Unit S11 (Collegiate North)

CPW's material on unit S11 stops at the boundary — there is no agency account of where its bighorn sheep live. The country below is verified; where to begin in it is our judgement, not the agency's. The unit lies in Lake, Chaffee, Pitkin and Gunnison counties.

The lines of the unit: Colo. 82, U.S. 24 and Chaffee CR 306

CPW has unit S11 bounded on the north by Colo. 82; on the east by U.S. 24; on the south by Chaffee CR 306 and Cottonwood Pass Rd. (USFS 209); on the west by USFS Rds. 742, 761 (Taylor Pass Rd.) and 7761, and Pitkin CRs 15E (Richmond Hill Rd.) and 14 (Aspen Mtn. Summer Rd.). It tells you the shape of the unit and nothing about its inhabitants. 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 Harvard, La Plata Peak and Collegiate Peaks

Named high points inside the unit include Mount Harvard at 14,377 feet, La Plata Peak at 14,316 feet, Collegiate Peaks at 14,283 feet, Mount Yale at 14,174 feet and Mount Belford at 14,170 feet. Several carry a public-land flag in our data, which makes them the first places to try for a view. Sheep need rock to escape into and will not stand far from it.

Holding ground: La Plata Basin, Browns Pass and Silver Basin

Below them sit La Plata Basin at 11,993 feet, Browns Pass at 11,981 feet, Silver Basin at 11,690 feet, Horn Fork Basin at 11,417 feet and Wet Gulch at 11,014 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: Clear Creek Reservoir SWA and Heckendorf SWA

CPW lists Clear Creek Reservoir SWA and Heckendorf 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 62% of the unit on top of those.

The herd this unit belongs to: RBS-12

CPW does not manage bighorn sheep unit by unit. It manages them as data analysis unit RBS-12, and unit S11 is one piece of it. The rest of RBS-12 is unit S17 and unit S66. 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's own harvest estimates put bighorn sheep success in unit S11 at 75% across all manners of take. A number like that comes from few tags and a short season, not from easy hunting. The plan: pick a glassing position across from the escape terrain and stay on it for hours, not minutes.

Glassing from Grizzly Peak, Huron Peak and Mount Hope

Take a position on one of Grizzly Peak (13,959 ft), Huron Peak (13,955 ft), Mount Hope (13,928 ft) and Ice Mountain (13,911 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, late hunts put rams with ewe groups on the same rock.

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.

Where unit S11 sits inside RBS-12

Across RBS-12, CPW's 2023 bighorn sheep success runs 80% in unit S66, 75% in unit S11 and 25% in unit S17. That puts unit S11 behind 1 of the 2 other units in the herd. If the draw lets you choose, unit S66 carried the better number in the same herd — check its tag count before you read that as an easier hunt.

The way in: Colo. 82, U.S. 24 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: Colo. 82, U.S. 24, Chaffee CR 306, USFS 209 and Pitkin CRs 15E. 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 Mount Harvard, La Plata Peak, Mount Yale and Mount Belford as places to see from, and Elkhead Pass, Church Basin, Missouri Basin and Clear Creek Reservoir SWA 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

466 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.