Unit 29 (Gore Range East)

What CPW publishes for unit 29 is a boundary, not a mule deer map. Every place named below sits inside the unit line. Which of them holds animals in your season is for you to find out. The unit lies in Boulder, Jefferson and Gilpin counties. It runs to about 442 square miles.

The lines of the unit: Boulder CRs 102 (Brainard Lake Rd.), U.S. 36 and Boulder CR 34 (Neva/Niwot roads)

CPW has unit 29 bounded on the north by ridge line from Pawnee Peak to Brainard Lake, Boulder CRs 102 (Brainard Lake Rd.), 94, 81, 106 & 95 (Lefthand Canyon Drive), U.S. 36, Boulder CR 34 (Neva/Niwot roads) and Colo. 52 (Mineral Rd.); on the east by I-25; on the south by Colo. 128, 93, 72, & 119 and USFS 149 (Rollins Pass Rd.); on the west by Continental Divide. 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: Niwot Ridge, Shoshoni Peak and Mount Neva

Named high points inside the unit include Niwot Ridge at 12,978 feet, Shoshoni Peak at 12,934 feet, Mount Neva at 12,780 feet, Mount Albion at 12,565 feet and Devils Thumb at 11,888 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: Tuscarora Gulch, Boiling Gulch and Pennsylvania Gulch

Below them sit Tuscarora Gulch at 8,224 feet, Boiling Gulch at 7,904 feet, Pennsylvania Gulch at 7,740 feet, Farewell Gulch at 7,735 feet and Routt Gulch at 7,723 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: Sawhill Ponds

CPW lists Sawhill Ponds 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 25% of the unit on top of those.

Water in this unit

The water inside the unit line comes to 892 mapped stream reaches, 117 lakes, 683 stock tanks and 3 springs. 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-27

CPW does not manage mule deer unit by unit. It manages them as data analysis unit D-27, and unit 29 is one piece of it. The rest of D-27 is unit 38. 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 29 at archery 21% and rifle 29%. 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 Woodland Mountain, Guinn Mountain and Arapaho Moraine

Take a position on one of Woodland Mountain (11,247 ft), Guinn Mountain (11,216 ft), Arapaho Moraine (10,941 ft) and Chittenden Mountain (10,846 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, late-season hunts put bucks with doe groups and moving in daylight.

Water against feed

There are 892 mapped stream reaches and 683 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. 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 76/46°F, Oct 63/35°F and Nov 52/27°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 2.1 in. in Sep, 1.6 in. in Oct and 1.1 in. in Nov, and the graded gravel in this unit turns greasy wet.

Getting past the roads: CO 72 and I 25

CO 72, I 25 and CO 128 are the paved frame, which is also where everyone else starts. FR 149 / CR 117 needs clearance, and that is usually where the boot tracks thin out. 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 29 sits inside D-27

Across D-27, CPW's 2023 mule deer success runs 27% in unit 29 and 20% in unit 38. Unit 29 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 Indian Peaks, Navajo Peak, Mount Neva and Devils Thumb as places to see from, and Pawnee Pass, Windy Gap, Mount Alto Park and Sawhill Ponds 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.