Colorado Elk Mule Deer Bear

Unit 61 (Uncompahgre)

Colorado Hunting Guide — Elk, Mule Deer, Bear

Unit 61 sits on the Uncompahgre country of western Colorado, covering about 923 square miles across Mesa, Montrose, Ouray and San Miguel counties. CPW manages its elk as herd E-20. The agency's unit material gives the boundary but no elk breakdown, so you'll scout from the terrain. The named glassing points we found run from about 7,700 to 9,700 feet and are all on public land. Pinning down where the elk are is what decides this hunt.

View Draw Odds Colorado Hunting Guide

🏔️

85%

Public Land

⛰️

5,682–9,643 ft

Sampled elevation

Build your own PDF hunt guide for Unit 61

Answer a few questions about your tag, your season and your rig, and the Field Intelligence Report builds a print-ready Colorado Unit 61 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.

Elk guide Mule Deer guide Bear guide

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Elk Hunting in Unit 61

Where to Find Elk in Unit 61: Divide Road Country, High Points and Benches

Start with what we don't have. CPW's unit material for 61 gives a legal boundary, the county list and the acreage, but no narrative on where elk concentrate. Nobody at the agency has told us which drainage holds bulls in October. What follows comes from the boundary and from our read of the terrain. Treat it as a scouting plan, not a promise.

The frame: Colo. 141, Colo. 62 and the Divide Road

The boundary description puts Colo. 141 on the north and Colo. 62 on the south. USFS 402 (Divide Rd.) and Dave Wood Rd. form the east line, and the San Miguel and Dolores rivers close the west. Those are the edges, and they say nothing about where the animals sit. They do tell you how you get in. Coming off Colo. 141, you're entering from the north. The Divide Road and Dave Wood Road are your east-side approaches. The west edge is river country, low and drier.

Spruce Mountain, Reade Hill and Windy Point

These are the highest glassing points we found, and all three are in Montrose County on public ground. Spruce Mountain tops out at 9,726 feet, Reade Hill at 9,723 and Windy Point at 9,537. Wolf Hill, in Mesa County at 9,250, and The Tongue, a ridge in Montrose at 9,135, are the next steps down. Early in the season, when elk are still at the top of their range, this is where we'd put the first days. Spruce Mountain and Reade Hill are the better places to set up and look downhill. Windy Point is a cliff, and cliff points usually give you a clean look into the head of a drainage.

Mesa County benches: Massey, Franks and Leonards Ridge

Mesa County has the densest run of named features. Massey Bench sits at 8,883 feet and Leonards Ridge at 8,848. Thimble Rock Point, Campbell Point and Bug Point are cliff and summit viewpoints between roughly 8,660 and 8,770. Down low are Franks Bench at 7,674, Tenderfoot Mesa and Bull Hill at 7,704, and Triangle Mesa at 7,958. Benches and mesa tops often hold feed with timber close by, so we'd glass them at first and last light. If weather pushes elk down later in the season, this lower tier is the country to work.

The San Miguel side: Iron Springs Mesa, The Flatiron, Craig Point

The San Miguel County features sit on the lower, western end of the unit. Iron Springs Mesa is 8,208 feet, The Flatiron 8,161 and Craig Point 7,684. They're far from the high Montrose points, so expect long drives between camps. Pick one end of the unit and hunt it. Don't try to cover both.

Water

The unit has plenty of named springs, including Loss Spring, Stuarts Springs, Cobb Spring, Dollarhide Spring, Mud Spring, Blue Mud Spring and Iron Spring. We can't tell you which are running in your season or which sit on public ground. Plot each one on a map before you go, check ownership, and note which ones sit near benches or timber edges.

Unit 61 terrain and land status

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

The lay of it

5,682–9,643 ft on a terrain sample , averaging 7,247 ft ; peaks can run higher.
921 sq mi inside the boundary. Big enough that picking one drainage beats driving three.

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

1,184 tanks
10 springs
8,492 stream segments
25 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: Spruce Mountain (9,726 ft), Windy Point (9,537 ft), Wolf Hill (9,250 ft), The Tongue (9,135 ft)

Holding ground: Reade Hill (9,723 ft), Columbine Pass (9,148 ft), Dead Horse Pasture (9,144 ft), Loss Spring, Stuarts Springs

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 61: Glassing the Points, Working the Springs

With no agency elk narrative to lean on, this hunt rewards the person who looks first and walks second. The named points give you plenty of places to do that.

Glass from Spruce Mountain and Reade Hill first

Get to your point before light. Spruce Mountain (9,726) and Reade Hill (9,723) are the high seats, so use them to look into the country below you at dawn. Stay until the sun is well up. Come back for the last ninety minutes of light. Midday is for moving or sleeping. If you see nothing after two mornings, don't keep sitting. Slide to a different point, like Windy Point or The Tongue, and look at a different slice of country.

Wind and thermals on the cliffs and benches

Cliff points like Windy Point, Thimble Rock Point and Bug Point make good viewpoints, but they're also where your scent can drop straight into a drainage. Morning air generally slides downhill and evening air climbs. Plan your approach to a bench like Massey or Franks so you're never walking upslope of the feed at dawn. A bull bedded under a ridge will smell you long before he sees you.

Use the springs as a checklist, not a destination

Names like Cobb Spring, Dollarhide Spring and Logging Camp Spring are worth plotting, and walking to one the day before you hunt it tells you quickly whether it's wet and worked. Fresh tracks and wallows tell you more than the map does. If a spring is dry, cross it off and don't come back.

Beating the crowd

The Divide Road and Dave Wood Road are the obvious east-side approaches, and anything within a short walk of them will see hunters. We'd rather park farther out and hike to a point like Wolf Hill or Gill Creek Divide than glass beside a trailhead truck. Weekday mornings are the quietest. On the Mesa County benches, a half-mile of extra walking is often all it takes to be alone.

Weapons, dates and the realistic day

CPW's unit material we have doesn't set out season dates, permit numbers or success rates for this unit. Check the current brochure for your tag's dates and weapon rules before you plan around them. Expect a long hike out. Much of the unit's relief is steep, and packing meat off a 9,000-foot point is real work. A realistic day is a dark start, three hours of glassing, a decision by mid-morning, a stalk or a move, then the evening look from a second spot. Know your ownership lines too. The named points are public, but private ground can sit close.

Getting in and staying out: unit 61

Named routes and what they need

CO 141 — 31 mi · Paved (all rigs)
FR 402 — 20.8 mi · High-clearance
CR 26 1/10;FR 402 — 15.9 mi · High-clearance
CO 145 — 6.8 mi · Paved (all rigs)
CR TS;FR 403 — 6 mi · High-clearance
FR 417 — 5.4 mi · High-clearance

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

Nucla — 9.7 mi · no services listed
Norwood — 22.6 mi · lodging
Olathe — 31.9 mi · no services listed
Delta — 33.5 mi · fuel
Montrose — 34.9 mi · fuel, groceries, lodging, gear

Developed camps

Columbine Campground
Iron Springs Campground
Jutten Camp
Unnamed camp site
Unnamed camp site

Season weather and signal

Jan42° / 15° · 0.9" precip
Aug89° / 56° · 1.7" precip
Sep81° / 48° · 1.7" precip
Oct68° / 36° · 1.4" precip
Nov54° / 25° · 1" precip
Dec43° / 16° · 1" 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.

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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Elk Success Rates

All manners of take53%

Archery52%

Muzzleloader50%

Rifle53%

CPW's 2023 harvest estimates put elk success in unit 61 at 53% — 588 animals taken by 1,114 hunters. That is a lot of hunters in one unit, and the percentage is what it looks like after all of them have been through it.

Archery — 52% success, 46 taken by 87 hunters
Muzzleloader — 50% success, 42 taken by 84 hunters
Rifle — 53% success, 500 taken by 943 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

Season	Tags	Applicants	Draw %	Pts Req
Rifle — 1st Season either sex (resident)	26	1,073	2.4%	23
Rifle — 1st Season either sex (nonresident)	6	455	1.3%	32
Rifle — 1st Season cow only (resident)	49	304	16.1%	2
Rifle — 1st Season cow only (nonresident)	15	47	31.9%	2
Rifle — 2nd Season cow only (resident)	109	548	19.9%	1
Rifle — 2nd Season cow only (nonresident)	37	106	34.9%	1
Rifle — 3rd Season cow only (resident)	132	513	25.7%	—
Rifle — 3rd Season cow only (nonresident)	41	138	29.7%	1
Rifle — 4th Season cow only (resident)	217	508	42.7%	—
Rifle — 4th Season cow only (nonresident)	19	52	36.5%	—
Rifle — 5th Season cow only (resident)	102	315	32.4%	—
Rifle — 5th Season cow only (nonresident)	2	13	15.4%	—
Rifle — 1st Season bull only (resident)	84	1,152	7.3%	15
Rifle — 1st Season bull only (nonresident)	20	497	4.0%	27
Rifle — 2nd Season bull only (resident)	75	784	9.6%	11
Rifle — 2nd Season bull only (nonresident)	19	291	6.5%	26
Rifle — 3rd Season bull only (resident)	32	460	7.0%	10
Rifle — 3rd Season bull only (nonresident)	8	233	3.4%	25
Rifle — 4th Season bull only (resident)	26	213	12.2%	9
Rifle — 4th Season bull only (nonresident)	6	159	3.8%	25
Archery — 1st Season either sex (resident)	57	939	6.1%	17
Archery — 1st Season either sex (nonresident)	14	776	1.8%	28
Muzzleloader — 1st Season cow only (resident)	23	122	18.9%	2
Muzzleloader — 1st Season cow only (nonresident)	9	33	27.3%	5
Muzzleloader — 1st Season bull only (resident)	30	361	8.3%	18
Muzzleloader — 1st Season bull only (nonresident)	7	295	2.4%	30

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

EM061O1R — Rifle, 1st Season, Bull Only, resident: 1,152 applicants for 84 licences, 7.3% drawn, 15 preference points needed
EE061E1R — Rifle, 1st Season, Either Sex, resident: 1,073 applicants for 26 licences, 2.4% drawn, 23 preference points needed
EE061O1A — Archery, 1st Season, Either Sex, resident: 939 applicants for 57 licences, 6.1% drawn, 17 preference points needed
EM061O2R — Rifle, 2nd Season, Bull Only, resident: 784 applicants for 75 licences, 9.6% drawn, 11 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 22 further code-and-residency combinations in the recap for this unit. Figures checked against CPW's own statistics pages on 2026-06-09.

Mule Deer Hunting in Unit 61

Unit 61 (Uncompahgre) covers 923 square miles across Mesa, Montrose, Ouray and San Miguel counties in western Colorado, inside deer herd D-19. CPW's unit material gives a boundary but no mule deer narrative, so we work from terrain: glassing points between roughly 7,700 and 9,700 feet, plus a long list of named springs. Scout early. Nobody has handed us harvest numbers or deer concentrations for this unit.

Where to Find Mule Deer in Unit 61: Benches, Points and the Roads That Frame Them

Start with what CPW doesn't give us. The agency's unit material for 61 describes the edges and says nothing about where mule deer hold. So we can't point you at a canyon and promise bucks. What we can do is lay out the frame and the high ground you'll be glassing from.

The frame: Colo. 141, Colo. 62 and the two rivers

CPW's boundary puts Colo. 141 on the north and Colo. 62 on the south. The east line follows USFS 402 (Divide Rd.) and Dave Wood Rd. The west line runs along the San Miguel River and the Dolores River. That's a legal description, not a deer map. It does tell you how you'll come in: the highways on the north and south, the Divide Rd. system from the east, and the river corridors on the west.

Montrose County high points: Spruce Mountain, Reade Hill, Windy Point

These are the highest glassing spots we can name. Spruce Mountain tops out at 9,726 feet and Reade Hill at 9,723. Windy Point, a cliff, sits at 9,537. The Tongue is a ridge at 9,135. All four are public land in Montrose County. Think of them as early-season lookouts over the upper country, with the cliff at Windy Point giving you a drop-off view.

Pine Ridge (8,485), Round Mountain (8,069), Patterson Mountain (7,935) and Piñon Mountain (7,869) step down from there, also in Montrose County. Horsefly Bench (7,910) and Starvation Point (7,705) sit near the bottom of the range we can see.

Mesa County benches and ridges

Mesa County has the deepest list. Wolf Hill is 9,250 feet. Massey Bench is 8,883, Leonards Ridge 8,848, and Thimble Rock Point 8,769. Campbell Point (8,689) and Bug Point (8,662) round out the upper tier. Below those you've got Gill Creek Divide (8,482), Pine Hill (8,180), Triangle Mesa (7,958), Pine Mountain (7,914), Bull Hill and Tenderfoot Mesa (both 7,704), and Franks Bench (7,674). All are public. Benches like Massey and Franks are the kind of flat shelf where you can glass a lot of slope from one seat.

San Miguel County: Iron Springs Mesa, The Flatiron, Craig Point

Iron Springs Mesa (8,208), The Flatiron (8,161) and Craig Point (7,684) are the public-land points we can name on the San Miguel side, nearest the west boundary rivers. Iron Springs Mesa is the best-named of the three for a first look.

We have no named public landform for Ouray County, and no record of how much private ground sits in this unit. Check ownership on a map before you commit to any ridge.

Unit 61 terrain and land status

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

The lay of it

5,682–9,643 ft on a terrain sample , averaging 7,247 ft ; peaks can run higher.
921 sq mi inside the boundary. Big enough that picking one drainage beats driving three.

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

1,184 tanks
10 springs
8,492 stream segments
25 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: Spruce Mountain (9,726 ft), Windy Point (9,537 ft), Wolf Hill (9,250 ft), The Tongue (9,135 ft)

Holding ground: Reade Hill (9,723 ft), Columbine Pass (9,148 ft), Dead Horse Pasture (9,144 ft), Loss Spring, Stuarts Springs

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 Unit 61: Glass High, Move Low, Scout the Springs

With no agency deer narrative to lean on, scouting does the work. Plan to learn this unit before the season, not during it.

Glass from the points, then drop to the benches

The named points give you elevation bands to work: roughly 9,500 feet and up at Spruce Mountain, Reade Hill and Windy Point, 8,500 to 9,000 at Wolf Hill, Massey Bench and Leonards Ridge, and the 7,700 to 8,200 range at spots like Horsefly Bench, Pine Hill and Starvation Point. Pick a band, glass it at first light, and if you're not seeing deer, drop a band. That's a method, not a promise that deer sit at any one of these places.

Glass the first hour and the last hour hard. Midday, deer bed in cover and you're wasting optics time on open slopes. Use the cliffs, Windy Point, Thimble Rock Point and Bug Point, to look across country you won't have to walk through. A bull-calling-style push isn't the game here. Sit, spot, plan the stalk, then go.

Treat the springs as a checklist

Fourteen springs are named in this unit: Loss Spring, Stuarts Springs, Z K Spring, Edmondson Spring, Cobb Spring, Galloway Spring, Clay Creek Spring, Logging Camp Spring, Mud Spring, Hole-in-Ground Spring, Dollarhide Spring, Blue Mud Spring, Iron Spring and Gutshall Spring. We don't know which hold water late in the year, and nobody has counted deer at them for us. Pull each one up on your mapping app, see which sit near the glassing points above, and visit in summer. Dry ones go off the list. Wet ones with fresh tracks go on it.

Getting in and beating the crowd

Colo. 141, Colo. 62 and the Divide Rd. and Dave Wood Rd. system are the edges CPW describes, so expect other hunters to use them. Walk a mile or more off any road before you set up. Take the ridges that look like a hassle to reach. If a point like The Tongue or Pine Ridge needs a long approach, that's often why it's quiet.

Check CPW's current travel and access rules for the specific roads you plan to drive. We haven't got a closure list for this unit, and USFS roads change. Also confirm land ownership for your chosen glassing spot before you hike in.

A realistic day: up before light, glassing from a point by shooting light, a midday scout of the next bench, then back on the glass by mid-afternoon. Expect to burn a few days finding deer before you find a buck.

Getting in and staying out: unit 61

Named routes and what they need

CO 141 — 31 mi · Paved (all rigs)
FR 402 — 20.8 mi · High-clearance
CR 26 1/10;FR 402 — 15.9 mi · High-clearance
CO 145 — 6.8 mi · Paved (all rigs)
CR TS;FR 403 — 6 mi · High-clearance
FR 417 — 5.4 mi · High-clearance

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

Nucla — 9.7 mi · no services listed
Norwood — 22.6 mi · lodging
Olathe — 31.9 mi · no services listed
Delta — 33.5 mi · fuel
Montrose — 34.9 mi · fuel, groceries, lodging, gear

Developed camps

Columbine Campground
Iron Springs Campground
Jutten Camp
Unnamed camp site
Unnamed camp site

Season weather and signal

Jan42° / 15° · 0.9" precip
Aug89° / 56° · 1.7" precip
Sep81° / 48° · 1.7" precip
Oct68° / 36° · 1.4" precip
Nov54° / 25° · 1" precip
Dec43° / 16° · 1" 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.

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 take59%

Archery59%

Rifle64%

CPW's 2023 harvest estimates put mule deer success in unit 61 at 59% — 141 animals taken by 239 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 — 59% success, 25 taken by 42 hunters
Rifle — 64% success, 112 taken by 177 hunters

Mule Deer Draw Odds

Season	Tags	Applicants	Draw %	Pts Req
Archery — 1st Season buck only (resident)	30	195	15.4%	3
Archery — 1st Season buck only (nonresident)	10	102	9.8%	8
Muzzleloader — 1st Season buck only (resident)	12	104	11.5%	5
Muzzleloader — 1st Season buck only (nonresident)	4	50	8.0%	10
Rifle — 2nd Season buck only (resident)	63	370	17.0%	3
Rifle — 2nd Season buck only (nonresident)	22	170	12.9%	12
Rifle — 3rd Season buck only (resident)	64	378	16.9%	4
Rifle — 3rd Season buck only (nonresident)	22	331	6.6%	18
Rifle — 1st Season buck only (resident)	24	231	10.4%	5
Rifle — 1st Season buck only (nonresident)	8	74	10.8%	7
Rifle — 1st Season buck only (resident)	31	53	58.5%	—
Rifle — 1st Season buck only (nonresident)	5	7	71.4%	—
Rifle — 4th Season buck only (resident)	12	392	3.1%	11
Rifle — 4th Season buck only (nonresident)	4	295	1.4%	26

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

DM061O4R — Rifle, 4th Season, Buck Only, resident: 392 applicants for 12 licences, 3.1% drawn, 11 preference points needed
DM061O3R — Rifle, 3rd Season, Buck Only, resident: 378 applicants for 64 licences, 16.9% drawn, 4 preference points needed
DM061O2R — Rifle, 2nd Season, Buck Only, resident: 370 applicants for 63 licences, 17% drawn, 3 preference points needed
DM061O3R — Rifle, 3rd Season, Buck Only, nonresident: 331 applicants for 22 licences, 6.6% drawn, 18 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 10 further code-and-residency combinations in the recap for this unit. Figures checked against CPW's own statistics pages on 2026-06-09.

Bear Hunting in Unit 61

Unit 61 sits in western Colorado across Mesa, Montrose, Ouray and San Miguel counties, 923 square miles framed by Colo. 141, Colo. 62 and the San Miguel and Dolores rivers. It's part of herd area B-5. CPW's unit material gives no bear-specific breakdown, so you're scouting from terrain. The thing to settle early is where on this big unit you'll actually hunt: the named high points and benches below are your starting list.

Where to start looking for bears in Unit 61

Be straight with yourself about what's known. CPW's unit description gives Unit 61's edges and counties but says nothing about where bears live inside it. Nobody has counted them for us either. What follows comes from the boundary, the elevation of named ground, and the springs on the map. It's a scouting plan, not a bear map.

The frame: Colo. 141, Colo. 62 and the two rivers

CPW describes the unit as bounded on the north by Colo. 141, on the east by USFS 402 (Divide Rd.) and Dave Wood Rd., on the south by Colo. 62, and on the west by the San Miguel and Dolores rivers. That's a legal line, not a statement of where animals sit. It does tell you how you'll get in. Come off Colo. 141 and you're entering on the north edge. Come up Divide Rd. or Dave Wood Rd. and you're on the east side. At 923 square miles, you can't cover it, so pick one corner.

Spruce Mountain, Reade Hill and Windy Point (Montrose County)

This is the highest named ground we can point you to. Spruce Mountain tops out at 9,726 feet and Reade Hill at 9,723. Windy Point, a cliff, is 9,537 and The Tongue, a ridge, is 9,135. All four are public ground and all make sense as glassing stations. Lower in the same county, Pine Ridge (8,485), Round Mountain (8,069), Patterson Mountain (7,935), Horsefly Bench (7,910), Piñon Mountain (7,869) and Starvation Point (7,705) give you a step-down of country to work through the season.

The Mesa County benches and ridges

Mesa County holds the longest list. Wolf Hill is 9,250 feet. Massey Bench sits at 8,883 and Leonards Ridge at 8,848. Thimble Rock Point, Campbell Point and Bug Point run 8,769 down to 8,662. Gill Creek Divide is 8,482. Lower down are Pine Hill, Triangle Mesa, Pine Mountain, Bull Hill, Tenderfoot Mesa and Franks Bench, the last at 7,674. Benches and divides are good places to start because they let you look into side drainages without dropping into them.

The San Miguel side

Iron Springs Mesa (8,208), The Flatiron (8,161) and Craig Point (7,684) are the San Miguel County points. They're on the unit's west side, toward the river line. Treat them as a separate trip from the Montrose and Mesa high ground, not something you'll combine in a day.

What we'd skip

We can't tell you which country to write off for bears, and we won't pretend to. Ouray County is on the agency's county list, but no named point in our terrain read falls there, so don't plan around it without your own scouting. Verify ownership on a current map before you commit to any one spot.

Unit 61 terrain and land status

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

The lay of it

5,682–9,643 ft on a terrain sample , averaging 7,247 ft ; peaks can run higher.
921 sq mi inside the boundary. Big enough that picking one drainage beats driving three.

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

1,184 tanks
10 springs
8,492 stream segments
25 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: Spruce Mountain (9,726 ft), Windy Point (9,537 ft), Wolf Hill (9,250 ft), The Tongue (9,135 ft)

Holding ground: Reade Hill (9,723 ft), Columbine Pass (9,148 ft), Dead Horse Pasture (9,144 ft), Loss Spring, Stuarts Springs

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 bears here: glass the points, then follow the water

Without a CPW bear narrative or harvest numbers for this unit, the play is to build your own picture quickly. Plan a scouting trip or a long first day that's mostly looking, not walking.

Glassing from the named points

Every landform on our list is public ground and fits a glassing role. Start on the high ones: Spruce Mountain, Reade Hill, Windy Point or Wolf Hill. Be on the point before first light and stay through the first couple of hours of warming. Then pick again in the last hours of daylight. Mornings, air generally drains downslope, so keep the wind in your face as you look into the draws below you. By late morning, rising air will carry your scent up and across the slope. Choose where you sit with that in mind.

Benches such as Massey, Horsefly and Franks are good for a second look because you can see across open ground without being skylined.

Springs: a lead, not a promise

The map shows named springs in the unit, among them Loss Spring, Stuarts Springs, Cobb Spring, Galloway Spring, Clay Creek Spring, Logging Camp Spring, Mud Spring, Hole-in-Ground Spring, Dollarhide Spring, Blue Mud Spring, Iron Spring and Gutshall Spring. We can't tell you which county or ridge each one sits on, and nobody has told us bears use them. Use them as places to check for sign once you've glassed a likely area. Fresh tracks, droppings and torn-up ground tell you more than a name on a map.

Beating the crowd

The roads that frame the unit are the easiest way in, and so they're where other hunters go first. Get off Divide Rd. and Dave Wood Rd. by a ridge or two, and look at the lower benches and points that need a longer walk, like Starvation Point, Bull Hill or Tenderfoot Mesa. Hunting the lower points gives you a different season-long picture than the 9,000-foot tops.

A realistic day

Up early, on a point by first light, glassing for two or three hours. If you've seen nothing, move to a bench lower down and check any spring that's close. Eat lunch where you can see something. Then glass again until the light's gone. If you do get a bear down, think about the pack-out before you shoot. It's a long way from the rivers to the tops, and the roads can't be assumed open to vehicles. Check CPW's current brochure and the travel rules for the roads you plan to use before you leave, along with the season dates and licence rules, which we haven't been given for this unit.

Getting in and staying out: unit 61

Named routes and what they need

CO 141 — 31 mi · Paved (all rigs)
FR 402 — 20.8 mi · High-clearance
CR 26 1/10;FR 402 — 15.9 mi · High-clearance
CO 145 — 6.8 mi · Paved (all rigs)
CR TS;FR 403 — 6 mi · High-clearance
FR 417 — 5.4 mi · High-clearance

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

Nucla — 9.7 mi · no services listed
Norwood — 22.6 mi · lodging
Olathe — 31.9 mi · no services listed
Delta — 33.5 mi · fuel
Montrose — 34.9 mi · fuel, groceries, lodging, gear

Developed camps

Columbine Campground
Iron Springs Campground
Jutten Camp
Unnamed camp site
Unnamed camp site

Season weather and signal

Jan42° / 15° · 0.9" precip
Aug89° / 56° · 1.7" precip
Sep81° / 48° · 1.7" precip
Oct68° / 36° · 1.4" precip
Nov54° / 25° · 1" precip
Dec43° / 16° · 1" 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.

Bear: 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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Bear Success Rates

CPW's 2023 harvest estimates carry no black bear row for unit 61 that we can read back to this unit on its own. Where the agency reports a unit inside a grouping, or prints a table our parser cannot resolve to a single column, we leave the number out rather than publish a statewide average as though it had been measured here. CPW's current harvest estimates are the place to check before you apply.

Bear Draw Odds

Season	Tags	Applicants	Draw %	Pts Req
Archery — 1st Season either sex (resident)	10	60	16.7%	3
Archery — 1st Season either sex (nonresident)	0	9	0.0%	—
Muzzleloader — 1st Season either sex (resident)	10	23	43.5%	—
Muzzleloader — 1st Season either sex (nonresident)	0	3	0.0%	—
Rifle — 1st Season either sex (resident)	129	743	17.4%	4
Rifle — 1st Season either sex (nonresident)	16	88	18.2%	4
Rifle — 2nd Season either sex (resident)	9	48	18.8%	2
Rifle — 2nd Season either sex (nonresident)	1	5	20.0%	1
Rifle — 5th Season either sex (resident)	10	176	5.7%	7
Rifle — 5th Season either sex (nonresident)	0	30	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 black bear in unit 61, by hunt code, with resident and nonresident kept apart because the two draw from different licence pools:

BE061O1R — Rifle, 1st Season, Either Sex, resident: 743 applicants for 129 licences, 17.4% drawn, 4 preference points needed
BE061O5R — Rifle, 5th Season, Either Sex, resident: 176 applicants for 10 licences, 5.7% drawn, 7 preference points needed
BE061O1R — Rifle, 1st Season, Either Sex, nonresident: 88 applicants for 16 licences, 18.2% drawn, 4 preference points needed
BE061O1A — Archery, 1st Season, Either Sex, resident: 60 applicants for 10 licences, 16.7% 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. There are 4 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

Planning Notes

⛺

Camp Sites

30 developed campgrounds in or beside the unit, including Columbine Campground, Iron Springs Campground and Jutten Camp.

🛣️

Road Conditions

CO 141, FR 402 and CR 26 1/10 / FR 402 are the named routes in the unit. Roughly 48 mi paved, 67 mi gravel and 1 mi four-wheel-drive.

🥾

Terrain Difficulty

5,682–9,643 ft, averaging 7,247. Enough relief to separate summer from winter range.

👥

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.

🌦️

Weather

Season normals: Sep 81/48°F, 1.7 in.; Oct 68/36°F, 1.4 in.; Nov 54/25°F, 1 in..

📱

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

Nucla (10 mi), Norwood (23 mi), Olathe (32 mi)

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Frequently Asked Questions

Where is Colorado unit 61?

Unit 61 lies in Mesa, Montrose, Ouray and San Miguel counties, and CPW has it bounded on the north by Colo. 141; on the east by USFS 402 (Divide Rd.) and Dave Wood Rd.; on the south by Colo. 62; on the west by San Miguel River and Dolores River. It covers about 921 square miles.

What is the elk success rate in unit 61?

CPW's 2023 harvest estimates put elk success in unit 61 at 53% across all manners of take, and archery 52%, muzzleloader 50% and rifle 53% 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 61 hunt?

The nearest services our logistics pipeline finds for unit 61 are at Nucla, about 10 miles from the unit's centre, with Norwood at about 23 miles. There are also 30 developed campgrounds in or beside the unit.

What is the mule deer success rate in unit 61?

CPW's 2023 harvest estimates put mule deer success in unit 61 at 59% across all manners of take, and archery 59% and rifle 64% by weapon. Those are the agency's own figures for this unit, not a statewide average.

What is the black bear success rate in unit 61?

CPW publishes no black bear success figure we can tie to unit 61 on its own — the 2023 harvest tables either omit the unit or report it in a grouping we could not read back to it reliably. Rather than quote a statewide average as though it were measured here, we say so. Check CPW's current harvest estimates before you apply.

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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 Elk Harvest Estimates — Colorado Parks and Wildlife · supports: Percent success for elk in unit 61, 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 Deer Harvest Estimates — Colorado Parks and Wildlife · supports: Percent success for mule deer in unit 61, Hunters and harvest by weapon and season · accessed 2026-10-22

Unit 61 (Uncompahgre)

Build your own PDF hunt guide for Unit 61

Elk Hunting in Unit 61

Where to Find Elk in Unit 61: Divide Road Country, High Points and Benches

The frame: Colo. 141, Colo. 62 and the Divide Road

Spruce Mountain, Reade Hill and Windy Point

Mesa County benches: Massey, Franks and Leonards Ridge

The San Miguel side: Iron Springs Mesa, The Flatiron, Craig Point

Water

Unit 61 terrain and land status

The lay of it

Who owns the ground

Water on the ground

Named features inside the unit

How to Hunt Elk in Unit 61: Glassing the Points, Working the Springs

Elk Success Rates

Elk Draw Odds

Mule Deer Hunting in Unit 61

Where to Find Mule Deer in Unit 61: Benches, Points and the Roads That Frame Them

The frame: Colo. 141, Colo. 62 and the two rivers

Montrose County high points: Spruce Mountain, Reade Hill, Windy Point

Mesa County benches and ridges

San Miguel County: Iron Springs Mesa, The Flatiron, Craig Point

Unit 61 terrain and land status

The lay of it

Who owns the ground

Water on the ground

Named features inside the unit

How to Hunt Unit 61: Glass High, Move Low, Scout the Springs

Mule Deer Success Rates

Mule Deer Draw Odds

Bear Hunting in Unit 61

Where to start looking for bears in Unit 61

The frame: Colo. 141, Colo. 62 and the two rivers

Spruce Mountain, Reade Hill and Windy Point (Montrose County)

The Mesa County benches and ridges

The San Miguel side

What we'd skip

Unit 61 terrain and land status

The lay of it

Who owns the ground

Water on the ground

Named features inside the unit

How to hunt bears here: glass the points, then follow the water

Bear Success Rates

Bear Draw Odds

Unit Logistics & Expectations

Explore Related Units

Unit 70 — Elk

Unit 74 — Elk

Unit 61 — Mule Deer

Frequently Asked Questions

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Sources & Verification