Unit 581 (San Juan Southwest Composite)

CPW's material on unit 581 stops at the boundary — there is no agency account of where its elk live. 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 Park, Teller and Fremont counties. It runs to about 688 square miles.

The lines of the unit: U.S. 24, Colo. 67 and Phantom Canyon Rd

CPW has unit 581 bounded on the north by U.S. 24; on the east by Colo. 67 and Phantom Canyon Rd.; on the south by U.S. 50; on the west by Colo. 9 and Park CRs 59 and 102. It tells you the shape of the unit and nothing about its inhabitants. 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: Stoll Mountain, Saddle Mountain and Rhyolite Mountain

Named high points inside the unit include Stoll Mountain at 10,860 feet, Saddle Mountain at 10,787 feet, Rhyolite Mountain at 10,738 feet, Pulver Mountain at 10,520 feet and Mount Pisgah at 10,377 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: Castle Gulch, Dead Ox Gulch and Antelope Park

Below them sit Castle Gulch at 8,827 feet, Dead Ox Gulch at 8,823 feet, Antelope Park at 8,802 feet, Arequa Gulch at 8,797 feet and Rishaberger Gulch at 8,756 feet. That is the low country of the unit — the ground animals drop into when they are pushed or when the weather turns. Work out which of them you can see from one position before you pick a camp.

Public ground to start from: Adelaide STL, Badger Flats STL and Deer Haven STL

CPW lists Adelaide STL, Badger Flats STL, Deer Haven STL, Dome Rock SWA and Oil Well Flats 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 36% of the unit on top of those.

Water in this unit

The water inside the unit line comes to 1,081 mapped stream reaches, 7 lakes, 368 stock tanks and 6 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: E-23

CPW does not manage elk unit by unit. It manages them as data analysis unit E-23, and unit 581 is one piece of it. The rest of E-23 is unit 59, unit 511, unit 512 and unit 591. 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.

CPW's own harvest estimates put elk success in unit 581 at archery 5%, muzzleloader 6% and rifle 14%. A number that low means most hunters here go home empty, and the ones who don't put the days in first. 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 Cover Mountain, Castle Mountain and Nipple Mountain

Take a position on one of Cover Mountain (10,146 ft), Castle Mountain (10,056 ft), Nipple Mountain (10,052 ft) and Straub Mountain (10,051 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, September bugling works where you can get above a drainage and let the thermals carry sound downhill.

Water against feed

There are 1,081 mapped stream reaches and 368 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 67/42°F, Oct 57/30°F and Nov 45/22°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 1.6 in. in Sep, 1 in. in Oct and 0.6 in. in Nov, and the graded gravel in this unit turns greasy wet.

Getting past the roads: US 24 and CR 59

US 24, CO 9 and CO 67 are the paved frame, which is also where everyone else starts. 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 581 sits inside E-23

Across E-23, CPW's 2023 elk success runs 100% in unit 512, 18% in unit 591, 11% in unit 581, 8% in unit 59 and 7% in unit 511. That puts unit 581 behind 2 of the 4 other units in the herd. If the draw lets you choose, unit 512 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 Stoll Mountain, Nipple Mountain, Little Pisgah Peak and Lookout Point as places to see from, and Wilkerson Pass, Dead Ox Gulch, Muley Gulch and Adelaide STL 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.