Unit 20 (Red Table / Fryingpan)

CPW's own harvest estimates put mule deer success in unit 20 at archery 8% and rifle 47%. 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 Lily Mountain, Lion Head and The Crags

Take a position on one of Lily Mountain (9,732 ft), Lion Head (9,700 ft), The Crags (9,682 ft) and House Rock (9,613 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. 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 against feed

There are 1,748 mapped stream reaches and 1,312 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 73/42°F, Oct 60/31°F and Nov 47/23°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 1.6 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: CR 44H and CR 106

I 25 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.

A first plan from the pins on this page

The map above marks Mount Audubon, Sawtooth Mountain, Twin Sisters Mountain and Bulwark Ridge as places to see from, and Donner Pass, Long Draw, Foggy Park and Boedecker Reservoir SWA as ground to watch. Each pin is a named feature verified to fall inside the unit line, not a spot anyone has hunted. Walk between two of them rather than driving between four, and you will learn more in a day.

What a day here costs you

1,199 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 Estes Park, about 9 miles out, which is an hour of your morning each way if you sleep there. With 6,030 feet between the lowest and highest ground, the walk back up out of a kill site is the part to plan first. 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.

CPW draws an exact line around unit 20 and says nothing about where the Shiras moose 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 Larimer, Boulder and Weld counties. It runs to about 1,199 square miles.

The lines of the unit: Larimer CRs 44H (Buckhorn Rd.), Harmony Rd and Colo. 52

CPW has unit 20 bounded on the north by Larimer CRs 44H (Buckhorn Rd.), 27, 38E & 19 and Harmony Rd.; on the east by I-25; on the south by Colo. 52, U.S. 287, Boulder CR 34 (Niwot/Neva roads), U.S. 36, Boulder CRs 94, 81, 106, 95 (Lefthand Canyon Drive) & 102 (Brainard Lake Rd.) and ridge line from Brainard Lake W to Pawnee Peak; on the west by Continental Divide, RMNP boundary and Pennock Creek-Elk Creek divide. It tells you the shape of the unit and nothing about its inhabitants. 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: Storm Mountain, Pierson Mountain and Lily Mountain

Named high points inside the unit include Storm Mountain at 9,883 feet, Pierson Mountain at 9,775 feet, Lily Mountain at 9,732 feet, Lion Head at 9,700 feet and The Crags at 9,682 feet. Several carry a public-land flag in our data, which makes them the first places to try for a view. Moose want willow, water and shade, and they rarely leave the drainage that has all three.

Holding ground: Johnny Park, Lake Pasture and Buck Gulch

Below them sit Johnny Park at 8,074 feet, Lake Pasture at 8,072 feet, Buck Gulch at 8,012 feet, Piper Meadows at 7,975 feet and Gillman Gulch at 7,960 feet. These are the folds worth watching, and the ones other hunters walk past on the way to somewhere steeper. Pick the one with the least road on its upwind side.

Public ground to start from: Simpson Ponds SWA, Twin Sisters SWA and Big Thompson Ponds SWA

CPW lists Simpson Ponds SWA, Twin Sisters SWA, Big Thompson Ponds SWA, Boedecker Reservoir SWA and Eagle Canyon 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 48% of the unit on top of those.

Water: Timberline Falls, Ribbon Falls and Marguerite Falls

The water inside the unit line comes to 1,748 mapped stream reaches, 275 lakes, 1,312 stock tanks and 39 springs. Named sources include Timberline Falls, Ribbon Falls, Marguerite Falls, Bridal Veil Falls, Grace Falls and Thousand Falls. 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: M-7

CPW does not manage Shiras moose unit by unit. It manages them as data analysis unit M-7, and unit 20 is one piece of it. The rest of M-7 is unit 29 and unit 38. 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.

CPW's own harvest estimates put Shiras moose success in unit 20 at 83% across all manners of take. A number like that comes from few tags and a short season, not from easy hunting. The plan: walk the willow bottoms slowly at first and last light and look for fresh browse before you look for the animal.

Glassing from Rams Horn Mountain, Teddys Teeth and Burnt Mountain

Take a position on one of Rams Horn Mountain (9,537 ft), Teddys Teeth (9,514 ft), Burnt Mountain (9,343 ft) and Panorama Peak (9,276 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, late September bulls answer a cow call near water.

Water against feed

There are 1,748 mapped stream reaches and 1,312 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 73/42°F, Oct 60/31°F and Nov 47/23°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 1.6 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: CR 44H and CR 106

I 25 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 20 sits inside M-7

Across M-7, CPW's 2023 Shiras moose success runs 83% in unit 20, 83% in unit 38 and 75% in unit 29. Nothing in the herd beat unit 20 on that measure and one unit matched it, which on a hunt this small says more about tag numbers than about animals. Success inside one herd moves with tag numbers and season length as much as with animals, so read the licence count alongside it.

A first plan from the pins on this page

The map above marks Mount Audubon, Sawtooth Mountain, Twin Sisters Mountain and Bulwark Ridge as places to see from, and Donner Pass, Long Draw, Foggy Park and Boedecker Reservoir 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.

CPW publishes no black bear success figure for unit 20 that we can tie to this unit alone, so we won't quote one. The plan: find the berry crop first, then glass it morning and evening until something is in it.

Glassing from Kenny Mountain, Kruger Rock and Crosier Mountain

Take a position on one of Kenny Mountain (9,265 ft), Kruger Rock (9,259 ft), Crosier Mountain (9,235 ft) and The Ironclads (9,221 ft) and be on it before light. Cold air slides downhill in the dark, so keep your scent out of the bowl you mean to watch; expect the thermals to turn uphill an hour after the sun reaches the slope. Give a basin forty minutes before you decide it is empty. On the rut hunts, September hunts coincide with the feeding push before denning.

Water against feed

There are 1,748 mapped stream reaches and 1,312 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 73/42°F, Oct 60/31°F and Nov 47/23°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 1.6 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: CR 44H and CR 106

I 25 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.

A first plan from the pins on this page

The map above marks Mount Audubon, Sawtooth Mountain, Twin Sisters Mountain and Bulwark Ridge as places to see from, and Donner Pass, Long Draw, Foggy Park and Boedecker Reservoir SWA as ground to watch. Each pin is a named feature verified to fall inside the unit line, not a spot anyone has hunted. Walk between two of them rather than driving between four, and you will learn more in a day.

What a day here costs you

1,199 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 Estes Park, about 9 miles out, which is an hour of your morning each way if you sleep there. With 6,030 feet between the lowest and highest ground, the walk back up out of a kill site is the part to plan first. One good position held through the whole of first light beats three visited in a hurry.