Unit 791

What CPW publishes for unit 791 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 Alamosa, Rio Grande and Saguache counties.

The lines of the unit: Colo. 17, U.S. 160 and Colo. 112

CPW has unit 791 bounded on the north by CR G; on the east by Colo. 17; on the south by U.S. 160; on the west by Colo. 112 and U.S. 285. 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.

Public ground to start from: Higel SWA, Home Lake SWA and Rio Grande SWA

CPW lists Higel SWA, Home Lake SWA, Rio Grande SWA and Shriver and Wright SWA 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 0% of the unit on top of those.

The herd this unit belongs to: D-36

CPW does not manage mule deer unit by unit. It manages them as data analysis unit D-36, and unit 791 is one piece of it. The rest of D-36 is unit 76 and unit 79. 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.

What is published about unit 791, and what is not

No named summit, basin or mapped water source falls inside this unit at all, though CPW does list 4 access properties in it. That is the finding, and on public ground it is less of a problem than it looks: unnamed country is still country, and it carries no other hunters following the same name to the same knob. What the unit does have is size, and the mule deer living on it are there whether or not anyone has mapped a name onto the ground. Mule deer on open country use every fold and draw there is, and almost none of the flat.

CPW publishes no mule deer success figure for unit 791 that we can tie to this unit alone, so we won't quote one. The plan: glass the broken edges at first light, then sit still and keep glassing the same ground.

Finding a view in unit 791

No named high ground falls inside this unit, which changes the method rather than ruling it out. Height comes from the vehicle or from a bank above a watercourse, and either is enough at first light. Mule deer on open country use every fold and draw there is, and almost none of the flat. Cover ground slowly and stop more often than feels sensible.

The way in: Colo. 17, U.S. 160 and Colo. 112

We have no road inventory for this unit, so the only routes we can name are the ones CPW draws the boundary with: Colo. 17, U.S. 160, Colo. 112 and U.S. 285. Those are its edges, not its interior — useful because they are where you leave the pavement, and useless for telling you what the inside is like. Check each of them on a current motor-vehicle-use map before you count on it, because a line on a boundary description is not a promise of public access.

A first plan from the pins on this page

The map above marks Higel SWA, Home Lake SWA and Rio Grande 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

409 square miles is more country than a week will cover, so pick one drainage and learn it rather than driving the unit. The ground is gentle enough that the pack-out is a distance problem rather than a climbing one. One good position held through the whole of first light beats three visited in a hurry.

What we can't tell you

We have no mule deer success figure for this unit that survives checking against CPW's own harvest and hunter counts, and we would rather say so than print a statewide average as though it were measured here.