Unit 36B (Salmon Zone)
Idaho Hunting Guide — Mule Deer
Unit 36B lies in Custer County and covers about 585 square miles. Named ground inside it runs from 4,754 to 10,431 feet. Idaho Fish and Game's harvest estimates put deer success here as high as 32%. Federal land covers about 93% of it. Check land status on a current map before you plan a route.
Build your own PDF hunt guide for Unit 36B
Answer a few questions about your tag, your season and your rig, and the Field Intelligence Report builds a print-ready Idaho Unit 36B 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 36B
Unit 36B lies in Custer County and covers about 585 square miles. Named ground inside it runs from 4,754 to 10,431 feet. Idaho Fish and Game's harvest estimates put deer success here as high as 32%. Federal land covers about 93% of it. Check land status on a current map before you plan a route.
Where to Find Mule Deer in Unit 36B
Idaho Fish and Game's material on unit 36B 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 Custer County. It runs to about 585 square miles.
How Idaho Fish and Game sets up mule deer hunting in unit 36B
Idaho Fish and Game keeps a general deer season page for unit 36B, and that page is where this year's dates and weapon rules live.
The lines of the unit: Salmon River, Ellis Creek and Yankee Fork
Idaho Fish and Game describes unit 36B as that portion of Custer County within the Salmon River drainage on the north and west side of the Salmon River from and including the Ellis Creek drainage upstream to, but excluding, the Yankee Fork drainage. That is a legal description, not a habitat map. 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: White Mountain, Twin Peaks and Bald Mountain
Named high points inside the unit include White Mountain at 10,431 feet, Twin Peaks at 10,328 feet, Bald Mountain at 10,304 feet, Ramshorn Mountain at 9,890 feet and Woods Peak at 9,713 feet. Several carry a public-land flag in our data, which makes them the first places to try for a view. Mule deer bed on broken ground with a view and feed on the brush below it.
Holding ground: Happy Hollow, Willow Patch and Sams Gulch
Below them sit Happy Hollow at 7,382 feet, Willow Patch at 7,362 feet, Sams Gulch at 7,282 feet, Bull of the Woods Gulch at 7,212 feet and Eddy Basin at 7,196 feet. These are the folds worth watching, and the ones other hunters walk past on the way to somewhere steeper. Pick the one with the least road on its upwind side.
Water in this unit
The water inside the unit line comes to 86 mapped stream reaches, 14 lakes and 38 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 32% 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 36B runs from 4,754 feet to 10,431 feet — more than 4,000 feet between the named features alone, so the season you draw decides which part of it you hunt.
Unit 36B terrain and land status
Measured from the unit boundary, not from the agency write-up
The lay of it
- 5,278–9,588 ft on a terrain sample , averaging 7,157 ft ; peaks can run higher. That spread means you can hunt two seasons in one day — plan clothing for both ends.
- 585 sq mi inside the boundary.
Who owns the ground
- National Forest — 60%
- State Trust — 8%
- Private / Other — 32%
Roughly 68% is public. Carry a land-status layer anyway — these are area percentages, not a map of where the boundaries fall.
Water on the ground
- 38 tanks
- 86 stream segments
- 14 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: White Mountain (10,431 ft), Twin Peaks (10,328 ft), Bald Mountain (10,304 ft), Ramshorn Mountain (9,890 ft)
Holding ground: Povert Flat (9,492 ft), Juliette Basin (8,301 ft), Spruce Gulch (7,638 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 36B
Mule Deer Success Rates
Idaho Fish and Game's 2025 harvest estimates put deer success in unit 36B at 32% — 368 animals taken by 1,139 hunters. That is a lot of hunters in one unit, and the percentage is what it looks like after all of them have been through 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
| Season | Tags | Applicants | Draw % | Pts (n/p) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Controlled — 1st Drawing either sex (resident) | 5 | 521 | 1.0% | — |
| Controlled — 1st Drawing either sex (nonresident) | 0 | 82 | 0.0% | — |
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 EngineIdaho Fish and Game's 2025 first drawing for mule deer in unit 36B, with residents and nonresidents kept apart because they draw from different tag pools:
- Hunt 1027 — residents 521 applicants for 5 tags, 1% drawn; nonresidents 82 applicants for 0 tags, 0% 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
Frequently Asked Questions
Where is Idaho unit 36B?
What is the mule deer success rate in unit 36B?
Where do you stay and resupply for a unit 36B hunt?
Plan Your Hunt with ProHunt Pro
Unlock advanced tactics, the Tag-to-Trail Planner, AI hunt strategy assistant, and personalized camp and trip execution plans.
Upgrade to Pro — $49/yrSources & Verification
Every fact on this page is tied to a primary source below. Last fact-checked 2026-10-24.
- 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
- IDFG general deer season page for unit 36B — Idaho Department of Fish and Game · supports: Season structure for the unit · accessed 2026-10-24
- IDFG Hunt Planner — 2025 general hunt harvest statistics — Idaho Department of Fish and Game · supports: Harvest, hunters and percent success for deer in unit 36B · accessed 2026-10-19
- 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
- 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