Unit S59 (Derby Creek)

CPW's own harvest estimates put bighorn sheep success in unit S59 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: pick a glassing position across from the escape terrain and stay on it for hours, not minutes.

Glassing from Turret Peak, Castle Peak and Little Flat Tops

Take a position on one of Turret Peak (11,493 ft), Castle Peak (11,267 ft), Little Flat Tops (11,197 ft) and Sand Point (11,169 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. 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 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. 3 mapped public entry points fall inside the unit, so decide which one you take before the morning you take it.

Where unit S59 sits inside RBS-33

Across RBS-33, CPW's 2023 bighorn sheep success runs 100% in unit S59, 100% in unit S74 and 0% in unit S67. Nothing in the herd beat unit S59 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 959, Routt CRs 132 and Colo. 131

We have no road inventory for this unit, so the only routes we can name are the ones CPW draws the boundary with: USFS 959, Routt CRs 132 and Colo. 131. 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 Flat Top Mountain, Sheep Mountain, Derby Peak and Dome Peak as places to see from, and Mandall Pass, Tenmile Park, Lost Sheepherder Gulch and Gypsum Ponds 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 a day here costs you

875 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.