Unit 138

CPW's material on unit 138 stops at the boundary — there is no agency account of where its mule deer live. 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 Baca County.

The lines of the unit: Baca-Bent, Baca-Prowers Co. lines and U.S. 287

CPW has unit 138 bounded on the north by Baca-Bent & Baca-Prowers Co. lines; on the east by U.S. 287; on the south by U.S. 160; on the west by Pritchett-Las Animas improved Rd. 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.

The herd this unit belongs to: D-33

CPW does not manage mule deer unit by unit. It manages them as data analysis unit D-33, and unit 138 is one piece of it. The rest of D-33 is unit 137, unit 143 and unit 144. Read a neighbour in the same herd before you read the state average — the herd, not the unit line, is what the agency is steering.

What is published about unit 138, and what is not

Almost nothing in the public datasets falls inside this unit: no named summit, no named basin, no mapped water, no agency access property. That is the finding, and on public ground it is less of a problem than it looks: unnamed country is still country, and it carries no other hunters following the same name to the same knob. What the unit does have is size, and the mule deer living on it are there whether or not anyone has mapped a name onto the ground. Mule deer on open country use every fold and draw there is, and almost none of the flat.

CPW's own harvest estimates put mule deer success in unit 138 at rifle 38%. 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.

Finding a view in unit 138

No named high ground falls inside this unit, which changes the method rather than ruling it out. Height comes from the vehicle or from a bank above a watercourse, and either is enough at first light. 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.

Where unit 138 sits inside D-33

Across D-33, CPW's 2023 mule deer success runs 56% in unit 137, 47% in unit 144, 36% in unit 138 and 34% in unit 143. That puts unit 138 behind 2 of the 3 other units in the herd. If the draw lets you choose, unit 137 carried the better number in the same herd — check its tag count before you read that as an easier hunt.

The way in: U.S. 287 and U.S. 160

We have no road inventory for this unit, so the only routes we can name are the ones CPW draws the boundary with: U.S. 287 and U.S. 160. 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.

What a day here costs you

312 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. One good position held through the whole of first light beats three visited in a hurry.

What we can't tell you

We have no verified map pins for this unit yet — a gap on our side, not a statement about the unit.