Unit 23 (Piceance Basin / Douglas Creek)

CPW draws an exact line around unit 23 and says nothing about where the mule deer stand inside it. The country below is verified; where to begin in it is our judgement, not the agency's. The unit lies in Rio Blanco and Garfield counties. It runs to about 422 square miles.

The lines of the unit: Rio Blanco CRs 30, USFS 250 and Rio Blanco CRs 8

CPW has unit 23 bounded on the north by Rio Blanco CRs 30, 15 & 48 and USFS 250; on the east by USFS 250, Rio Blanco CRs 8 & 17 and USFS Primary Forest Rd. 245 (Buford-Newcastle Rd.); on the south by White River-Colorado River divide; on the west by Colo. 13. That is a legal description, not a habitat map. Its value is practical — those are the features you will navigate by, and the ridges that separate one day's country from another's.

High ground inside the line: Sawmill Mountain, Wells Ridge and Uranium Peak

Named high points inside the unit include Sawmill Mountain at 9,459 feet, Wells Ridge at 9,364 feet, Uranium Peak at 9,338 feet, Red Elephant Point at 9,267 feet and Middle Mountain at 9,214 feet. Several carry a public-land flag in our data, which makes them the first places to try for a view. Mule deer bed on broken ground with a view and feed on the brush below it.

Holding ground: Buckskin Gulch, Wear Park and Stove Gulch

Below them sit Buckskin Gulch at 8,342 feet, Wear Park at 8,323 feet, Stove Gulch at 8,202 feet, Big Beaver Basin at 8,076 feet and Bear Gulch at 7,858 feet. That is the low country of the unit — the ground animals drop into when they are pushed or when the weather turns. Pick the one with the least road on its upwind side.

Public ground to start from: Coal Creek Ranch SWA, Collins Mountain Ranch SWA (Limited Access Easement) and Meeker Pasture SWA

CPW lists Coal Creek Ranch SWA, Collins Mountain Ranch SWA (Limited Access Easement), Meeker Pasture SWA, Oak Ridge SWA and Oak Ridge SWA - Bel Aire 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 39% of the unit on top of those.

Water in this unit

The water inside the unit line comes to 37 mapped stream reaches, 9 lakes and 308 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: D-7

CPW does not manage mule deer unit by unit. It manages them as data analysis unit D-7, and unit 23 is one piece of it. The rest of D-7 is unit 11, unit 12, unit 13, unit 22, unit 24, unit 131, unit 211 and unit 231. 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 23 at archery 9% and rifle 37%. 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 Middle Mountain, LO 7 Hill and Oak Ridge

Take a position on one of Middle Mountain (9,140 ft), LO 7 Hill (8,534 ft), Oak Ridge (8,392 ft) and Rattlesnake Mesa (7,068 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 308 tanks and only 37 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 76/40°F, Oct 62/28°F and Nov 48/19°F. By Nov the lows are around 19°F, and the first hard storm after that moves animals off the high ground — a late tag is a bet on that storm arriving. Precipitation runs about 1.7 in. in Sep, 1.7 in. in Oct and 1.2 in. in Nov, and the graded gravel in this unit turns greasy wet.

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. One mapped public entry point falls inside the unit, so decide which one you take before the morning you take it.

Where unit 23 sits inside D-7

Across D-7, CPW's 2023 mule deer success runs 67% in unit 22, 51% in unit 211, 47% in unit 13, 44% in unit 11 and 30% in unit 12. That puts unit 23 behind 5 of the 7 other units in the herd. If the draw lets you choose, unit 22 carried the better number in the same herd — check its tag count before you read that as an easier hunt.

The way in: Blanco CRs 30, USFS 250 and Blanco CRs 8

We have no road inventory for this unit, so the only routes we can name are the ones CPW draws the boundary with: Blanco CRs 30, USFS 250, Blanco CRs 8 and Colo. 13. 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 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.