Unit 201 (Maybell)

CPW's own harvest estimates put mule deer success in unit 201 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: glass the broken edges at first light, then sit still and keep glassing the same ground.

Glassing from Buck Knoll, Bishop Peak and O-Wi-Yu-Kuts Mountains

Take a position on one of Buck Knoll (9,001 ft), Bishop Peak (8,822 ft), O-Wi-Yu-Kuts Mountains (8,820 ft) and Limestone Ridge (8,629 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. A tripod is worth more here than another hour of walking. On the rut hunts, late-season hunts put bucks with doe groups and moving in daylight.

Water decides where you sit

With 93 tanks and only 12 mapped stream reaches, this is ground where standing water is made rather than found. Find the two or three holding water near a glassing position and you have found the only appointment the animals keep. A tank with no tracks is a tank with no reason to sit on it.

Timing the season: Sep, Oct, Nov

Season normals here run Sep 78/43°F, Oct 64/33°F and Nov 49/22°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 1.3 in. in Sep, 1.3 in. in Oct and 0.5 in. in Nov, and the graded gravel in this unit turns greasy wet.

Getting past the roads: CO 318 and CR 10N

CO 318 is 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 201 sits inside D-1

Across D-1, CPW's 2023 mule deer success runs 83% in unit 201 and 57% in unit 2. Unit 201 is the best of them on that measure, which usually means fewer tags rather than more 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 Diamond Peak, Middle Mountain, Kleins Hill and O-Wi-Yu-Kuts Mountains as places to see from, and Elk Meadow, O-Wi-Yu-Kuts Flats, My Valley and Browns Park 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

240 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 Browns Park, about 15 miles out, which is an hour of your morning each way if you sleep there. With 3,813 feet between the lowest and highest ground, the walk back up out of a kill site is the part to plan first. Leave the truck earlier than you want to and you will hunt the best half-hour of the day.

CPW's own harvest estimates put pronghorn success in unit 201 at 76% 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 Cold Spring Mountain, Peekaboo Ridge and Diamond Peak

Take a position on one of Cold Spring Mountain (8,591 ft), Peekaboo Ridge (7,710 ft), Diamond Peak (9,661 ft) and Middle Mountain (9,540 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, early-season bucks hold does and can be decoyed where the law allows it.

Water decides where you sit

With 93 tanks and only 12 mapped stream reaches, this is ground where standing water is made rather than found. Find the two or three holding water near a glassing position and you have found the only appointment the animals keep. 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 78/43°F, Oct 64/33°F and Nov 49/22°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 1.3 in. in Sep, 1.3 in. in Oct and 0.5 in. in Nov, and the graded gravel in this unit turns greasy wet.

Getting past the roads: CO 318 and CR 10N

CO 318 is 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 201 sits inside A-11

Across A-11, CPW's 2023 pronghorn success runs 100% in unit 1, 76% in unit 201 and 61% in unit 2. That puts unit 201 behind 1 of the 2 other units in the herd. If the draw lets you choose, unit 1 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 Diamond Peak, Middle Mountain, Kleins Hill and O-Wi-Yu-Kuts Mountains as places to see from, and Elk Meadow, O-Wi-Yu-Kuts Flats, My Valley and Browns Park 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 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 201 and says nothing about where the black bear 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 Moffat County. It runs to about 240 square miles.

The lines of the unit: CR 10N (Irish Canyon Rd.), Colo. 318 and CR 10

CPW has unit 201 bounded on the north by WY; on the east by CR 10N (Irish Canyon Rd.), Colo. 318 and CR 10; on the south by CR 34 and Green River; on the west by UT. It tells you the shape of the unit and nothing about its inhabitants. 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.

High ground inside the line: Limestone Ridge, Cold Spring Mountain and Peekaboo Ridge

Named high points inside the unit include Limestone Ridge at 8,629 feet, Cold Spring Mountain at 8,591 feet, Peekaboo Ridge at 7,710 feet, Diamond Peak at 9,661 feet and Middle Mountain at 9,540 feet. Several carry a public-land flag in our data, which makes them the first places to try for a view. Bears follow food, which in early autumn means oakbrush, chokecherry and serviceberry on south slopes.

Holding ground: Antone Canyon, Green Canyon and Little Joe Basin

Below them sit Antone Canyon at 6,838 feet, Green Canyon at 6,536 feet, Little Joe Basin at 6,273 feet, Irish Canyon at 6,100 feet and Bull Canyon at 5,682 feet. That is the low country of the unit — the ground animals drop into when they are pushed or when the weather turns. Two you can watch from a single knob is worth more than five you have to drive between.

Public ground to start from: Browns Park SWA - Cold Springs Mountain Unit, Browns Park SWA - Wiggins Unit and Cold Springs Mountain STL

CPW lists Browns Park SWA - Cold Springs Mountain Unit, Browns Park SWA - Wiggins Unit, Cold Springs Mountain STL, Browns Park SWA and Browns Park SWA - Beaver Creek 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 72% of the unit on top of those.

Water: Honeymoon Spring, O-Wi-Yu-Kuts Spring and Summit Spring

The water inside the unit line comes to 12 mapped stream reaches, 4 lakes and 93 stock tanks. Named sources include Honeymoon Spring, O-Wi-Yu-Kuts Spring, Summit Spring, Bobs Spring, Antelope Spring and Willow Springs. Nothing in the data says which of them run in autumn, so a scouting trip earns its fuel.

The herd this unit belongs to: B-15

CPW does not manage black bear unit by unit. It manages them as data analysis unit B-15, and unit 201 is one piece of it. The rest of B-15 is unit 1, unit 2, unit 3, unit 10, unit 11, unit 211 and unit 301. 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 publishes no black bear success figure for unit 201 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 Kleins Hill, Buck Knoll and Bishop Peak

Take a position on one of Kleins Hill (9,046 ft), Buck Knoll (9,001 ft), Bishop Peak (8,822 ft) and O-Wi-Yu-Kuts Mountains (8,820 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. A tripod is worth more here than another hour of walking. On the rut hunts, September hunts coincide with the feeding push before denning.

Water decides where you sit

With 93 tanks and only 12 mapped stream reaches, this is ground where standing water is made rather than found. Find the two or three holding water near a glassing position and you have found the only appointment the animals keep. Check the ground around it before you commit an evening to it.

Timing the season: Sep, Oct, Nov

Season normals here run Sep 78/43°F, Oct 64/33°F and Nov 49/22°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 1.3 in. in Sep, 1.3 in. in Oct and 0.5 in. in Nov, and the graded gravel in this unit turns greasy wet.

Getting past the roads: CO 318 and CR 10N

CO 318 is 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.

A first plan from the pins on this page

The map above marks Diamond Peak, Middle Mountain, Kleins Hill and O-Wi-Yu-Kuts Mountains as places to see from, and Elk Meadow, O-Wi-Yu-Kuts Flats, My Valley and Browns Park 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

240 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 Browns Park, about 15 miles out, which is an hour of your morning each way if you sleep there. With 3,813 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. We have no black bear success figure for this unit that survives checking against CPW's own harvest and hunter counts, and we would rather say so than print a statewide average as though it were measured here.