check each of them on a current motor-vehicle-use map before you count on it, because a line on a boundary description is not a promise of public access.

A first plan from the pins on this page

The map above marks John Donlon Draw, Karney Ranch SWA, Sweetwater STL and Treetop STL 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

675 square miles is more country than a week will cover, so pick one drainage and learn it rather than driving the unit. The ground is gentle enough that the pack-out is a distance problem rather than a climbing one. Decide the night before where you will be at first light, and go there in the dark.

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.