Unit 191

Colorado Hunting Guide — Elk

Unit 191 lies in Larimer County and covers about 299 square miles. Ground runs from 5,487 to 8,757 feet. CPW bounds it by U.S. 287 and Colo. 14 among others. CPW's harvest estimates put elk success here as high as 18%. Federal land covers about 32% of it. Check land status on a current map before you plan a route.

View Draw Odds Colorado Hunting Guide

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32%

Public Land

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5,487–8,174 ft

Sampled elevation

Build your own PDF hunt guide for Unit 191

Answer a few questions about your tag, your season and your rig, and the Field Intelligence Report builds a print-ready Colorado Unit 191 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.

Elk guide

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Elk Hunting in Unit 191

Where to Find Elk in Unit 191

What CPW publishes for unit 191 is a boundary, not a elk map. 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 Larimer County. It runs to about 299 square miles.

The lines of the unit: U.S. 287, Colo. 14 and CR 69 (Manhattan Rd.)

CPW has unit 191 bounded on the north by WY; on the east by U.S. 287; on the south by Colo. 14; on the west by CRs 69 (Manhattan Rd.), 74E (Red Feather Lakes Rd.), 67J (Red Prairie Divide Rd.), 80C (Cherokee Park Rd.) and 59. Read it as a frame, not as a hint about animals. Those features are what you will check against the map all week, and the divides among them are the ones that matter.

High ground inside the line: Soule Hill, Lonetree Mountain and Bull Rock

Named high points inside the unit include Soule Hill at 8,757 feet, Lonetree Mountain at 8,356 feet, Bull Rock at 8,093 feet, Bald Mountain at 8,008 feet and Manhead Mountain at 7,961 feet. Several carry a public-land flag in our data, which makes them the first places to try for a view. Elk on low, open country live on distance and visibility, so they see you first.

Holding ground: Teakettle Canyon, Dadd Gulch and Hole Canyon

Below them sit Teakettle Canyon at 7,201 feet, Dadd Gulch at 7,041 feet, Hole Canyon at 7,007 feet, Georges Gulch at 6,779 feet and Greyrock Meadow at 6,708 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: Cherokee SWA, Cherokee SWA - Lone Pine Unit and Cherokee SWA - Lower Unit

CPW lists Cherokee SWA, Cherokee SWA - Lone Pine Unit, Cherokee SWA - Lower Unit, Cherokee SWA - Middle Unit and Cherokee SWA - Roy Brown Unit 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 32% of the unit on top of those.

Water in this unit

The water inside the unit line comes to 236 mapped stream reaches, 14 lakes and 123 stock tanks. 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: E-4

CPW does not manage elk unit by unit. It manages them as data analysis unit E-4, and unit 191 is one piece of it. The rest of E-4 is unit 7, unit 8, unit 9 and unit 19. 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.

Unit 191 terrain and land status

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

The lay of it

5,487–8,174 ft on a terrain sample , averaging 6,894 ft ; peaks can run higher.
298.9 sq mi inside the boundary.

Who owns the ground

National Forest — 60%
BLM — 15%
State Trust — 8%
Private / Other — 17%

Roughly 83% is public. Carry a land-status layer anyway — these are area percentages, not a map of where the boundaries fall.

Water on the ground

123 tanks
236 stream segments
14 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: Lonetree Mountain (8,356 ft), Manhead Mountain (7,961 ft), Sheep Mountain (7,934 ft), Mount Margaret (7,932 ft)

Holding ground: Wintersteen Park (8,562 ft), Prairie Divide (7,927 ft), Stuart Hole (7,682 ft), Cherokee SWA, Cherokee SWA - Lone Pine Unit

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 Elk in Unit 191

CPW's own harvest estimates put elk success in unit 191 at archery 9%, muzzleloader 18% and rifle 11%. A number that low means most hunters here go home empty, and the ones who don't put the days in first. The plan: find the feed, find the timber it backs onto, then watch the seam between them at the edges of the day.

Glassing from Haystack Butte, Home Rock and Turkey Roost

Take a position on one of Haystack Butte (7,841 ft), Home Rock (7,719 ft), Turkey Roost (7,713 ft) and Mount Moriah (7,632 ft) and be on it before light. Work the morning with the air falling away from you, then accept that by mid-morning the wind has reversed and the plan has to change with it. Glass the edges first, then the shaded timber, then the edges again as the light goes. On the rut hunts, September bugling works where you can get above a drainage and let the thermals carry sound downhill.

Water against feed

There are 236 mapped stream reaches and 123 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 70/42°F, Oct 57/32°F and Nov 46/24°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 1.8 in. in Sep, 1.2 in. in Oct and 0.8 in. in Nov, and the graded gravel in this unit turns greasy wet.

Getting past the roads: US 287 and CO 14

US 287 and CO 14 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 191 sits inside E-4

Across E-4, CPW's 2023 elk success runs 31% in unit 9, 11% in unit 191, 10% in unit 8, 10% in unit 19 and 9% in unit 7. That puts unit 191 behind 1 of the 4 other units in the herd. If the draw lets you choose, unit 9 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 Lonetree Mountain, Manhead Mountain, Sheep Mountain and Mount Margaret as places to see from, and Wintersteen Park, Prairie Divide, Stuart Hole and Cherokee SWA 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 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.

Getting in and staying out: unit 191

Named routes and what they need

US 287 — 19.4 mi · Paved (all rigs)
CO 14 — 17.8 mi · Paved (all rigs)
CR 67J — 7.4 mi · Graded gravel (2WD / small trailer)
CR 80C — 6 mi · Graded gravel (2WD / small trailer)
CR 68C — 4.5 mi · Graded gravel (2WD / small trailer)
Bonner Springs Ranch Road — 4.4 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

Red Feather Lakes — 10.9 mi · no services listed
Rustic — 13 mi · no services listed
Laporte — 18.1 mi · no services listed
Wellington — 20.9 mi · fuel, groceries
Fort Collins — 22.3 mi · fuel, groceries, gear

Developed camps

Season weather and signal

Jan39° / 17° · 0.5" precip
Aug78° / 50° · 1.8" precip
Sep70° / 42° · 1.8" precip
Oct57° / 32° · 1.2" precip
Nov46° / 24° · 0.8" precip
Dec38° / 17° · 0.6" precip

Best signal is Verizon at about 21% 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.

Elk: 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. That is lungs, and on a quartering-away angle it picks up the far shoulder.

Shots to refuse

No straight-on and no straight-away shots. An elk's chest is deep and the margin is small.
Nothing standing behind or overlapping the animal you picked. A pass-through kills the elk behind it too.
Your maximum range is the farthest you have put three shots in a paper plate off the sticks you are actually carrying. Not the farthest you have ever hit anything.
Scope on 3–4x. A herd fills a 12x field of view and you lose the animal you picked.

Identification:On an antlerless tag, legal means no antler of any kind through the skin. A spike looks exactly like a cow until it turns its head. If you can't see the head, don't shoot.

Plan the carry: roughly 150– 220 lb of boned-out meat, before head and hide — two to four large coolers, plus bagged ice from town. ProHunt planning estimate, not an agency figure.

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Elk Success Rates

All manners of take11%

Archery9%

Muzzleloader18%

Rifle11%

CPW's 2023 harvest estimates put elk success in unit 191 at 11% — 66 animals taken by 601 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 — 9% success, 8 taken by 83 hunters
Muzzleloader — 18% success, 4 taken by 22 hunters
Rifle — 11% success, 55 taken by 496 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.

Elk Draw Odds

Season	Tags	Applicants	Draw %	Pts Req
Rifle — 1st Season cow only (resident)	36	75	48.0%	—
Rifle — 1st Season cow only (nonresident)	1	1	100.0%	—
Rifle — 2nd Season cow only (resident)	37	107	34.6%	—
Rifle — 2nd Season cow only (nonresident)	2	6	33.3%	—
Rifle — 5th Season cow only (resident)	56	88	63.6%	—
Rifle — 5th Season cow only (nonresident)	2	3	66.7%	—
Rifle — 1st Season bull only (resident)	30	92	32.6%	—
Rifle — 1st Season bull only (nonresident)	14	29	48.3%	—
Rifle — 2nd Season bull only (resident)	53	114	46.5%	—
Rifle — 2nd Season bull only (nonresident)	11	14	78.6%	—
Rifle — 3rd Season cow only (resident)	22	79	27.8%	—
Rifle — 3rd Season cow only (nonresident)	4	6	66.7%	—
Rifle — 4th Season cow only (resident)	11	57	19.3%	—
Rifle — 4th Season cow only (nonresident)	0	0	0.0%	—
Rifle — 3rd Season bull only (resident)	46	101	45.5%	—
Rifle — 3rd Season bull only (nonresident)	10	13	76.9%	—
Rifle — 4th Season bull only (resident)	31	87	35.6%	—
Rifle — 4th Season bull only (nonresident)	6	6	100.0%	—

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 elk in unit 191, by hunt code, with resident and nonresident kept apart because the two draw from different licence pools:

EM191O2R — Rifle, 2nd Season, Bull Only, resident: 114 applicants for 53 licences, 46.5% drawn, no preference points needed
EF191O2R — Rifle, 2nd Season, Cow Only, resident: 107 applicants for 37 licences, 34.6% drawn, no preference points needed
EM191O3R — Rifle, 3rd Season, Bull Only, resident: 101 applicants for 46 licences, 45.5% drawn, no preference points needed
EM191O1R — Rifle, 1st Season, Bull Only, resident: 92 applicants for 30 licences, 32.6% drawn, no preference points needed

No preference points were needed for the codes above in that year, which can change the moment applicant numbers do. There are 13 further code-and-residency combinations in the recap for this unit. Figures checked against CPW's own statistics pages on 2026-06-09.

Unit Logistics & Expectations

Planning Notes

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Camp Sites

36 developed campgrounds in or beside the unit, including 3, 4 and 5.

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Road Conditions

US 287, CO 14 and CR 67J are the named routes in the unit. Roughly 42 mi paved, 36 mi gravel and 4 mi four-wheel-drive.

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Terrain Difficulty

5,487–8,174 ft, averaging 6,894. Enough relief to separate summer from winter range.

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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 70/42°F, 1.8 in.; Oct 57/32°F, 1.2 in.; Nov 46/24°F, 0.8 in..

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Cell Service

Verizon 21%, AT&T 14%, T-Mobile 7% of the unit area — modelled coverage, not measured. Assume no signal off the paved road.

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Nearest Town

Red Feather Lakes (11 mi), Rustic (13 mi), Laporte (18 mi)

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Frequently Asked Questions

Where is Colorado unit 191?

Unit 191 lies in Larimer County, and CPW has it bounded on the north by WY; on the east by U.S. 287; on the south by Colo. 14; on the west by CRs 69 (Manhattan Rd.), 74E (Red Feather Lakes Rd.), 67J (Red Prairie Divide Rd.), 80C (Cherokee Park Rd.) and 59. It covers about 299 square miles.

What is the elk success rate in unit 191?

CPW's 2023 harvest estimates put elk success in unit 191 at 11% across all manners of take, and archery 9%, muzzleloader 18% and rifle 11% 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 191 hunt?

The nearest services our logistics pipeline finds for unit 191 are at Red Feather Lakes, about 11 miles from the unit's centre, with Rustic at about 13 miles. There are also 36 developed campgrounds in or beside the unit.

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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 Elk Harvest Estimates — Colorado Parks and Wildlife · supports: Percent success for elk in unit 191, 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