Colorado Mule Deer Elk Black Bear

Unit 85

Colorado Hunting Guide — Mule Deer, Elk, Black Bear

Unit 85 lies in Huerfano and Las Animas counties. CPW bounds it by Colo. 69 and Colo. 12 among others. CPW's harvest estimates put mule deer success here as high as 54%. Federal land covers about 12% of it. Check land status on a current map before you plan a route.

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12%

Public Land

Build your own PDF hunt guide for Unit 85

Answer a few questions about your tag, your season and your rig, and the Field Intelligence Report builds a print-ready Colorado Unit 85 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.

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Mule Deer Hunting in Unit 85

Where to Find Mule Deer in Unit 85

CPW's material on unit 85 stops at the boundary — there is no agency account of where its mule deer live. The country below is verified; where to begin in it is our judgement, not the agency's. The unit lies in Huerfano and Las Animas counties.

The lines of the unit: Colo. 69, Colo. 12 and North

CPW has unit 85 bounded on the north by Colo. 69; on the east by I-25; on the south by Colo. 12 and North and West forks of Purgatoire River; on the west by Sangre de Cristo divide and Huerfano CRs 570, 572 (Pass Creek Rd.) & 555 (Muddy Creek Rd.). 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: Spanish Peaks, West Spanish Peak and Trinchera Peak

Named high points inside the unit include Spanish Peaks at 13,555 feet, West Spanish Peak at 13,555 feet, Trinchera Peak at 13,507 feet, Cuatro Peak at 13,477 feet and Mount Maxwell at 13,300 feet. Several carry a public-land flag in our data, which makes them the first places to try for a view. Mule deer bed on broken ground with a view and feed on the brush below it.

Holding ground: Cucharas Pass, Bear Canyon and North La Veta Pass

Below them sit Cucharas Pass at 9,947 feet, Bear Canyon at 9,811 feet, North La Veta Pass at 9,433 feet, La Veta Pass at 9,381 feet and Oliver Canyon at 9,010 feet. These are the folds worth watching, and the ones other hunters walk past on the way to somewhere steeper. Pick the one with the least road on its upwind side.

Public ground to start from: Aguilar TV Hill STL, Badito STL and Bear Creek STL

CPW lists Aguilar TV Hill STL, Badito STL, Bear Creek STL, Black Hawk STL and Guillermo Ranch 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 12% of the unit on top of those.

The herd this unit belongs to: D-32

CPW does not manage mule deer unit by unit. It manages them as data analysis unit D-32, and unit 85 is one piece of it. The rest of D-32 is unit 140 and unit 851. That matters twice over: the population objective and the licence numbers are set for the whole area, and the animals move across unit lines inside it without noticing them.

Unit 85 terrain and land status

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

Named features inside the unit

Glass from: Spanish Peaks (13,555 ft), Trinchera Peak (13,507 ft), Cuatro Peak (13,477 ft), East Spanish Peak (12,619 ft)

Holding ground: Cordova Pass (11,260 ft), Hells Canyon (10,309 ft), Bear Canyon (6,822 ft), Aguilar TV Hill STL, Badito 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 Mule Deer in Unit 85

CPW's own harvest estimates put mule deer success in unit 85 at archery 49% and rifle 54%. A number like that comes from few tags and a short season, not from easy hunting. The plan: glass the broken edges at first light, then sit still and keep glassing the same ground.

Glassing from Park Mountain, Mount Mestas and Raspberry Mountain

Take a position on one of Park Mountain (11,663 ft), Mount Mestas (11,554 ft), Raspberry Mountain (11,233 ft) and Rough Mountain (11,100 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. A tripod is worth more here than another hour of walking. On the rut hunts, late-season hunts put bucks with doe groups and moving in daylight.

Where unit 85 sits inside D-32

Across D-32, CPW's 2023 mule deer success runs 53% in unit 85, 51% in unit 851 and 29% in unit 140. Unit 85 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: Colo. 69, I-25 and Colo. 12

We have no road inventory for this unit, so the only routes we can name are the ones CPW draws the boundary with: Colo. 69, I-25, Colo. 12 and Huerfano CRs 570. 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 Spanish Peaks, Trinchera Peak, Cuatro Peak and East Spanish Peak as places to see from, and Cordova Pass, Hells Canyon, Bear Canyon and Aguilar TV Hill STL as ground to watch. Each pin is a named feature verified to fall inside the unit line, not a spot anyone has hunted. Take the pair you can reach on one road and treat the rest as a second trip.

What a day here costs you

1,174 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. Decide the night before where you will be at first light, and go there in the dark.

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.

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.

Pro Members Only

Unlock mule deer tactics for Unit 85

Upgrade to Pro — $49/yr

Mule Deer Success Rates

All manners of take53%

Archery49%

Rifle54%

CPW's 2023 harvest estimates put mule deer success in unit 85 at 53% — 444 animals taken by 833 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 — 49% success, 47 taken by 95 hunters
Rifle — 54% success, 373 taken by 693 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.

Mule Deer Draw Odds

Season	Tags	Applicants	Draw %	Pts Req
Rifle — 5th Season doe only (resident)	90	297	30.3%	—
Rifle — 5th Season doe only (nonresident)	1	27	3.7%	—
Rifle — 2nd Season buck only (resident)	206	868	23.7%	—
Rifle — 2nd Season buck only (nonresident)	68	241	28.2%	—
Rifle — 3rd Season buck only (resident)	168	834	20.1%	—
Rifle — 3rd Season buck only (nonresident)	52	194	26.8%	—
Rifle — 1st Season buck only (resident)	2	96	2.1%	28
Rifle — 1st Season buck only (nonresident)	0	0	0.0%	—
Rifle — 4th Season buck only (resident)	28	614	4.6%	3
Rifle — 4th Season buck only (nonresident)	10	136	7.4%	5
Archery — 1st Season buck only (resident)	101	301	33.6%	—
Archery — 1st Season buck only (nonresident)	35	187	18.7%	2
Muzzleloader — 1st Season buck only (resident)	39	126	31.0%	—
Muzzleloader — 1st Season buck only (nonresident)	13	73	17.8%	2

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

DM085O2R — Rifle, 2nd Season, Buck Only, resident: 868 applicants for 206 licences, 23.7% drawn, no preference points needed
DM085O3R — Rifle, 3rd Season, Buck Only, resident: 834 applicants for 168 licences, 20.1% drawn, no preference points needed
DM085O4R — Rifle, 4th Season, Buck Only, resident: 614 applicants for 28 licences, 4.6% drawn, 3 preference points needed
DM085O1A — Archery, 1st Season, Buck Only, resident: 301 applicants for 101 licences, 33.6% drawn, no 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 9 further code-and-residency combinations in the recap for this unit. Figures checked against CPW's own statistics pages on 2026-06-09.

Elk Hunting in Unit 85

Unit 85 lies in Huerfano and Las Animas counties. CPW bounds it by Colo. 69 and Colo. 12 among others. CPW's harvest estimates put elk success here as high as 23%. Federal land covers about 12% of it. Check land status on a current map before you plan a route.

Where to Find Elk in Unit 85

CPW draws an exact line around unit 85 and says nothing about where the elk stand inside it. 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 Huerfano and Las Animas counties.

The lines of the unit: Colo. 69, Colo. 12 and North

CPW has unit 85 bounded on the north by Colo. 69; on the east by I-25; on the south by Colo. 12 and North and West forks of Purgatoire River; on the west by Sangre de Cristo divide and Huerfano CRs 570, 572 (Pass Creek Rd.) & 555 (Muddy Creek Rd.). Read it as a frame, not as a hint about animals. 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: East Spanish Peak, Steep Mountain and Napoleon Peak

Named high points inside the unit include East Spanish Peak at 12,619 feet, Steep Mountain at 12,019 feet, Napoleon Peak at 11,854 feet, Park Mountain at 11,663 feet and Mount Mestas at 11,554 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: Herlick Canyon, Dry Gulch and Groomer Canyon

Below them sit Herlick Canyon at 8,645 feet, Dry Gulch at 8,526 feet, Groomer Canyon at 8,517 feet, Babcock Canyon at 8,409 feet and Coal Creek Flat at 8,325 feet. These are the folds worth watching, and the ones other hunters walk past on the way to somewhere steeper. Pick the one with the least road on its upwind side.

Public ground to start from: Little Sheep Mountain STL, Maitland STL and North Lake SWA

CPW lists Little Sheep Mountain STL, Maitland STL, North Lake SWA, Sakariason STL and Schultz Canyon 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 12% of the unit on top of those.

The herd this unit belongs to: E-33

CPW does not manage elk unit by unit. It manages them as data analysis unit E-33, and unit 85 is one piece of it. The rest of E-33 is unit 83, unit 140 and unit 851. That matters twice over: the population objective and the licence numbers are set for the whole area, and the animals move across unit lines inside it without noticing them.

Unit 85 terrain and land status

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

Named features inside the unit

Glass from: Spanish Peaks (13,555 ft), Trinchera Peak (13,507 ft), Cuatro Peak (13,477 ft), East Spanish Peak (12,619 ft)

Holding ground: Cordova Pass (11,260 ft), Hells Canyon (10,309 ft), Bear Canyon (6,822 ft), Aguilar TV Hill STL, Badito 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 85

CPW's own harvest estimates put elk success in unit 85 at archery 10%, muzzleloader 18% and rifle 23%. 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 Sheep Mountain, Silver Mountain and South White Peak

Take a position on one of Sheep Mountain (10,617 ft), Silver Mountain (10,505 ft), South White Peak (10,444 ft) and Boyd Mountain (10,370 ft) and be on it before light. Cold air slides downhill in the dark, so keep your scent out of the bowl you mean to watch; expect the thermals to turn uphill an hour after the sun reaches the slope. Glass the edges first, then the shaded timber, then the edges again as the light goes. On the rut hunts, September bugling works where you can get above a drainage and let the thermals carry sound downhill.

Where unit 85 sits inside E-33

Across E-33, CPW's 2023 elk success runs 34% in unit 851, 32% in unit 140, 26% in unit 83 and 18% in unit 85. Unit 85 is the lowest of them, so whatever drives success in this herd is happening somewhere else in it. If the draw lets you choose, unit 851 carried the better number in the same herd — check its tag count before you read that as an easier hunt.

The way in: Colo. 69, I-25 and Colo. 12

We have no road inventory for this unit, so the only routes we can name are the ones CPW draws the boundary with: Colo. 69, I-25, Colo. 12 and Huerfano CRs 570. 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 Spanish Peaks, Trinchera Peak, Cuatro Peak and East Spanish Peak as places to see from, and Cordova Pass, Hells Canyon, Bear Canyon and Aguilar TV Hill 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

1,174 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.

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.

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 elk tactics for Unit 85

Upgrade to Pro — $49/yr

Elk Success Rates

All manners of take18%

Archery10%

Muzzleloader18%

Rifle23%

CPW's 2023 harvest estimates put elk success in unit 85 at 18% — 528 animals taken by 2,931 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 — 10% success, 107 taken by 1,051 hunters
Muzzleloader — 18% success, 32 taken by 173 hunters
Rifle — 23% success, 389 taken by 1,708 hunters

Elk Draw Odds

Season	Tags	Applicants	Draw %	Pts Req
Muzzleloader — 1st Season either sex (resident)	84	186	45.2%	—
Muzzleloader — 1st Season either sex (nonresident)	29	152	19.1%	2
Muzzleloader — 1st Season cow only (resident)	65	116	56.0%	—
Muzzleloader — 1st Season cow only (nonresident)	5	9	55.6%	—
Rifle — 1st Season either sex (resident)	58	407	14.3%	1
Rifle — 1st Season either sex (nonresident)	16	158	10.1%	1
Rifle — 4th Season either sex (resident)	64	269	23.8%	—
Rifle — 4th Season either sex (nonresident)	47	106	44.3%	—
Rifle — 1st Season either sex (resident)	94	205	45.9%	—
Rifle — 1st Season either sex (nonresident)	113	141	80.1%	—
Rifle — 1st Season either sex (resident)	1	115	0.9%	29
Rifle — 1st Season either sex (nonresident)	0	0	0.0%	—
Rifle — 1st Season cow only (resident)	33	248	13.3%	—
Rifle — 1st Season cow only (nonresident)	1	16	6.3%	1
Rifle — 2nd Season cow only (resident)	33	240	13.8%	—
Rifle — 2nd Season cow only (nonresident)	9	51	17.6%	—
Rifle — 3rd Season cow only (resident)	43	157	27.4%	—
Rifle — 3rd Season cow only (nonresident)	5	29	17.2%	—
Rifle — 4th Season cow only (resident)	40	122	32.8%	—
Rifle — 4th Season cow only (nonresident)	7	34	20.6%	—
Rifle — 5th Season cow only (resident)	171	471	36.3%	—
Rifle — 5th Season cow only (nonresident)	18	44	40.9%	—
Rifle — 6th Season cow only (resident)	192	481	39.9%	—
Rifle — 6th Season cow only (nonresident)	14	21	66.7%	—
Rifle — 1st Season cow only (resident)	7	29	24.1%	4
Rifle — 1st Season cow only (nonresident)	0	0	0.0%	—
Rifle — 2nd Season cow only (resident)	2	46	4.3%	—
Archery — 1st Season either sex (resident)	0	0	0.0%	—
Archery — 1st Season either sex (nonresident)	567	718	79.0%	—
Archery — 1st Season cow only (resident)	0	0	0.0%	—
Archery — 1st Season cow only (nonresident)	2	26	7.7%	—

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 elk in unit 85, by hunt code, with resident and nonresident kept apart because the two draw from different licence pools:

EE085V1A — Archery, 1st Season, Either Sex, nonresident: 718 applicants for 567 licences, 79% drawn, no preference points needed
EF085P6R — Rifle, 6th Season, Cow Only, resident: 481 applicants for 192 licences, 39.9% drawn, no preference points needed
EF085P5R — Rifle, 5th Season, Cow Only, resident: 471 applicants for 171 licences, 36.3% drawn, no preference points needed
EE085O1R — Rifle, 1st Season, Either Sex, resident: 407 applicants for 58 licences, 14.3% drawn, 1 preference point 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.

Black Bear Hunting in Unit 85

Unit 85 lies in Huerfano and Las Animas counties. CPW bounds it by Colo. 69 and Colo. 12 among others. CPW publishes no per-unit black bear success figure we can verify for this unit. Federal land covers about 12% of it. Check land status on a current map before you plan a route.

Where to Find Black Bear in Unit 85

CPW's material on unit 85 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 Huerfano and Las Animas counties.

The lines of the unit: Colo. 69, Colo. 12 and North

CPW has unit 85 bounded on the north by Colo. 69; on the east by I-25; on the south by Colo. 12 and North and West forks of Purgatoire River; on the west by Sangre de Cristo divide and Huerfano CRs 570, 572 (Pass Creek Rd.) & 555 (Muddy Creek Rd.). Read it as a frame, not as a hint about animals. What it does give you is the way in: the rivers and highways you cross, and the divides that decide which drainage you end up in.

High ground inside the line: Raspberry Mountain, Rough Mountain and Sheep Mountain

Named high points inside the unit include Raspberry Mountain at 11,233 feet, Rough Mountain at 11,100 feet, Sheep Mountain at 10,617 feet, Silver Mountain at 10,505 feet and South White Peak at 10,444 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: Tracy Canyon, Hope Gulch and Price Canyon

Below them sit Tracy Canyon at 8,191 feet, Hope Gulch at 8,095 feet, Price Canyon at 8,081 feet, Sheep Canyon at 8,037 feet and Hicks Canyon at 8,036 feet. Those are the basins, parks and bottoms this unit has, and they are what you glass into from above. Pick the one with the least road on its upwind side.

Public ground to start from: South Gardner STL, South Middle Creek STL and Spanish Peaks SWA - Dochter Tract

CPW lists South Gardner STL, South Middle Creek STL, Spanish Peaks SWA - Dochter Tract, Spanish Peaks SWA - Oberosler Tract and Spanish Peaks SWA - Sakariason Tract 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 12% 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 85 is one piece of it. The rest of B-7 is unit 69, unit 82, unit 83, unit 84, 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 85 terrain and land status

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

Named features inside the unit

Glass from: Spanish Peaks (13,555 ft), Trinchera Peak (13,507 ft), Cuatro Peak (13,477 ft), East Spanish Peak (12,619 ft)

Holding ground: Cordova Pass (11,260 ft), Hells Canyon (10,309 ft), Bear Canyon (6,822 ft), Aguilar TV Hill STL, Badito 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 Black Bear in Unit 85

CPW publishes no black bear success figure for unit 85 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 Middle White Peak, North White Peak and Little Sheep Mountain

Take a position on one of Middle White Peak (10,321 ft), North White Peak (10,129 ft), Little Sheep Mountain (9,588 ft) and Kruger Mountain (9,462 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. A tripod is worth more here than another hour of walking. On the rut hunts, September hunts coincide with the feeding push before denning.

The way in: Colo. 69, I-25 and Colo. 12

We have no road inventory for this unit, so the only routes we can name are the ones CPW draws the boundary with: Colo. 69, I-25, Colo. 12 and Huerfano CRs 570. 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

What a day here costs you

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.

Black Bear Success Rates

CPW's 2023 harvest estimates carry no black bear row for unit 85 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 — 1st Season either sex (resident)	2	327	0.6%	21
Rifle — 1st Season either sex (nonresident)	0	0	0.0%	—
Rifle — 2nd Season either sex (resident)	1	47	2.1%	—

Data from 2021 draw results. Each row is one residency pool — read the label before the number.

Open in Draw Odds Engine

CPW's 2021 draw recap for black bear in unit 85, by hunt code, with resident and nonresident kept apart because the two draw from different licence pools:

BE085W1R — Rifle, 1st Season, Either Sex, resident: 327 applicants for 2 licences, 0.6% drawn, 21 preference points needed
BE085W2R — Rifle, 2nd Season, Either Sex, resident: 47 applicants for 1 licences, 2.1% drawn, no 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. Figures checked against CPW's own statistics pages on 2026-06-09.

Unit Logistics & Expectations

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Frequently Asked Questions

Where is Colorado unit 85?

Unit 85 lies in Huerfano and Las Animas counties, and CPW has it bounded on the north by Colo. 69; on the east by I-25; on the south by Colo. 12 and North and West forks of Purgatoire River; on the west by Sangre de Cristo divide and Huerfano CRs 570, 572 (Pass Creek Rd.) & 555 (Muddy Creek Rd.).

What is the mule deer success rate in unit 85?

CPW's 2023 harvest estimates put mule deer success in unit 85 at 53% across all manners of take, and archery 49% and rifle 54% by weapon. Those are the agency's own figures for this unit, not a statewide average.

What is the elk success rate in unit 85?

CPW's 2023 harvest estimates put elk success in unit 85 at 18% across all manners of take, and archery 10%, muzzleloader 18% and rifle 23% 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 85?

CPW publishes no black bear success figure we can tie to unit 85 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 Deer Harvest Estimates — Colorado Parks and Wildlife · supports: Percent success for mule deer in unit 85, 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 Elk Harvest Estimates — Colorado Parks and Wildlife · supports: Percent success for elk in unit 85, Hunters and harvest by weapon and season · accessed 2026-10-22