Colorado Elk Black Bear

Unit 84

Colorado Hunting Guide — Elk, Black Bear

Unit 84 lies in Custer, Fremont, Huerfano and Pueblo counties. CPW bounds it by U.S. 50 and Colo. 1 among others. CPW's harvest estimates put elk success here as high as 47%. Federal land covers about 22% of it. Check land status on a current map before you plan a route.

View Draw Odds Colorado Hunting Guide

🏔️

22%

Public Land

Build your own PDF hunt guide for Unit 84

Answer a few questions about your tag, your season and your rig, and the Field Intelligence Report builds a print-ready Colorado Unit 84 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 Black Bear guide

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 84

Where to Find Elk in Unit 84

CPW draws an exact line around unit 84 and says nothing about where the elk stand inside it. The country below is verified; where to begin in it is our judgement, not the agency's. The unit lies in Custer, Fremont, Huerfano and Pueblo counties.

The lines of the unit: U.S. 50, Colo. 1 and Colo. 69

CPW has unit 84 bounded on the north by U.S. 50; on the east by I-25 and Colo. 1; on the south by Colo. 69; on the west by Colo. 96 & 67. That is a legal description, not a habitat map. 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: Greenhorn Mountain, North Peak and Saint Charles Peak

Named high points inside the unit include Greenhorn Mountain at 12,337 feet, North Peak at 12,223 feet, Saint Charles Peak at 11,786 feet, Deer Peak at 11,569 feet and Wixson Mountain at 11,093 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: Roger Gulch, Junkins Park and Deadman Gulch

Below them sit Roger Gulch at 9,835 feet, Junkins Park at 9,696 feet, Deadman Gulch at 9,532 feet, Elmer Canyon at 9,495 feet and North Deadman Gulch at 9,483 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.

Public ground to start from: Black Mountain STL, Blue Spring STL and Lake Beckwith SWA

CPW lists Black Mountain STL, Blue Spring STL, Lake Beckwith SWA, Lake Pueblo SWA and Rosita 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 22% of the unit on top of those.

The herd this unit belongs to: E-28

CPW does not manage elk unit by unit. It manages them as data analysis unit E-28, and unit 84 is one piece of it. The rest of E-28 is unit 69. 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.

Unit 84 terrain and land status

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

Named features inside the unit

Glass from: Greenhorn Mountain (12,337 ft), North Peak (12,223 ft), Saint Charles Peak (11,786 ft), Deer Peak (11,569 ft)

Holding ground: Antelope Park (10,251 ft), Mammoth Gulch (10,113 ft), Lilly Park (9,961 ft), Black Mountain STL, Blue Spring 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 84

CPW's own harvest estimates put elk success in unit 84 at archery 36%, muzzleloader 22% and rifle 47%. That is an ordinary spread for this country, and it rewards whoever scouted. 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 Antelope Mountain, Wet Mountains and Arkansas Mountain

Take a position on one of Antelope Mountain (10,741 ft), Wet Mountains (10,707 ft), Arkansas Mountain (10,565 ft) and Rudolph Mountain (10,326 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, September bugling works where you can get above a drainage and let the thermals carry sound downhill.

Getting past the roads

There is little true four-wheel-drive road here, so distance from the gravel is the only thing separating you from the next hunter. 2 mapped public entry points fall inside the unit, so decide which one you take before the morning you take it.

Where unit 84 sits inside E-28

Across E-28, CPW's 2023 elk success runs 44% in unit 84 and 27% in unit 69. Unit 84 is the best of them on that measure, which usually means fewer tags rather than more animals. Success inside one herd moves with tag numbers and season length as much as with animals, so read the licence count alongside it.

The way in: U.S. 50, I-25 and Colo. 1

We have no road inventory for this unit, so the only routes we can name are the ones CPW draws the boundary with: U.S. 50, I-25, Colo. 1, Colo. 69 and Colo. 96. 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 Greenhorn Mountain, North Peak, Saint Charles Peak and Deer Peak as places to see from, and Antelope Park, Mammoth Gulch, Lilly Park and Black Mountain STL as ground to watch. Each pin is a named feature verified to fall inside the unit line, not a spot anyone has hunted. Walk between two of them rather than driving between four, and you will learn more in a day.

What a day here costs you

1,280 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. Leave the truck earlier than you want to and you will hunt the best half-hour of the day.

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.

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.

Pro Members Only

Unlock tactics for Unit 84

Upgrade to Pro — $49/yr

Elk Success Rates

All manners of take44%

Archery36%

Muzzleloader22%

Rifle47%

CPW's 2023 harvest estimates put elk success in unit 84 at 44% — 292 animals taken by 667 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 — 36% success, 30 taken by 83 hunters
Muzzleloader — 22% success, 13 taken by 58 hunters
Rifle — 47% success, 249 taken by 525 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)	1	255	0.4%	32
Rifle — 1st Season either sex (nonresident)	0	0	0.0%	—
Rifle — 2nd Season either sex (resident)	3	140	2.1%	26
Rifle — 2nd Season either sex (nonresident)	0	0	0.0%	—
Rifle — 1st Season cow only (resident)	5	63	7.9%	6
Rifle — 1st Season cow only (nonresident)	0	0	0.0%	—
Rifle — 2nd Season cow only (resident)	9	55	16.4%	4
Rifle — 2nd Season cow only (nonresident)	0	0	0.0%	—
Rifle — 3rd Season cow only (resident)	5	67	7.5%	5
Rifle — 3rd Season cow only (nonresident)	0	0	0.0%	—
Rifle — 5th Season cow only (resident)	5	87	5.7%	5
Rifle — 5th Season cow only (nonresident)	0	0	0.0%	—
Rifle — 4th Season cow only (resident)	6	39	15.4%	2
Rifle — 4th Season cow only (nonresident)	0	0	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 elk in unit 84, by hunt code, with resident and nonresident kept apart because the two draw from different licence pools:

EE084W1R — Rifle, 1st Season, Either Sex, resident: 255 applicants for 1 licences, 0.4% drawn, 32 preference points needed
EE084W2R — Rifle, 2nd Season, Either Sex, resident: 140 applicants for 3 licences, 2.1% drawn, 26 preference points needed
EF084W5R — Rifle, 5th Season, Cow Only, resident: 87 applicants for 5 licences, 5.7% drawn, 5 preference points needed
EF084W3R — Rifle, 3rd Season, Cow Only, resident: 67 applicants for 5 licences, 7.5% drawn, 5 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 3 further code-and-residency combinations in the recap for this unit. Figures checked against CPW's own statistics pages on 2026-06-09.

Black Bear Hunting in Unit 84

Unit 84 lies in Custer, Fremont, Huerfano and Pueblo counties. CPW bounds it by U.S. 50 and Colo. 1 among others. CPW publishes no per-unit black bear success figure we can verify for this unit. Federal land covers about 22% of it. Check land status on a current map before you plan a route.

Where to Find Black Bear in Unit 84

CPW's material on unit 84 stops at the boundary — there is no agency account of where its black bear 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 Custer, Fremont, Huerfano and Pueblo counties.

The lines of the unit: U.S. 50, Colo. 1 and Colo. 69

High ground inside the line: Round Mountain, Sperry Mountain and Gobblers Knob

Named high points inside the unit include Round Mountain at 11,024 feet, Sperry Mountain at 10,910 feet, Gobblers Knob at 10,748 feet, Antelope Mountain at 10,741 feet and Wet Mountains at 10,707 feet. Several carry a public-land flag in our data, which makes them the first places to try for a view. Bears follow food, which in early autumn means oakbrush, chokecherry and serviceberry on south slopes.

Holding ground: Bigelow Divide, Wixson Divide and Greenhill Divide

Below them sit Bigelow Divide at 9,398 feet, Wixson Divide at 9,382 feet, Greenhill Divide at 9,352 feet, Rushmer Canyon at 9,295 feet and DeWeese Plateau at 9,284 feet. These are the folds worth watching, and the ones other hunters walk past on the way to somewhere steeper. Reaching the edge of one before light beats reaching its middle at noon.

Public ground to start from: Upper Red Cliff Ranch SWA, Black Mountain STL and Blue Spring STL

CPW lists Upper Red Cliff Ranch SWA, Black Mountain STL, Blue Spring STL, Lake Beckwith SWA and Lake Pueblo 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 22% of the unit on top of those.

The herd this unit belongs to: B-7

CPW does not manage black bear unit by unit. It manages them as data analysis unit B-7, and unit 84 is one piece of it. The rest of B-7 is unit 69, unit 82, unit 83, unit 85, unit 86, unit 140, unit 691 and unit 851 and 1 more. 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.

Unit 84 terrain and land status

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

Named features inside the unit

Glass from: Greenhorn Mountain (12,337 ft), North Peak (12,223 ft), Saint Charles Peak (11,786 ft), Deer Peak (11,569 ft)

Holding ground: Antelope Park (10,251 ft), Mammoth Gulch (10,113 ft), Lilly Park (9,961 ft), Black Mountain STL, Blue Spring STL

Every one of these was tested against the unit polygon before it went on the map. They are starting points, not agency recommendations.

Pro Members Only

Unlock Unit 84 bear locations

Upgrade to Pro — $49/yr

How to Hunt Black Bear in Unit 84

CPW publishes no black bear success figure for unit 84 that we can tie to this unit alone, so we won't quote one. The plan: find the berry crop first, then glass it morning and evening until something is in it.

Glassing from Piltz Mountain, Round Top Mountain and Rosita Hills

Take a position on one of Piltz Mountain (10,259 ft), Round Top Mountain (10,156 ft), Rosita Hills (9,672 ft) and Mount Robinson (9,672 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. Work the glass in strips and go back over ground you already covered — animals appear in country you looked at ten minutes ago. On the rut hunts, September hunts coincide with the feeding push before denning.

Getting past the roads

The way in: U.S. 50, I-25 and Colo. 1

We have no road inventory for this unit, so the only routes we can name are the ones CPW draws the boundary with: U.S. 50, I-25, Colo. 1, Colo. 69 and Colo. 96. 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. Pick the edge nearest the country you mean to hunt and work in from it on foot, rather than driving the perimeter looking for a way through.

A first plan from the pins on this page

The map above marks Greenhorn Mountain, North Peak, Saint Charles Peak and Deer Peak as places to see from, and Antelope Park, Mammoth Gulch, Lilly Park and Black Mountain 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 a day here costs you

1,280 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

Some of the ground named above carries no land-status flag we trust, so check ownership on a current layer before you hunt it. We have no black bear 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.

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.

Black 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.

Pro Members Only

Unlock Unit 84 bear tactics

Upgrade to Pro — $49/yr

Black Bear Success Rates

CPW's 2023 harvest estimates carry no black bear row for unit 84 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.

Black Bear Draw Odds

Season	Tags	Applicants	Draw %	Pts Req
Rifle — 5th Season either sex (resident)	35	41	85.4%	—
Rifle — 5th Season either sex (nonresident)	12	14	85.7%	—

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

BE084P5R — Rifle, 5th Season, Either Sex, resident: 41 applicants for 35 licences, 85.4% drawn, no preference points needed
BE084P5R — Rifle, 5th Season, Either Sex, nonresident: 14 applicants for 12 licences, 85.7% drawn, no preference points needed

No preference points were needed for the codes above in that year, which can change the moment applicant numbers do. Figures checked against CPW's own statistics pages on 2026-06-09.

Unit Logistics & Expectations

Pro Members Only

Unlock logistics for Unit 84

Upgrade to Pro — $49/yr

Frequently Asked Questions

Where is Colorado unit 84?

Unit 84 lies in Custer, Fremont, Huerfano and Pueblo counties, and CPW has it bounded on the north by U.S. 50; on the east by I-25 and Colo. 1; on the south by Colo. 69; on the west by Colo. 96 & 67.

What is the elk success rate in unit 84?

CPW's 2023 harvest estimates put elk success in unit 84 at 44% across all manners of take, and archery 36%, muzzleloader 22% and rifle 47% 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 84?

CPW publishes no black bear success figure we can tie to unit 84 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.

Free Hunt Planning Tools

🎰 Colorado Draw Odds Unit-level tag success rates 📅 Application Timeline Deadlines for all 9 states 🦌 Rut Forecast Peak rut timing by species 💰 Hunt Cost Calculator Budget your entire hunt

Plan Your Hunt with ProHunt Pro

Unlock advanced tactics, the Tag-to-Trail Planner, AI hunt strategy assistant, and personalized camp and trip execution plans.

Upgrade to Pro — $49/yr

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 84, 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