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Idaho Mule Deer Elk

Unit 11A (Palouse Zone)

Idaho Hunting Guide — Mule Deer, Elk

Unit 11A lies in Clearwater, Idaho, Lewis and Nez Perce counties and covers about 824 square miles. Named ground inside it runs from 944 to 3,889 feet. Idaho Fish and Game's harvest estimates put deer success here as high as 33%. No federal land falls inside it, so every acre is a permission question. Check land status on a current map before you plan a route.

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0%
Public Land
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1,998–3,627 ft
Sampled elevation

Build your own PDF hunt guide for Unit 11A

Answer a few questions about your tag, your season and your rig, and the Field Intelligence Report builds a print-ready Idaho Unit 11A 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.

Free accounts get one report a year with the top spot unlocked. ProHunt Pro includes unlimited reports, all three spots, the full camp plan, and GPX/KML downloads for onX and Google Earth. Prefer to see one first? Open the builder and pick any unit.

Mule Deer Hunting in Unit 11A

Unit 11A lies in Clearwater, Idaho, Lewis and Nez Perce counties and covers about 824 square miles. Named ground inside it runs from 944 to 3,889 feet. Idaho Fish and Game's harvest estimates put deer success here as high as 33%. No federal land falls inside it, so every acre is a permission question. Check land status on a current map before you plan a route.

Where to Find Mule Deer in Unit 11A

Idaho Fish and Game's material on unit 11A stops at the boundary — there is no agency account of where its mule deer 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 Clearwater, Idaho, Lewis and Nez Perce counties. It runs to about 824 square miles.

How Idaho Fish and Game sets up mule deer hunting in unit 11A

Idaho Fish and Game keeps a general deer season page for unit 11A, and that page is where this year's dates and weapon rules live.

What bounds unit 11A

Idaho Fish and Game draws unit 11A in Clearwater, Idaho, Lewis and Nez Perce counties on a line that runs along U.S. 95 and State Highway 13, and past Clearwater River, written out corner by corner in its unit boundary descriptions. It tells you the shape of the unit and nothing about its inhabitants. 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: Big Butte, Twin Buttes and Central Ridge

Named high points inside the unit include Big Butte at 3,889 feet, Twin Buttes at 3,748 feet, Central Ridge at 3,267 feet, Angel Ridge at 3,038 feet and Red Rock Butte at 2,881 feet. None carries a public-land flag we trust, so settle the ownership question before you plan to stand on one. Mule deer bed on broken ground with a view and feed on the brush below it.

Holding ground: Nichols Canyon, Half Moon Draw and Doty Draw

Below them sit Nichols Canyon at 1,626 feet, Half Moon Draw at 1,512 feet, Doty Draw at 1,236 feet, Jameson Draw at 1,205 feet and Six Mile Canyon at 1,178 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.

Water in this unit

The water inside the unit line comes to 102 mapped stream reaches, 15 lakes and 73 stock tanks. Nothing in the data says which of them run in autumn, so a scouting trip earns its fuel.

Reading the land status

Our ownership read for this unit is approximate — it comes out as National Forest 60%, Private / Other 17%, BLM 15% and State Trust 8%, so treat it as a starting point and check a current land-status layer before you plan a route. Named ground inside unit 11A runs from 944 feet to 3,889 feet. Those are the heights of the features GNIS names, which bound the range from inside rather than measure it.

Unit 11A terrain and land status

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

The lay of it

  • 1,998–3,627 ft on a terrain sample , averaging 3,085 ft ; peaks can run higher.
  • 823.5 sq mi inside the boundary. Big enough that picking one drainage beats driving three.

Who owns the ground

  • National Forest — 60%
  • BLM — 15%
  • State Trust — 8%
  • Private / Other — 17%

Roughly 83% is public. Carry a land-status layer anyway — these are area percentages, not a map of where the boundaries fall.

Water on the ground

  • 73 tanks
  • 102 stream segments
  • 15 lakes

Counts from mapping data, so this is how many exist, not how many hold water in a dry year. Sitting water only pays where you find fresh tracks.

Named features inside the unit

Glass from: Big Butte (3,889 ft), Twin Buttes (3,748 ft), Central Ridge (3,267 ft)

Holding ground: Coldsprings Canyon (3,437 ft), Pickle Canyon (2,495 ft)

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 Mule Deer in Unit 11A

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Mule Deer Success Rates

Idaho Fish and Game's 2025 harvest estimates put deer success in unit 11A at 33% — 283 animals taken by 846 hunters. The hunter count is large enough for the percentage to mean something and small enough that a good or bad year still moves it. The figure is IDFG's result for deer in the unit, not for mule deer alone.

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 Idaho Fish and Game's current harvest estimates before you read a trend into them.

Mule Deer Draw Odds

SeasonTagsApplicantsDraw %Pts (n/p)
Controlled — 1st Drawing either sex (resident) 4513533.0% —
Controlled — 1st Drawing either sex (nonresident) 51729.0% —
Controlled — 2nd Drawing either sex (resident) 3615.0% —
Controlled — 2nd Drawing either sex (nonresident) 060.0% —

Data from 2025 draw results. Each row is one residency pool — read the label before the number. This agency publishes no point thresholds, so the Pts column stays blank and these are pool odds, not what a point total draws.

Open in Draw Odds Engine

Idaho Fish and Game's 2025 first drawing for mule deer in unit 11A, with residents and nonresidents kept apart because they draw from different tag pools:

  • Hunt 1004 — residents 135 applicants for 45 tags, 33% drawn; nonresidents 17 applicants for 5 tags, 29% drawn
  • Hunt 1005 — residents 131 applicants for 24 tags, 18% drawn; nonresidents 20 applicants for 1 tag, 5% drawn
  • Hunt 1100 — residents 109 applicants for 23 tags, 21% drawn; nonresidents 8 applicants for 2 tags, 25% drawn
  • Hunt 1069 — residents 5 applicants for 5 tags, 100% drawn

Idaho draws at random with no point system, so these are what that year happened to look like, not a requirement to build toward. Idaho Fish and Game reuses hunt numbers for different areas between years, so the figures are matched on the area each hunt had in 2025. Checked against Idaho Fish and Game's hunt planner draw results on 2026-06-09.

Unit Logistics & Expectations

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Frequently Asked Questions

Where is Idaho unit 11A?
Unit 11A lies in Clearwater, Idaho, Lewis and Nez Perce counties. Idaho Fish and Game draws unit 11A on a line that runs along U.S. 95 and State Highway 13, and past Clearwater River, written out corner by corner in its unit boundary descriptions. It covers about 824 square miles.
What is the mule deer success rate in unit 11A?
Idaho Fish and Game's 2025 harvest estimates put deer success in unit 11A at 33% across all manners of take. Those are the agency's own figures for this unit, not a statewide average.
Where do you stay and resupply for a unit 11A hunt?
The nearest services our logistics pipeline finds for unit 11A are at Nezperce, about 4 miles from the unit's centre, with Craigmont at about 7 miles. There are also 6 developed campgrounds in or beside the unit.
What is the elk success rate in unit 11A?
Idaho Fish and Game's 2025 harvest estimates put elk success in unit 11A at 27% across all manners of take. Those are the agency's own figures for this unit, not a statewide average.

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Sources & Verification

Every fact on this page is tied to a primary source below. Last fact-checked 2026-10-24.

  1. Idaho Big Game 2026 Seasons & Rules — Idaho Department of Fish and Game · supports: Game management unit boundary description, Counties the unit lies in, Controlled hunt numbers, tags and season dates · accessed 2026-10-24
  2. IDFG general deer season page for unit 11A — Idaho Department of Fish and Game · supports: Season structure for the unit · accessed 2026-10-24
  3. IDFG Hunt Planner — 2025 general hunt harvest statistics — Idaho Department of Fish and Game · supports: Harvest, hunters and percent success for deer in unit 11A · accessed 2026-10-19
  4. IDFG Hunt Planner — controlled hunt drawing odds — Idaho Department of Fish and Game · supports: Applicants, tags and percent drawn by hunt, year and residency · accessed 2026-06-09
  5. IDFG GameManagementUnits and ControlledHunts_All feature services — game management units and every species' controlled-hunt areas — Idaho Department of Fish and Game · supports: Mapped extent of the unit or hunt area, Which named ground falls inside its line · accessed 2026-10-24
  6. IDFG Palouse Zone elk tag limits — Idaho Department of Fish and Game · supports: Season structure for the unit · accessed 2026-10-24