Unit 99

What CPW publishes for unit 99 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 Weld, Morgan and Adams counties. It runs to about 1,652 square miles.

The lines of the unit: I-76 Business/U.S. 34 spur, U.S. 34 and Colo. 71

CPW has unit 99 bounded on the north by I-76; New on the east by I-76 Business/U.S. 34 spur, U.S. 34 and Colo. 71; on the south by U.S. 36; on the west by Colo. 79 and 144th Ave.; on the south and west by Adams CR 25N, 152nd Ave. and I-76; on the west by I-76. That is a legal description, not a habitat map. 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: Bidwell Hill, Pleasant Ridge and Round Top

Named high points inside the unit include Bidwell Hill at 4,877 feet, Pleasant Ridge at 4,566 feet and Round Top at 4,518 feet. None carries a public-land flag we trust, so settle the ownership question before you plan to stand on one. Mule deer on open country use every fold and draw there is, and almost none of the flat.

Holding ground: Hay Gulch, Antelope Flats and Spring Gulch

Below them sit Hay Gulch at 4,810 feet, Antelope Flats at 4,798 feet, Spring Gulch at 5,112 feet, Cabin Gulch at 4,973 feet and Lone Tree Gulch at 4,914 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: Prospect STL, Rosener STL and South Roggen STL

CPW lists Prospect STL, Rosener STL, South Roggen STL, Antelope Flats STL and Banner Lakes 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.

Water: Poision Springs

The water inside the unit line comes to 285 mapped stream reaches, 41 lakes, 157 stock tanks and 2 springs. Named sources include Poision Springs. On ground with that many tanks, knowing which two or three hold water in your season is the most useful thing a scouting trip can tell you.

The herd this unit belongs to: D-54

CPW does not manage mule deer unit by unit. It manages them as data analysis unit D-54, and unit 99 is one piece of it. The rest of D-54 is unit 93, unit 97, unit 98 and unit 100. Read a neighbour in the same herd before you read the state average — the herd, not the unit line, is what the agency is steering.

CPW's own harvest estimates put mule deer success in unit 99 at archery 24% and rifle 37%. That is an ordinary spread for this country, and it rewards whoever scouted. The plan: glass the broken edges at first light, then sit still and keep glassing the same ground.

Glassing from Bidwell Hill, Pleasant Ridge and Round Top

Take a position on one of Bidwell Hill (4,877 ft), Pleasant Ridge (4,566 ft) and Round Top (4,518 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. 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, late-season hunts put bucks with doe groups and moving in daylight.

Water against feed

There are 285 mapped stream reaches and 157 tanks inside the unit, so water is rarely the limiting factor. Where water is everywhere, feed is what concentrates animals, so hunt the feed and treat water as a convenience. Check the ground around it before you commit an evening to it.

Timing the season: Sep, Oct, Nov

Season normals here run Sep 80/46°F, Oct 66/33°F and Nov 52/21°F. Warm afternoons compress the hunting into the first and last hour, and make meat care the day's real problem rather than the shot. Precipitation runs about 1.2 in. in Sep, 1.1 in. in Oct and 0.6 in. in Nov, and the graded gravel in this unit turns greasy wet.

Getting past the roads: I 76 and North Winview Road

I 76, CO 71 and US 36 are the paved frame, which is also where everyone else starts. 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 99 sits inside D-54

Across D-54, CPW's 2023 mule deer success runs 45% in unit 97, 42% in unit 98, 33% in unit 99, 33% in unit 100 and 25% in unit 93. That puts unit 99 behind 2 of the 4 other units in the herd. If the draw lets you choose, unit 97 carried the better number in the same herd — check its tag count before you read that as an easier hunt.

A first plan from the pins on this page

The map above marks Bidwell Hill, Pleasant Ridge and Round Top as places to see from, and Spring Gulch, Cabin Gulch, Antelope Flats STL and Banner Lakes 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 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.