Colorado Bighorn Sheep

Unit S50 (Mount Maestas)

Colorado Hunting Guide — Bighorn Sheep

Unit S50 lies in Huerfano and Costilla counties. CPW bounds it by Huerfano CR 550 and Colo. 69 among others. CPW's harvest estimates put bighorn sheep success here as high as 50%. Federal land covers about 34% of it. Check land status on a current map before you plan a route.

View Draw Odds Colorado Hunting Guide

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34%

Public Land

Build your own PDF hunt guide for Unit S50

Answer a few questions about your tag, your season and your rig, and the Field Intelligence Report builds a print-ready Colorado Unit S50 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 S50

Where to Find Bighorn Sheep in Unit S50

What CPW publishes for unit S50 is a boundary, not a bighorn sheep map. The country below is verified; where to begin in it is our judgement, not the agency's. The unit lies in Huerfano and Costilla counties.

The lines of the unit: Huerfano CR 550, Colo. 69 and Huerfano River

CPW has unit S50 bounded on the north by Huerfano CR 550, Colo. 69 and Huerfano River; on the east by I-25; on the south by U.S. 160; on the west by Pass Creek 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 Mestas, Rough Mountain and Sheep Mountain

Named high points inside the unit include Mount Mestas at 11,554 feet, Rough Mountain at 11,100 feet, Sheep Mountain at 10,617 feet, Silver Mountain at 10,505 feet and Little Sheep Mountain at 9,588 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: Sangre de Cristo Pass, McDowell Park and Long Saddle

Below them sit Sangre de Cristo Pass at 9,460 feet, McDowell Park at 9,117 feet, Long Saddle at 6,361 feet and Bells Gap at 6,346 feet. Those are the basins, parks and bottoms this unit has, and they are what you glass into from above. Pick the one with the least road on its upwind side.

Public ground to start from: Badito STL, Guillermo Ranch STL and Little Sheep Mountain STL

CPW lists Badito STL, Guillermo Ranch STL, Little Sheep Mountain STL, Maitland STL and South Gardner 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 34% of the unit on top of those.

The herd this unit belongs to: RBS-15

CPW does not manage bighorn sheep unit by unit. It manages them as data analysis unit RBS-15, and unit S50 is one piece of it. CPW puts no other unit in RBS-15, so this unit carries the herd on its own. 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.

Unit S50 terrain and land status

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

Named features inside the unit

Glass from: Mount Mestas (11,554 ft), Rough Mountain (11,100 ft), Sheep Mountain (10,617 ft), Silver Mountain (10,505 ft)

Holding ground: Badito STL, Guillermo Ranch STL, Little Sheep Mountain STL, Maitland STL

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

How to Hunt Bighorn Sheep in Unit S50

CPW's own harvest estimates put bighorn sheep success in unit S50 at 50% 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 Mount Mestas, Rough Mountain and Sheep Mountain

Take a position on one of Mount Mestas (11,554 ft), Rough Mountain (11,100 ft), Sheep Mountain (10,617 ft) and Silver Mountain (10,505 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. A tripod is worth more here than another hour of walking. On the rut hunts, late hunts put rams with ewe groups on the same rock.

The way in: Huerfano CR 550, Colo. 69 and I-25

We have no road inventory for this unit, so the only routes we can name are the ones CPW draws the boundary with: Huerfano CR 550, Colo. 69, I-25 and U.S. 160. 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 Mestas, Rough Mountain, Sheep Mountain and Silver Mountain as places to see from, and Badito STL, Guillermo Ranch STL, Little Sheep Mountain STL and Maitland STL 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

297 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. Leave the truck earlier than you want to and you will hunt the best half-hour of the day.

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.

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

All manners of take50%

CPW's 2023 harvest estimates put bighorn sheep success in unit S50 at 50% — 1 animals taken by 2 hunters. On a sample that small the percentage moves several points with one animal, so read the hunter count beside it.

These are the agency's own printed figures for this unit, not a modelled estimate and not a state average. They describe one season, so check CPW's current harvest estimates before you read a trend into them.

Bighorn Sheep Draw Odds

Season	Tags	Applicants	Draw %	Pts Req
Rifle — 1st Season ram only (resident)	1	56	1.8%	3
Rifle — 1st Season ram only (nonresident)	0	0	0.0%	—

Data from 2026 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 S50, by hunt code, with resident and nonresident kept apart because the two draw from different licence pools:

SMS50O1R — Rifle, 1st Season, Ram Only, resident: 56 applicants for 1 licences, 1.8% 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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Camp Sites

Backcountry camp required for effective sheep hunting. Dispersed camping on USFS/BLM.

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Road Conditions

Trailhead access varies. Expect significant hiking from any road end.

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Terrain Difficulty

Extreme. Technical sheep terrain requiring excellent physical conditioning.

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Hunting Pressure

Very low. Five tags over three years means near-zero other hunters.

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Weather

Variable with elevation. Alpine areas can see snow in September-October.

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Cell Service

Poor to none in sheep terrain.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Where is Colorado unit S50?

Unit S50 lies in Huerfano and Costilla counties, and CPW has it bounded on the north by Huerfano CR 550, Colo. 69 and Huerfano River; on the east by I-25; on the south by U.S. 160; on the west by Pass Creek Rd.

What is the bighorn sheep success rate in unit S50?

CPW's 2023 harvest estimates put bighorn sheep success in unit S50 at 50% across all manners of take. Those are the agency's own figures for this unit, not a statewide average.

Free Hunt Planning Tools

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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
2023 Colorado Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep Harvest Estimates — Colorado Parks and Wildlife · supports: Percent success for bighorn sheep in unit S50, Hunters and harvest by weapon and season · 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