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Colorado Elk Mule Deer

Unit 481

Colorado Hunting Guide — Elk, Mule Deer

Unit 481 lies in Chaffee County and covers about 283 square miles. Ground runs from 7,715 to 14,377 feet. CPW bounds it by South Fork of Clear Creek and Clear Creek among others. CPW's harvest estimates put elk success here as high as 25%. Federal land covers about 77% of it. Check land status on a current map before you plan a route.

🏔️
77%
Public Land
⛰️
7,922–13,683 ft
Sampled elevation

Build your own PDF hunt guide for Unit 481

Answer a few questions about your tag, your season and your rig, and the Field Intelligence Report builds a print-ready Colorado Unit 481 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.

Free accounts get one report a year with the top spot unlocked. ProHunt Pro includes unlimited reports, all three spots, the full camp plan, and GPX/KML downloads for onX and Google Earth. Prefer to see one first? Open the builder and pick any unit.

Elk Hunting in Unit 481

Unit 481 lies in Chaffee County and covers about 283 square miles. Ground runs from 7,715 to 14,377 feet. CPW bounds it by South Fork of Clear Creek and Clear Creek among others. CPW's harvest estimates put elk success here as high as 25%. Federal land covers about 77% of it. Check land status on a current map before you plan a route.

Where to Find Elk in Unit 481

What CPW publishes for unit 481 is a boundary, not a elk 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 Chaffee County. It runs to about 283 square miles.

The lines of the unit: South Fork of Clear Creek, Clear Creek and Arkansas River

CPW has unit 481 bounded on the north by South Fork of Clear Creek and Clear Creek; on the east by Arkansas River; on the south by Chalk Creek and Tincup Pass Rd. from St. Elmo; on the west by Continental Divide. 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: Mount Harvard, Collegiate Peaks and Mount Princeton

Named high points inside the unit include Mount Harvard at 14,377 feet, Collegiate Peaks at 14,283 feet, Mount Princeton at 14,179 feet, Mount Yale at 14,174 feet and Mount Belford at 14,170 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: Mineral Basin, Horn Fork Basin and Grassy Gulch

Below them sit Mineral Basin at 11,553 feet, Horn Fork Basin at 11,417 feet, Grassy Gulch at 10,861 feet, Morgans Gulch at 10,734 feet and Jonesy Gulch at 10,521 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: Clear Creek Reservoir SWA, Heckendorf SWA and Maxwell Park STL

CPW lists Clear Creek Reservoir SWA, Heckendorf SWA and Maxwell Park 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 77% of the unit on top of those.

Water in this unit

The water inside the unit line comes to 2,444 mapped stream reaches, 22 lakes and 337 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: E-17

CPW does not manage elk unit by unit. It manages them as data analysis unit E-17, and unit 481 is one piece of it. The rest of E-17 is unit 48, unit 56 and unit 561. 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 481 terrain and land status

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

The lay of it

  • 7,922–13,683 ft on a terrain sample , averaging 10,914 ft ; peaks can run higher. That spread means you can hunt two seasons in one day — plan clothing for both ends.
  • 282.5 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

  • 337 tanks
  • 2,444 stream segments
  • 22 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: Mount Harvard (14,377 ft), Mount Princeton (14,179 ft), Mount Yale (14,174 ft), Mount Belford (14,170 ft)

Holding ground: Elkhead Pass (13,256 ft), Missouri Basin (12,361 ft), Big Grassy (12,343 ft), Heckendorf SWA, Maxwell Park 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 481

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Elk Success Rates

All manners of take22%
Archery16%
Muzzleloader20%
Rifle25%

CPW's 2023 harvest estimates put elk success in unit 481 at 22% — 111 animals taken by 493 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 — 16% success, 15 taken by 93 hunters
  • Muzzleloader — 20% success, 12 taken by 59 hunters
  • Rifle — 25% success, 84 taken by 341 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.

Elk Draw Odds

SeasonTagsApplicantsDraw %Pts Req
Archery — 1st Season either sex (resident) 7323131.6% —
Archery — 1st Season either sex (nonresident) 2610524.8% 2
Muzzleloader — 1st Season cow only (resident) 257433.8% —
Muzzleloader — 1st Season cow only (nonresident) 41428.6% —
Muzzleloader — 1st Season bull only (resident) 258429.8% —
Muzzleloader — 1st Season bull only (nonresident) 93625.0% 3
Rifle — 2nd Season cow only (resident) 5518729.4% —
Rifle — 2nd Season cow only (nonresident) 81844.4% —
Rifle — 5th Season cow only (resident) 3313125.2% —
Rifle — 5th Season cow only (nonresident) 1250.0% 1
Rifle — 1st Season bull only (resident) 4118222.5% 1
Rifle — 1st Season bull only (nonresident) 1410213.7% 5
Rifle — 2nd Season bull only (resident) 5320725.6% —
Rifle — 2nd Season bull only (nonresident) 178320.5% 2
Rifle — 3rd Season cow only (resident) 3313125.2% —
Rifle — 3rd Season cow only (nonresident) 2728.6% —
Rifle — 4th Season cow only (resident) 207626.3% —
Rifle — 4th Season cow only (nonresident) 000.0% —
Rifle — 3rd Season bull only (resident) 3014121.3% —
Rifle — 3rd Season bull only (nonresident) 51729.4% —
Rifle — 4th Season bull only (resident) 65211.5% —
Rifle — 4th Season bull only (nonresident) 21910.5% 2

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

  • EE481O1A — Archery, 1st Season, Either Sex, resident: 231 applicants for 73 licences, 31.6% drawn, no preference points needed
  • EM481O2R — Rifle, 2nd Season, Bull Only, resident: 207 applicants for 53 licences, 25.6% drawn, no preference points needed
  • EF481O2R — Rifle, 2nd Season, Cow Only, resident: 187 applicants for 55 licences, 29.4% drawn, no preference points needed
  • EM481O1R — Rifle, 1st Season, Bull Only, resident: 182 applicants for 41 licences, 22.5% 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 17 further code-and-residency combinations in the recap for this unit. Figures checked against CPW's own statistics pages on 2026-06-09.

Unit Logistics & Expectations

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Frequently Asked Questions

Where is Colorado unit 481?
Unit 481 lies in Chaffee County, and CPW has it bounded on the north by South Fork of Clear Creek and Clear Creek; on the east by Arkansas River; on the south by Chalk Creek and Tincup Pass Rd. from St. Elmo; on the west by Continental Divide. It covers about 283 square miles.
What is the elk success rate in unit 481?
CPW's 2023 harvest estimates put elk success in unit 481 at 22% across all manners of take, and archery 16%, muzzleloader 20% and rifle 25% 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 481 hunt?
The nearest services our logistics pipeline finds for unit 481 are at Buena Vista, about 8 miles from the unit's centre, with Tincup at about 13 miles. There are also 3 developed campgrounds in or beside the unit.
What is the mule deer success rate in unit 481?
CPW's 2023 harvest estimates put mule deer success in unit 481 at 44% across all manners of take, and archery 10% and rifle 59% by weapon. Those are the agency's own figures for this unit, not a statewide average.

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Sources & Verification

Every fact on this page is tied to a primary source below. Last fact-checked 2026-10-23.

  1. 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
  2. 2023 Colorado Elk Harvest Estimates — Colorado Parks and Wildlife · supports: Percent success for elk in unit 481, Hunters and harvest by weapon and season · accessed 2026-10-22
  3. 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
  4. 2023 Colorado Deer Harvest Estimates — Colorado Parks and Wildlife · supports: Percent success for mule deer in unit 481, Hunters and harvest by weapon and season · accessed 2026-10-22