Unit G02 (Mount Princeton)

CPW draws an exact line around unit G02 and says nothing about where the mountain goat stand inside it. 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 Chaffee and Gunnison counties.

The lines of the unit: Cottonwood Pass Rd. (USFS 209, USFS 306 and Chaffee CR 306)

CPW has unit G02 bounded on the north by Cottonwood Pass Rd. (USFS 209, USFS 306 and Chaffee CR 306); on the east by U.S. 24 and U.S. 285; on the south by Colo. 162, USFS 211 and USFS 267; on the west by USFS 765 and USFS 742. 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: Mount Princeton, Emma Burr Mountain and Jones Mountain

Named high points inside the unit include Mount Princeton at 14,179 feet, Emma Burr Mountain at 13,518 feet, Jones Mountain at 13,199 feet, Gladstone Ridge at 13,195 feet and Mount Kreutzer at 13,095 feet. Several carry a public-land flag in our data, which makes them the first places to try for a view. Goats live above the trees on cliff and talus and come down only when weather makes them.

Holding ground: Grassy Gulch, Morgans Gulch and Jonesy Gulch

Below them sit Grassy Gulch at 10,861 feet, Morgans Gulch at 10,734 feet, Jonesy Gulch at 10,521 feet, Green Timber Gulch at 10,267 feet and Grizzly Gulch at 9,924 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: Maxwell Park STL

CPW lists Maxwell Park 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 87% of the unit on top of those.

The herd this unit belongs to: MG-01

CPW does not manage mountain goat unit by unit. It manages them as data analysis unit MG-01, and unit G02 is one piece of it. The rest of MG-01 is unit G1, unit G3 and unit G14. 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.

CPW's own harvest estimates put mountain goat success in unit G02 at 100% across all manners of take. A number like that comes from few tags and a short season, not from easy hunting. The plan: glass from across the basin, judge the climb honestly, and decide whether a hit animal could be recovered.

Glassing from Bald Mountain, Chalk Cliffs and Mount Princeton

Take a position on one of Bald Mountain (9,819 ft), Chalk Cliffs (9,319 ft), Mount Princeton (14,179 ft) and Emma Burr Mountain (13,518 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. Give a basin forty minutes before you decide it is empty. On the rut hunts, early hunts find goats higher and later hunts find them pushed down by snow.

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 G02 sits inside MG-01

Across MG-01, CPW's 2023 mountain goat success runs 100% in unit G2, 90% in unit G3 and 43% in unit G1. Nothing in the herd beat unit G02 on that measure and one unit matched it, which on a hunt this small says more about tag numbers than about 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: USFS 209, USFS 306 and Chaffee CR 306

We have no road inventory for this unit, so the only routes we can name are the ones CPW draws the boundary with: USFS 209, USFS 306, Chaffee CR 306, U.S. 24 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 Mount Princeton, Emma Burr Mountain, Jones Mountain and Gladstone Ridge as places to see from, and Big Grassy, Cottonwood Pass, Garden Basin and Chalk Cliffs SFU 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

155 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.