Unit 52

CPW's material on unit 52 stops at the boundary — there is no agency account of where its elk live. 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 Delta County. It runs to about 264 square miles.

The lines of the unit: Delta-Mesa Co. line, Grand Mesa- Gunnison NF boundary and Overland Ditch

CPW has unit 52 bounded on the north by Delta-Mesa Co. line; on the east by Grand Mesa- Gunnison NF boundary, Overland Ditch, West Res. No. 1 and Jay Creek; on the south by North Fork of Gunnison River and Colo. 92; on the west by Colo. 65. 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: Oak Mesa, Spaulding Peak and Wilbanks Mesa

Named high points inside the unit include Oak Mesa at 8,811 feet, Spaulding Peak at 8,599 feet, Wilbanks Mesa at 8,178 feet, Redlands Mesa at 7,422 feet and Cedar Mesa at 6,775 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: Stingley Gulch, Harts Basin and Posin Gulch

Below them sit Stingley Gulch at 5,641 feet, Harts Basin at 5,597 feet, Posin Gulch at 5,560 feet, Madison Gulch at 5,514 feet and Harts Basin at 5,510 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.

Water in this unit

The water inside the unit line comes to 1,946 mapped stream reaches, 82 lakes and 347 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-14

CPW does not manage elk unit by unit. It manages them as data analysis unit E-14, and unit 52 is one piece of it. The rest of E-14 is unit 41, unit 42, unit 411, unit 421 and unit 521. 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.

Reading the land status

Our ownership read for this unit is approximate — it comes out as National Forest 60%, Private / Other 17%, BLM 15% and State Trust 8%, so treat it as a starting point and check a current land-status layer before you plan a route. A grid sample of the unit reads 5,386 to 10,152 feet, and named ground inside the line runs 5,273 to 11,325 feet — take 5,273 to 11,325 as the spread, because the sample is a grid and misses both ends. With 6,052 feet between the two ends, that is a lot of vertical to cover, and it means the season you draw decides which half of the unit you hunt.

CPW draws an exact line around unit 52 and says nothing about where the Shiras moose 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 Delta County. It runs to about 264 square miles.

The lines of the unit: Delta-Mesa Co. line, Grand Mesa- Gunnison NF boundary and Overland Ditch

CPW has unit 52 bounded on the north by Delta-Mesa Co. line; on the east by Grand Mesa- Gunnison NF boundary, Overland Ditch, West Res. No. 1 and Jay Creek; on the south by North Fork of Gunnison River and Colo. 92; on the west by Colo. 65. 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: Rogers Mesa, Antelope Hill and Powell Mesa

Named high points inside the unit include Rogers Mesa at 6,030 feet, Antelope Hill at 5,857 feet, Powell Mesa at 5,768 feet, Barrow Mesa at 5,745 feet and Shamrock Mesa at 5,730 feet. None carries a public-land flag we trust, so settle the ownership question before you plan to stand on one. Moose want willow, water and shade, and they rarely leave the drainage that has all three.

Holding ground: I X Gulch, Short Draw and Sulphur Gulch

Below them sit I X Gulch at 5,419 feet, Short Draw at 5,366 feet, Sulphur Gulch at 5,273 feet, Doughty Park at 9,784 feet and High Park at 9,643 feet. That is the low country of the unit — the ground animals drop into when they are pushed or when the weather turns. Reaching the edge of one before light beats reaching its middle at noon.

Water in this unit

The water inside the unit line comes to 1,946 mapped stream reaches, 82 lakes and 347 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: M-5

CPW does not manage Shiras moose unit by unit. It manages them as data analysis unit M-5, and unit 52 is one piece of it. The rest of M-5 is unit 41, unit 42, unit 43, unit 53, unit 54, unit 63, unit 64 and unit 411 and 2 more. 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.

Reading the land status

Our ownership read for this unit is approximate — it comes out as National Forest 60%, Private / Other 17%, BLM 15% and State Trust 8%, so treat it as a starting point and check a current land-status layer before you plan a route. A grid sample of the unit reads 5,386 to 10,152 feet, and named ground inside the line runs 5,273 to 11,325 feet — take 5,273 to 11,325 as the spread, because the sample is a grid and misses both ends. With 6,052 feet between the two ends, that is a lot of vertical to cover, and it means the season you draw decides which half of the unit you hunt.

CPW's own harvest estimates put Shiras moose success in unit 52 at 0% across all manners of take. A number that low means most hunters here go home empty, and the ones who don't put the days in first. 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 Knob Hill, Duke Hill and Mount Hatten

Take a position on one of Knob Hill (5,452 ft), Duke Hill (5,449 ft), Mount Hatten (11,325 ft) and Priest Mountain (10,977 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, late September bulls answer a cow call near water.

Water against feed

There are 1,946 mapped stream reaches and 347 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. Check the ground around it before you commit an evening to it.

Timing the season: Sep, Oct, Nov

Season normals here run Sep 73/48°F, Oct 60/37°F and Nov 47/27°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 1.9 in. in Sep, 1.4 in. in Oct and 0.7 in. in Nov, and the graded gravel in this unit turns greasy wet.

Getting past the roads: CO 65 and North Road

CO 65 and CO 92 are the paved frame, which is also where everyone else starts. FR 733 and FR 123 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.

Where unit 52 sits inside M-5

Across M-5, CPW's 2023 Shiras moose success runs 100% in unit 53, 100% in unit 54, 80% in unit 521, 75% in unit 43 and 60% in unit 42. That puts unit 52 behind 6 of the 7 other units in the herd. If the draw lets you choose, unit 53 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 Mount Hatten, Priest Mountain, Green Mountain and Doughty Mountain as places to see from, and Doughty Park, Duke Basin, Hells Hole and CO 92 @ unit boundary 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 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.