Colorado Mule Deer Elk Moose

Unit 44 (Monarch Pass / Poncha)

Colorado Hunting Guide — Mule Deer, Elk, Moose

Unit 44 lies in Eagle County and covers about 377 square miles. Ground runs from 6,272 to 13,373 feet. CPW bounds it by Colorado River and Eagle River among others. CPW's harvest estimates put mule deer success here as high as 63%. Federal land covers about 80% of it. Check land status on a current map before you plan a route.

View Draw Odds Colorado Hunting Guide

🏔️

80%

Public Land

⛰️

6,272–11,402 ft

Sampled elevation

Build your own PDF hunt guide for Unit 44

Answer a few questions about your tag, your season and your rig, and the Field Intelligence Report builds a print-ready Colorado Unit 44 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.

Mule Deer guide Elk guide Moose guide

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Mule Deer Hunting in Unit 44

Where to Find Mule Deer in Unit 44

What CPW publishes for unit 44 is a boundary, not a mule deer 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 Eagle County. It runs to about 377 square miles.

The lines of the unit: Colorado River, Eagle River and East Lake Creek

CPW has unit 44 bounded on the north by Colorado River and Eagle River; on the east by East Lake Creek; on the south by Fryingpan River-Eagle River divide; on the west by USFS 514 (Red Table Mountain Rd.), CR 10A (Cottonwood Pass Rd.) and Cottonwood Creek. 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: Gold Dust Peak, Eagle Peak and Fools Peak

Named high points inside the unit include Gold Dust Peak at 13,373 feet, Eagle Peak at 13,012 feet, Fools Peak at 12,925 feet, New York Mountain at 12,514 feet and Craig Peak at 11,879 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: White Quail Gulch, Bull Park and Triangle Park

Below them sit White Quail Gulch at 9,984 feet, Bull Park at 9,829 feet, Triangle Park at 9,788 feet, Willow Park at 9,760 feet and Bowman Gulch at 9,599 feet. These are the folds worth watching, and the ones other hunters walk past on the way to somewhere steeper. Work out which of them you can see from one position before you pick a camp.

Public ground to start from: Brush Creek SWA and Old Man's Gulch STL

CPW lists Brush Creek SWA and Old Man's Gulch 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 80% of the unit on top of those.

Water: Caliente Spring, Fulford Cave Spring and Stag Gulch Spring

The water inside the unit line comes to 8,148 mapped stream reaches, 26 lakes and 470 stock tanks. Named sources include Caliente Spring, Fulford Cave Spring, Stag Gulch Spring, Lettuce Patch Springs, Bear Cat Spring and Happy Jack Spring. 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-14

CPW does not manage mule deer unit by unit. It manages them as data analysis unit D-14, and unit 44 is one piece of it. CPW puts no other unit in D-14, so this unit carries the herd on its own. 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 44 terrain and land status

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

The lay of it

6,272–11,402 ft on a terrain sample , averaging 8,761 ft ; peaks can run higher. That spread means you can hunt two seasons in one day — plan clothing for both ends.
376.6 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

470 tanks
8,148 stream segments
26 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: Gold Dust Peak (13,373 ft), Eagle Peak (13,012 ft), New York Mountain (12,514 ft), Sugarloaf (11,189 ft)

Holding ground: Negro Basin (11,659 ft), Dubach Meadows (10,083 ft), Timber Basin (10,055 ft), Brush Creek SWA, Old Man's Gulch STL

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 Mule Deer in Unit 44

CPW's own harvest estimates put mule deer success in unit 44 at archery 39% and rifle 63%. 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 Mount Eve, Porphyry Mountain and Erickson Ridge

Take a position on one of Mount Eve (11,147 ft), Porphyry Mountain (10,856 ft), Erickson Ridge (9,973 ft) and Suicide Mountain (9,835 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. Give a basin forty minutes before you decide it is empty. On the rut hunts, late-season hunts put bucks with doe groups and moving in daylight.

Water against feed

There are 8,148 mapped stream reaches and 470 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 73/42°F, Oct 60/31°F and Nov 44/21°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 1.9 in. in Sep, 1.7 in. in Oct and 1.6 in. in Nov, and the graded gravel in this unit turns greasy wet.

Getting past the roads: Red Table Mountain Road and FR 416.1

FR 416.1 and FR 431.1 need 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. One mapped public entry point falls 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 Gold Dust Peak, Eagle Peak, New York Mountain and Sugarloaf as places to see from, and Negro Basin, Dubach Meadows, Timber Basin and Brush Creek SWA as ground to watch. Each pin is a named feature verified to fall inside the unit line, not a spot anyone has hunted. Join two of them into a morning: be on the first before light, move to the second once the thermals turn.

What a day here costs you

377 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 Eagle, about 7 miles out, which is an hour of your morning each way if you sleep there. With 5,130 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.

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 44

Named routes and what they need

Red Table Mountain Road — 7.6 mi · Graded gravel (2WD / small trailer)
FR 416.1 — 7.5 mi · High-clearance
CR 10A — 5.3 mi · Graded gravel (2WD / small trailer)
FR 431.1 — 4.6 mi · High-clearance
1909 — 3.5 mi · Graded gravel (2WD / small trailer)
BLM 8356 — 2 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

Eagle — 7 mi · fuel, groceries
Gypsum — 10.3 mi · fuel, groceries
Edwards — 12.5 mi · groceries, gear
Dotsero — 15.3 mi · no services listed
Avon — 15.7 mi · fuel, groceries, lodging, gear

Developed camps

Unnamed camp site
Unnamed camp site
Unnamed camp site
Unnamed camp site
Unnamed camp site

Season weather and signal

Jan33° / 10° · 1.6" precip
Aug80° / 49° · 1.6" precip
Sep73° / 42° · 1.9" precip
Oct60° / 31° · 1.7" precip
Nov44° / 21° · 1.6" precip
Dec33° / 11° · 1.3" precip

Best signal is Verizon at about 15% 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.

Mule Deer: 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.

Shots to refuse

Nothing behind or overlapping the animal you picked.
Your maximum range is the farthest you have shot a three-shot group into a paper plate from the rest you are carrying.
Pass the shot you are talking yourself into.

Plan the carry: roughly 40– 120 lb of boned-out meat, before head and hide — two large coolers. ProHunt planning estimate, not an agency figure.

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Mule Deer Success Rates

All manners of take52%

Archery39%

Rifle63%

CPW's 2023 harvest estimates put mule deer success in unit 44 at 52% — 136 animals taken by 262 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 — 39% success, 21 taken by 53 hunters
Rifle — 63% success, 96 taken by 153 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.

Mule Deer Draw Odds

Season	Tags	Applicants	Draw %	Pts Req
Archery — 1st Season either sex (resident)	45	267	16.9%	1
Archery — 1st Season either sex (nonresident)	17	148	11.5%	3
Rifle — 2nd Season either sex (resident)	5	26	19.2%	—
Rifle — 2nd Season either sex (nonresident)	3	10	30.0%	—
Rifle — 3rd Season either sex (resident)	5	22	22.7%	1
Rifle — 3rd Season either sex (nonresident)	3	13	23.1%	1
Rifle — 2nd Season doe only (resident)	26	198	13.1%	—
Rifle — 2nd Season doe only (nonresident)	1	17	5.9%	—
Rifle — 3rd Season doe only (resident)	10	154	6.5%	—
Rifle — 3rd Season doe only (nonresident)	1	9	11.1%	2
Rifle — 1st Season buck only (resident)	12	128	9.4%	7
Rifle — 1st Season buck only (nonresident)	3	42	7.1%	11
Rifle — 2nd Season buck only (resident)	40	432	9.3%	6
Rifle — 2nd Season buck only (nonresident)	13	247	5.3%	20
Rifle — 3rd Season buck only (resident)	12	456	2.6%	23
Rifle — 3rd Season buck only (nonresident)	3	658	0.5%	30
Rifle — 4th Season buck only (resident)	13	575	2.3%	27
Rifle — 4th Season buck only (nonresident)	3	622	0.5%	29
Muzzleloader — 1st Season doe only (resident)	16	66	24.2%	—
Muzzleloader — 1st Season doe only (nonresident)	0	7	0.0%	—
Muzzleloader — 1st Season buck only (resident)	42	91	46.2%	1
Muzzleloader — 1st Season buck only (nonresident)	13	72	18.1%	4

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 mule deer in unit 44, by hunt code, with resident and nonresident kept apart because the two draw from different licence pools:

DM044O3R — Rifle, 3rd Season, Buck Only, nonresident: 658 applicants for 3 licences, 0.5% drawn, 30 preference points needed
DM044O4R — Rifle, 4th Season, Buck Only, nonresident: 622 applicants for 3 licences, 0.5% drawn, 29 preference points needed
DM044O4R — Rifle, 4th Season, Buck Only, resident: 575 applicants for 13 licences, 2.3% drawn, 27 preference points needed
DM044O3R — Rifle, 3rd Season, Buck Only, resident: 456 applicants for 12 licences, 2.6% drawn, 23 preference points needed

Colorado runs a pure preference-point draw, so the point figure above is the requirement the agency published for that code in that year, not a forecast for the next one. There are 18 further code-and-residency combinations in the recap for this unit. Figures checked against CPW's own statistics pages on 2026-06-09.

Elk Hunting in Unit 44

Unit 44 lies in Eagle County and covers about 377 square miles. Ground runs from 6,272 to 13,373 feet. CPW bounds it by Colorado River and Eagle River among others. CPW's harvest estimates put elk success here as high as 24%. Federal land covers about 80% of it. Check land status on a current map before you plan a route.

Where to Find Elk in Unit 44

What CPW publishes for unit 44 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 Eagle County. It runs to about 377 square miles.

The lines of the unit: Colorado River, Eagle River and East Lake Creek

CPW has unit 44 bounded on the north by Colorado River and Eagle River; on the east by East Lake Creek; on the south by Fryingpan River-Eagle River divide; on the west by USFS 514 (Red Table Mountain Rd.), CR 10A (Cottonwood Pass Rd.) and Cottonwood Creek. It tells you the shape of the unit and nothing about its inhabitants. 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: Sugarloaf, Hardscrabble Mountain and Adam Mountain

Named high points inside the unit include Sugarloaf at 11,189 feet, Hardscrabble Mountain at 11,165 feet, Adam Mountain at 11,149 feet, Mount Eve at 11,147 feet and Porphyry Mountain at 10,856 feet. Several carry a public-land flag in our data, which makes them the first places to try for a view. Elk want timber to bed in and open ground to feed on, within a short walk of each other.

Holding ground: Graveyard Flats, Metheny Park and Big Park

Below them sit Graveyard Flats at 9,579 feet, Metheny Park at 9,564 feet, Big Park at 9,525 feet, Bumpity Park at 9,467 feet and Elk Park at 9,259 feet. These are the folds worth watching, and the ones other hunters walk past on the way to somewhere steeper. Reaching the edge of one before light beats reaching its middle at noon.

Public ground to start from: Brush Creek SWA and Old Man's Gulch STL

Water: Antones Spring, Spruce Spring and Dewey Park Spring

The water inside the unit line comes to 8,148 mapped stream reaches, 26 lakes and 470 stock tanks. Named sources include Antones Spring, Spruce Spring, Dewey Park Spring, Rock Spring, Third Gulch Spring and Adam Mountain Spring. 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-16

CPW does not manage elk unit by unit. It manages them as data analysis unit E-16, and unit 44 is one piece of it. The rest of E-16 is unit 45, unit 47 and unit 444. 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.

Unit 44 terrain and land status

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

The lay of it

6,272–11,402 ft on a terrain sample , averaging 8,761 ft ; peaks can run higher. That spread means you can hunt two seasons in one day — plan clothing for both ends.
376.6 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

470 tanks
8,148 stream segments
26 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: Gold Dust Peak (13,373 ft), Eagle Peak (13,012 ft), New York Mountain (12,514 ft), Sugarloaf (11,189 ft)

Holding ground: Negro Basin (11,659 ft), Dubach Meadows (10,083 ft), Timber Basin (10,055 ft), Brush Creek SWA, Old Man's Gulch STL

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 44

CPW's own harvest estimates put elk success in unit 44 at archery 12%, muzzleloader 24% and rifle 14%. That is an ordinary spread for this country, and it rewards whoever scouted. 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 Slow Trail Ridge, Bellyache Mountain and The Seven Hermits

Take a position on one of Slow Trail Ridge (9,770 ft), Bellyache Mountain (9,686 ft), The Seven Hermits (9,435 ft) and Coffin Mountain (9,300 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. Give a basin forty minutes before you decide it is empty. On the rut hunts, September bugling works where you can get above a drainage and let the thermals carry sound downhill.

Water against feed

Timing the season: Sep, Oct, Nov

Getting past the roads: Red Table Mountain Road and FR 416.1

Where unit 44 sits inside E-16

Across E-16, CPW's 2023 elk success runs 17% in unit 47, 17% in unit 444, 15% in unit 45 and 14% in unit 44. Unit 44 is the lowest of them, so whatever drives success in this herd is happening somewhere else in it. If the draw lets you choose, unit 47 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 Gold Dust Peak, Eagle Peak, New York Mountain and Sugarloaf as places to see from, and Negro Basin, Dubach Meadows, Timber Basin and Brush Creek 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.

Getting in and staying out: unit 44

Named routes and what they need

Red Table Mountain Road — 7.6 mi · Graded gravel (2WD / small trailer)
FR 416.1 — 7.5 mi · High-clearance
CR 10A — 5.3 mi · Graded gravel (2WD / small trailer)
FR 431.1 — 4.6 mi · High-clearance
1909 — 3.5 mi · Graded gravel (2WD / small trailer)
BLM 8356 — 2 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

Eagle — 7 mi · fuel, groceries
Gypsum — 10.3 mi · fuel, groceries
Edwards — 12.5 mi · groceries, gear
Dotsero — 15.3 mi · no services listed
Avon — 15.7 mi · fuel, groceries, lodging, gear

Developed camps

Unnamed camp site
Unnamed camp site
Unnamed camp site
Unnamed camp site
Unnamed camp site

Season weather and signal

Jan33° / 10° · 1.6" precip
Aug80° / 49° · 1.6" precip
Sep73° / 42° · 1.9" precip
Oct60° / 31° · 1.7" precip
Nov44° / 21° · 1.6" precip
Dec33° / 11° · 1.3" precip

Best signal is Verizon at about 15% 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

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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Unlock elk tactics for Unit 44

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Elk Success Rates

All manners of take14%

Archery12%

Muzzleloader24%

Rifle14%

CPW's 2023 harvest estimates put elk success in unit 44 at 14% — 131 animals taken by 917 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 — 12% success, 35 taken by 295 hunters
Muzzleloader — 24% success, 15 taken by 63 hunters
Rifle — 14% success, 81 taken by 559 hunters

Elk Draw Odds

Season	Tags	Applicants	Draw %	Pts Req
Muzzleloader — 1st Season cow only (resident)	81	213	38.0%	—
Muzzleloader — 1st Season cow only (nonresident)	31	96	32.3%	—
Muzzleloader — 1st Season bull only (resident)	119	247	48.2%	—
Muzzleloader — 1st Season bull only (nonresident)	120	222	54.1%	—
Rifle — 1st Season cow only (resident)	147	593	24.8%	—
Rifle — 1st Season cow only (nonresident)	26	115	22.6%	—
Rifle — 1st Season bull only (resident)	68	555	12.3%	1
Rifle — 1st Season bull only (nonresident)	25	253	9.9%	4
Rifle — 4th Season bull only (resident)	25	94	26.6%	—
Rifle — 4th Season bull only (nonresident)	11	30	36.7%	—
Rifle — 2nd Season cow only (resident)	155	282	55.0%	—
Rifle — 2nd Season cow only (nonresident)	18	44	40.9%	—
Rifle — 3rd Season cow only (resident)	123	221	55.7%	—
Rifle — 3rd Season cow only (nonresident)	18	39	46.2%	—
Rifle — 4th Season cow only (resident)	33	108	30.6%	—
Rifle — 4th Season cow only (nonresident)	4	16	25.0%	—
Archery — 1st Season bull only (resident)	401	816	49.1%	—
Archery — 1st Season bull only (nonresident)	383	759	50.5%	—
Archery — 1st Season either sex (resident)	470	802	58.6%	—
Archery — 1st Season either sex (nonresident)	499	875	57.0%	—

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 44, by hunt code, with resident and nonresident kept apart because the two draw from different licence pools:

EE044O1A — Archery, 1st Season, Either Sex, nonresident: 875 applicants for 499 licences, 57% drawn, no preference points needed
EE044O1A — Archery, 1st Season, Either Sex, resident: 802 applicants for 470 licences, 58.6% drawn, no preference points needed
EF044O1R — Rifle, 1st Season, Cow Only, resident: 593 applicants for 147 licences, 24.8% drawn, no preference points needed
EM044O1R — Rifle, 1st Season, Bull Only, resident: 555 applicants for 68 licences, 12.3% drawn, 1 preference point needed

Colorado runs a pure preference-point draw, so the point figure above is the requirement the agency published for that code in that year, not a forecast for the next one. There are 14 further code-and-residency combinations in the recap for this unit. Figures checked against CPW's own statistics pages on 2026-06-09.

Moose Hunting in Unit 44

Unit 44 lies in Eagle County and covers about 377 square miles. Ground runs from 6,272 to 13,373 feet. CPW bounds it by Colorado River and Eagle River among others. CPW's harvest estimates put Shiras moose success here as high as 100%. Federal land covers about 80% of it. Check land status on a current map before you plan a route.

Where to Find Shiras Moose in Unit 44

What CPW publishes for unit 44 is a boundary, not a Shiras moose 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 Eagle County. It runs to about 377 square miles.

The lines of the unit: Colorado River, Eagle River and East Lake Creek

High ground inside the line: Erickson Ridge, Suicide Mountain and Slow Trail Ridge

Named high points inside the unit include Erickson Ridge at 9,973 feet, Suicide Mountain at 9,835 feet, Slow Trail Ridge at 9,770 feet, Bellyache Mountain at 9,686 feet and The Seven Hermits at 9,435 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: Snowslide Park, McGinley Gulch and Devils Canyon

Below them sit Snowslide Park at 9,218 feet, McGinley Gulch at 9,210 feet, Devils Canyon at 9,206 feet, Yeoman Park at 9,082 feet and Pot Hole at 9,014 feet. Those are the basins, parks and bottoms this unit has, and they are what you glass into from above. Two you can watch from a single knob is worth more than five you have to drive between.

Public ground to start from: Brush Creek SWA and Old Man's Gulch STL

Water: Billings Spring, Box Spring and Granite Springs

The water inside the unit line comes to 8,148 mapped stream reaches, 26 lakes and 470 stock tanks. Named sources include Billings Spring, Box Spring, Granite Springs, Newcomer Spring, Big Park Spring and Card Creek 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: M-11

CPW does not manage Shiras moose unit by unit. It manages them as data analysis unit M-11, and unit 44 is one piece of it. The rest of M-11 is unit 45, unit 47, unit 431, unit 444 and unit 471. 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.

Unit 44 terrain and land status

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

The lay of it

6,272–11,402 ft on a terrain sample , averaging 8,761 ft ; peaks can run higher. That spread means you can hunt two seasons in one day — plan clothing for both ends.
376.6 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

470 tanks
8,148 stream segments
26 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: Gold Dust Peak (13,373 ft), Eagle Peak (13,012 ft), New York Mountain (12,514 ft), Sugarloaf (11,189 ft)

Holding ground: Negro Basin (11,659 ft), Dubach Meadows (10,083 ft), Timber Basin (10,055 ft), Brush Creek SWA, Old Man's Gulch STL

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 Shiras Moose in Unit 44

CPW's own harvest estimates put Shiras moose success in unit 44 at 100% 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 Bellyache Ridge, North Hardscrabble Mountain and Whittaker Point

Take a position on one of Bellyache Ridge (9,272 ft), North Hardscrabble Mountain (9,129 ft), Whittaker Point (9,079 ft) and Horse Mountain (8,641 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. Glass the edges first, then the shaded timber, then the edges again as the light goes. On the rut hunts, late September bulls answer a cow call near water.

Water against feed

There are 8,148 mapped stream reaches and 470 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

Getting past the roads: Red Table Mountain Road and FR 416.1

Where unit 44 sits inside M-11

Across M-11, CPW's 2023 Shiras moose success runs 100% in unit 44, 100% in unit 45, 100% in unit 47, 100% in unit 444 and 100% in unit 471. Nothing in the herd beat unit 44 on that measure and 4 units 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 Gold Dust Peak, Eagle Peak, New York Mountain and Sugarloaf as places to see from, and Negro Basin, Dubach Meadows, Timber Basin and Brush Creek 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 44

Named routes and what they need

Red Table Mountain Road — 7.6 mi · Graded gravel (2WD / small trailer)
FR 416.1 — 7.5 mi · High-clearance
CR 10A — 5.3 mi · Graded gravel (2WD / small trailer)
FR 431.1 — 4.6 mi · High-clearance
1909 — 3.5 mi · Graded gravel (2WD / small trailer)
BLM 8356 — 2 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

Eagle — 7 mi · fuel, groceries
Gypsum — 10.3 mi · fuel, groceries
Edwards — 12.5 mi · groceries, gear
Dotsero — 15.3 mi · no services listed
Avon — 15.7 mi · fuel, groceries, lodging, gear

Developed camps

Unnamed camp site
Unnamed camp site
Unnamed camp site
Unnamed camp site
Unnamed camp site

Season weather and signal

Jan33° / 10° · 1.6" precip
Aug80° / 49° · 1.6" precip
Sep73° / 42° · 1.9" precip
Oct60° / 31° · 1.7" precip
Nov44° / 21° · 1.6" precip
Dec33° / 11° · 1.3" precip

Best signal is Verizon at about 15% 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

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.

Moose: where to put the shot

Broadside, behind the shoulder and a third up. Moose look slow to react — the first shot has to count.

Shots to refuse

Where it falls decides your next two days. Avoid shots that drop a moose in water or a bog.
A .30-06 class cartridge minimum, with a bullet built for heavy bone.

Plan the carry: roughly 350– 500 lb of boned-out meat, before head and hide — four or more large coolers, or a processor. ProHunt planning estimate, not an agency figure.

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Moose Success Rates

All manners of take100%

CPW's 2023 harvest estimates put Shiras moose success in unit 44 at 100% — 2 animals taken by 2 hunters. On a sample that small the percentage moves several points with one animal, so read the hunter count beside it.

Moose Draw Odds

Season	Tags	Applicants	Draw %	Pts Req
Any Legal Method — 1st Season bull only (resident)	2	442	0.5%	3
Any Legal Method — 1st Season bull only (nonresident)	1	208	0.5%	3
Archery — 1st Season cow only (resident)	2	64	3.1%	3
Archery — 1st Season cow only (nonresident)	0	0	0.0%	—

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 Shiras moose in unit 44, by hunt code, with resident and nonresident kept apart because the two draw from different licence pools:

MM044O1X — Any Legal Method, 1st Season, Bull Only, resident: 442 applicants for 2 licences, 0.5% drawn, 3 preference points needed
MM044O1X — Any Legal Method, 1st Season, Bull Only, nonresident: 208 applicants for 1 licences, 0.5% drawn, 3 preference points needed
MF044O1A — Archery, 1st Season, Cow Only, resident: 64 applicants for 2 licences, 3.1% drawn, 3 preference points needed

Colorado runs a pure preference-point draw, so the point figure above is the requirement the agency published for that code in that year, not a forecast for the next one. Figures checked against CPW's own statistics pages on 2026-06-09.

Unit Logistics & Expectations

Planning Notes

⛺

Camp Sites

18 developed campgrounds in or beside the unit, including Fulford Cave Campground, Wolcott Campground and Eagle Area.

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Road Conditions

Red Table Mountain Road, FR 416.1 and CR 10A are the named routes in the unit. Roughly 7 mi paved, 19 mi gravel and 0 mi four-wheel-drive.

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Terrain Difficulty

6,272–11,402 ft, averaging 8,761. More than 4,000 feet of relief, so plan the pack-out before the shot.

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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 73/42°F, 1.9 in.; Oct 60/31°F, 1.7 in.; Nov 44/21°F, 1.6 in..

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Cell Service

Verizon 15%, AT&T 10%, T-Mobile 5% of the unit area — modelled coverage, not measured. Assume no signal off the paved road.

🏘️

Nearest Town

Eagle (7 mi), Gypsum (10 mi), Edwards (13 mi)

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Frequently Asked Questions

Where is Colorado unit 44?

Unit 44 lies in Eagle County, and CPW has it bounded on the north by Colorado River and Eagle River; on the east by East Lake Creek; on the south by Fryingpan River-Eagle River divide; on the west by USFS 514 (Red Table Mountain Rd.), CR 10A (Cottonwood Pass Rd.) and Cottonwood Creek. It covers about 377 square miles.

What is the mule deer success rate in unit 44?

CPW's 2023 harvest estimates put mule deer success in unit 44 at 52% across all manners of take, and archery 39% and rifle 63% 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 44 hunt?

The nearest services our logistics pipeline finds for unit 44 are at Eagle, about 7 miles from the unit's centre, with Gypsum at about 10 miles. There are also 18 developed campgrounds in or beside the unit.

What is the elk success rate in unit 44?

CPW's 2023 harvest estimates put elk success in unit 44 at 14% across all manners of take, and archery 12%, muzzleloader 24% and rifle 14% by weapon. Those are the agency's own figures for this unit, not a statewide average.

What is the Shiras moose success rate in unit 44?

CPW's 2023 harvest estimates put Shiras moose success in unit 44 at 100% across all manners of take. Those are the agency's own figures for this unit, not a statewide average.

Free Hunt Planning Tools

🎰 Colorado Draw Odds Unit-level tag success rates 📅 Application Timeline Deadlines for all 9 states 🦌 Rut Forecast Peak rut timing by species 💰 Hunt Cost Calculator Budget your entire hunt

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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 Deer Harvest Estimates — Colorado Parks and Wildlife · supports: Percent success for mule deer in unit 44, 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
2023 Colorado Elk Harvest Estimates — Colorado Parks and Wildlife · supports: Percent success for elk in unit 44, Hunters and harvest by weapon and season · accessed 2026-10-22
2023 Colorado Moose Harvest Estimates — Colorado Parks and Wildlife · supports: Percent success for Shiras moose in unit 44, Hunters and harvest by weapon and season · accessed 2026-10-22