Colorado Bighorn Sheep

Unit S39 (Mount Silverheels)

Colorado Hunting Guide — Bighorn Sheep

Unit S39 lies in Park and Summit counties. CPW bounds it by Swan River Rd. (Summit CR 6) and USFS 6 among others. CPW publishes no per-unit bighorn sheep success figure we can verify for this unit. Federal land covers about 65% of it. Check land status on a current map before you plan a route.

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65%

Public Land

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Answer a few questions about your tag, your season and your rig, and the Field Intelligence Report builds a print-ready Colorado Unit S39 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.

Bighorn Sheep guide

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Bighorn Sheep Hunting in Unit S39

Where to Find Bighorn Sheep in Unit S39

CPW's material on unit S39 stops at the boundary — there is no agency account of where its bighorn sheep 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 Park and Summit counties.

The lines of the unit: Swan River Rd. (Summit CR 6), USFS 6 and Continental Divide

CPW has unit S39 bounded on the north by Swan River Rd. (Summit CR 6), USFS 6, Continental Divide and North Fork of South Platte River; on the east by U.S. 285, Park CRs 77 and 23 (Turner Gulch Rd. or USFS 234); on the south by U.S. 24; on the west by U.S. 285 and Colo. 9. 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: Mount Silverheels, Bald Mountain and Hoosier Ridge

Named high points inside the unit include Mount Silverheels at 13,822 feet, Bald Mountain at 13,685 feet, Hoosier Ridge at 13,346 feet, Mount Guyot at 13,341 feet and Red Mountain at 13,231 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: Hoosier Pass, Boreas Pass and Purgatory Gulch

Below them sit Hoosier Pass at 11,534 feet, Boreas Pass at 11,495 feet, Purgatory Gulch at 11,212 feet, Little French Gulch at 11,126 feet and High Park at 11,039 feet. Those are the basins, parks and bottoms this unit has, and they are what you glass into from above. Reaching the edge of one before light beats reaching its middle at noon.

Public ground to start from: 63 Ranch STL, 63 Ranch SWA and Badger Basin STL

CPW lists 63 Ranch STL, 63 Ranch SWA, Badger Basin STL, Boreas Pass Ranch Hunting Easement and Cline Ranch 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 65% of the unit on top of those.

Water: Association Spring, Badger Spring and Harriman Spring

Named sources include Association Spring, Badger Spring and Harriman Spring. Nothing in the data says which of them run in autumn, so a scouting trip earns its fuel.

The herd this unit belongs to: RBS-05

CPW does not manage bighorn sheep unit by unit. It manages them as data analysis unit RBS-05, and unit S39 is one piece of it. The rest of RBS-05 is unit S12 and unit S78. 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.

Unit S39 terrain and land status

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

Named features inside the unit

Glass from: Mount Silverheels (13,822 ft), Bald Mountain (13,685 ft), Hoosier Ridge (13,346 ft), Mount Guyot (13,341 ft)

Holding ground: Black Powder Pass (12,168 ft), Horseshoe Basin (12,047 ft), Georgia Pass (11,589 ft), 63 Ranch STL, Badger Basin STL

Every one of these was tested against the unit polygon before it went on the map. They are starting points, not agency recommendations.

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How to Hunt Bighorn Sheep in Unit S39

CPW publishes no bighorn sheep success figure for unit S39 that we can tie to this unit alone, so we won't quote one. The plan: pick a glassing position across from the escape terrain and stay on it for hours, not minutes.

Glassing from Glacier Peak, Palmer Peak and Sheep Mountain

Take a position on one of Glacier Peak (12,838 ft), Palmer Peak (12,497 ft), Sheep Mountain (12,491 ft) and Beaver Ridge (12,417 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, 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. 2 mapped public entry points fall inside the unit, so decide which one you take before the morning you take it.

The way in: Summit CR 6, USFS 6 and U.S. 285

We have no road inventory for this unit, so the only routes we can name are the ones CPW draws the boundary with: Summit CR 6, USFS 6, U.S. 285, Park CRs 77 and USFS 234. 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. Park on the boundary and walk; a unit you can only enter from its rim rewards whoever is willing to leave the truck at the rim.

A first plan from the pins on this page

The map above marks Mount Silverheels, Bald Mountain, Hoosier Ridge and Mount Guyot as places to see from, and Black Powder Pass, Horseshoe Basin, Georgia Pass and 63 Ranch 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

616 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. We have no bighorn sheep 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

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.

Bighorn Sheep: 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.

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Bighorn Sheep Success Rates

CPW's 2023 harvest estimates carry no bighorn sheep row for unit S39 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.

Bighorn Sheep Draw Odds

Season	Tags	Applicants	Draw %	Pts Req
Rifle — 1st Season ewe only (resident)	2	35	5.7%	3
Rifle — 1st Season ewe only (nonresident)	0	0	0.0%	—
Rifle — 1st Season ram only (resident)	2	104	1.9%	3
Rifle — 1st Season ram only (nonresident)	0	0	0.0%	—
Rifle — 2nd Season ram only (resident)	2	77	2.6%	3
Rifle — 2nd Season ram only (nonresident)	0	0	0.0%	—
Archery — 1st Season ram only (resident)	1	15	6.7%	3
Archery — 1st Season ram only (nonresident)	0	0	0.0%	—

Data from 2021 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 bighorn sheep in unit S39, by hunt code, with resident and nonresident kept apart because the two draw from different licence pools:

SMS39O1A — Archery, 1st Season, Ram Only, resident: 15 applicants for 1 licences, 6.7% drawn, 3 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

Planning Notes

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Water

Arkansas River is the primary water source; carry water on steep day hunts in the canyon.

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Road Conditions

Highway 50 parallels the Arkansas River; side roads to canyon access points vary from paved to rough 4WD.

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Terrain Difficulty

Very difficult — near-vertical canyon walls with extreme route-finding demands; sheep hunting fitness required.

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Nearest Town

Cañon City is the nearest full-service town, positioned at the east end of the Royal Gorge / Arkansas River canyon.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Where is Colorado unit S39?

Unit S39 lies in Park and Summit counties, and CPW has it bounded on the north by Swan River Rd. (Summit CR 6), USFS 6, Continental Divide and North Fork of South Platte River; on the east by U.S. 285, Park CRs 77 and 23 (Turner Gulch Rd. or USFS 234); on the south by U.S. 24; on the west by U.S. 285 and Colo. 9.

What is the bighorn sheep success rate in unit S39?

CPW publishes no bighorn sheep success figure we can tie to unit S39 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 Sheep & Goat Hunting Brochure — Game Management Unit (GMU) Descriptions (pp. 16-17) — 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
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