Unit 86

What CPW publishes for unit 86 is a boundary, not a black bear map. 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 Fremont, Custer and Chaffee counties.

The lines of the unit: U.S. 50, South Arkansas River and Arkansas River

CPW has unit 86 bounded on the north by U.S. 50, South Arkansas River and Arkansas River; on the east by Colo. 69 and Fremont CR 27; on the south by Huerfano- Custer Co. line; on the west by Sangre De Cristo divide 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.

High ground inside the line: Broken Hand Peak, Eureka Mountain and Horn Peak

Named high points inside the unit include Broken Hand Peak at 13,541 feet, Eureka Mountain at 13,452 feet, Horn Peak at 13,401 feet, Spread Eagle Peak at 13,376 feet and Lakes Peak at 13,350 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: Moss Gulch, Oak Draw and Porter Gulch

Below them sit Moss Gulch at 8,277 feet, Oak Draw at 8,155 feet, Porter Gulch at 8,040 feet, Stover Gulch at 8,026 feet and Wet Mountain Valley at 7,969 feet. That is the low country of the unit — the ground animals drop into when they are pushed or when the weather turns. Work out which of them you can see from one position before you pick a camp.

Public ground to start from: Foster Gulch STL, Froze Creek STL and McCoy Gulch STL

CPW lists Foster Gulch STL, Froze Creek STL, McCoy Gulch STL, Middle Taylor Creek SWA and Short Creek Baldy 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 55% 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 86 is one piece of it. The rest of B-7 is unit 69, unit 82, unit 83, unit 84, unit 85, unit 140, unit 691 and unit 851 and 1 more. 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.

CPW publishes no black bear success figure for unit 86 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 Thirsty Peak, Eagle Peak and Little Horn Peak

Take a position on one of Thirsty Peak (13,181 ft), Eagle Peak (13,171 ft), Little Horn Peak (13,124 ft) and Bushnell Peak (13,072 ft) and be on it before light. In the dark the air runs downhill. Pick an approach that doesn't send it into the country you want to see, and plan to move once the slope warms. 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

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

The way in: U.S. 50, Colo. 69 and Fremont CR 27

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, Colo. 69, Fremont CR 27 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 Humboldt Peak, Mount Adams, Rito Alto Peak and Electric Peak as places to see from, and Hermit Pass, Venable Pass, Cloverdale Basin and Foster Gulch 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

496 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. 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.