Idaho Elk Moose

Unit 60A (Island Park Zone)

Idaho Hunting Guide — Elk, Moose

Unit 60A lies in Clark, Fremont, Jefferson and Madison counties and covers about 919 square miles. Named ground inside it runs from 4,896 to 6,546 feet. Idaho Fish and Game's harvest estimates put elk success here as high as 0%. Federal land covers about 34% of it. Check land status on a current map before you plan a route.

View Draw Odds Idaho Hunting Guide

🏔️

34%

Public Land

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4,834–6,396 ft

Sampled elevation

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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 Idaho Unit 60A 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.

Elk guide Moose guide

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Elk Hunting in Unit 60A

Where to Find Elk in Unit 60A

Idaho Fish and Game's material on unit 60A stops at the boundary — there is no agency account of where its elk 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 Clark, Fremont, Jefferson and Madison counties. It runs to about 919 square miles.

How Idaho Fish and Game sets up elk hunting in unit 60A

Idaho Fish and Game runs its general elk seasons by elk management zone rather than unit by unit, and puts unit 60A in the Island Park Zone, so the zone's tag rules are the ones that apply here.

The lines of the unit: Split Butte, Red Creek and Sand Creek

Idaho Fish and Game draws unit 60A in Clark, Fremont, Jefferson and Madison counties on a line that runs along Interstate 15, U.S. 191-20 and State Highway 33, and past Split Butte, Red Creek and Sand Creek, 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: Crater Butte, Pine Butte and Cinder Butte

Named high points inside the unit include Crater Butte at 6,546 feet, Pine Butte at 6,544 feet, Cinder Butte at 6,407 feet, Split Butte at 6,224 feet and West Butte at 6,184 feet. Several carry a public-land flag in our data, which makes them the first places to try for a view. Elk on low, open country live on distance and visibility, so they see you first.

Holding ground: Hansen Basin

Below them sit Hansen Basin at 5,798 feet. That is the low country of the unit — the ground animals drop into when they are pushed or when the weather turns. Pick the one with the least road on its upwind side.

Water in this unit

The water inside the unit line comes to 54 mapped stream reaches, 12 lakes and 71 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 Private / Other 85% and BLM 15%, so treat it as a starting point and check a current land-status layer before you plan a route. Named ground inside unit 60A runs from 4,896 feet to 6,546 feet. Those are the heights of the features GNIS names, which bound the range from inside rather than measure it.

Unit 60A terrain and land status

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

The lay of it

4,834–6,396 ft on a terrain sample , averaging 5,384 ft ; peaks can run higher.
918.6 sq mi inside the boundary. Big enough that picking one drainage beats driving three.

Who owns the ground

BLM — 15%
Private / Other — 85%

Roughly 15% is public. Carry a land-status layer anyway — these are area percentages, not a map of where the boundaries fall.

Water on the ground

71 tanks
54 stream segments
12 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: Cinder Butte (6,407 ft), Split Butte (6,224 ft), West Butte (6,184 ft), North Junipers (5,764 ft)

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 Elk in Unit 60A

Idaho Fish and Game's own harvest estimates put elk success in unit 60A at 0% across all manners of take. A number that low means most hunters here go home empty, and the ones who don't put the days in first. The plan: find the feed, find the timber it backs onto, then watch the seam between them at the edges of the day.

Glassing from Big Grassy Ridge, South Junipers and North Junipers

Take a position on one of Big Grassy Ridge (5,875 ft), South Junipers (5,867 ft), North Junipers (5,764 ft) and Bed Springs Butte (5,707 ft) and be on it before light. Work the morning with the air falling away from you, then accept that by mid-morning the wind has reversed and the plan has to change with it. Glass the edges first, then the shaded timber, then the edges again as the light goes. On the rut hunts, September bugling works where you can get above a drainage and let the thermals carry sound downhill.

Water against feed

There are 54 mapped stream reaches and 71 tanks inside the unit, so water is rarely the limiting factor. Where water is everywhere, feed is what concentrates animals, so hunt the feed and treat water as a convenience. A tank with no tracks is a tank with no reason to sit on it.

Timing the season: Sep, Oct, Nov

Season normals here run Sep 75/42°F, Oct 59/32°F and Nov 42/21°F. Warm afternoons compress the hunting into the first and last hour, and make meat care the day's real problem rather than the shot. Precipitation runs about 0.9 in. in Sep, 1 in. in Oct and 0.8 in. in Nov, and the graded gravel in this unit turns greasy wet.

Getting past the roads: I 15 and Sand Creek Road

I 15, ID 33 and US 20 are the paved frame, which is also where everyone else starts. There is little true four-wheel-drive road here, so distance from the gravel is the only thing separating you from the next hunter.

A first plan from the pins on this page

The map above marks Cinder Butte, Split Butte, West Butte and North Junipers as places to see from, and I 15 @ unit boundary, Parker and Dubois 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

919 square miles is more country than a week will cover, so pick one drainage and learn it rather than driving the unit. The nearest services are at Parker, about 13 miles out, which is an hour of your morning each way if you sleep there. 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.

Getting in and staying out: unit 60A

Named routes and what they need

I 15 — 40.9 mi · Paved (all rigs)
Sand Creek Road — 9 mi · Graded gravel (2WD / small trailer)
ID 33 — 8.3 mi · Paved (all rigs)
US 20 — 7.9 mi · Paved (all rigs)
North 2500 East — 5.7 mi · Graded gravel (2WD / small trailer)
Spencer-Kilgore Road — 5.2 mi · Graded gravel (2WD / small trailer)

Ratings come from road data, not from a drive this season. Check current conditions with the managing office before you commit a trailer.

Nearest services

Parker — 13 mi · no services listed
Dubois — 15 mi · no services listed
St. Anthony — 15.8 mi · no services listed
Sugar City — 17.8 mi · fuel, groceries
Rexburg — 19.7 mi · fuel, groceries, lodging

Developed camps

Sand Hills Resort RV Campground
Egin Lakes Campground/Day Use Area · reservable

Season weather and signal

Jan29° / 11° · 1.1" precip
Aug85° / 50° · 0.6" precip
Sep75° / 42° · 0.9" precip
Oct59° / 32° · 1" precip
Nov42° / 21° · 0.8" precip
Dec30° / 13° · 1.1" precip

Best signal is Verizon at about 21% of the unit. Plan on being out of contact and tell someone your route.

Idaho rules that decide your day

Summarised from IDFG 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

Idaho has no general off-road retrieval allowance on federal ground; stay on designated routes.

Tagging

Validate the tag by cutting out the month and day, and attach it to the carcass before moving it.

Leaving meat

Wasting edible meat is illegal.

Where you may not shoot

Occupied structures — No shooting from or across a public highway, and no shooting toward an occupied dwelling.

Elk: 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. That is lungs, and on a quartering-away angle it picks up the far shoulder.

Shots to refuse

No straight-on and no straight-away shots. An elk's chest is deep and the margin is small.
Nothing standing behind or overlapping the animal you picked. A pass-through kills the elk behind it too.
Your maximum range is the farthest you have put three shots in a paper plate off the sticks you are actually carrying. Not the farthest you have ever hit anything.
Scope on 3–4x. A herd fills a 12x field of view and you lose the animal you picked.

Identification:On an antlerless tag, legal means no antler of any kind through the skin. A spike looks exactly like a cow until it turns its head. If you can't see the head, don't shoot.

Plan the carry: roughly 150– 220 lb of boned-out meat, before head and hide — two to four large coolers, plus bagged ice from town. ProHunt planning estimate, not an agency figure.

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Elk Success Rates

Rifle0%

Archery13%

Idaho Fish and Game's 2025 harvest estimates put elk success in unit 60A at 0% — 0 animals taken by 4 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 Idaho Fish and Game's current harvest estimates before you read a trend into them.

Elk Draw Odds

Draw odds data not available for this specific unit/species combination in our database.

Search Idaho Draw Odds

Idaho Fish and Game's 2024 first drawing for elk in unit 60A, with residents and nonresidents kept apart because they draw from different tag pools:

Hunt 2111 — residents 391 applicants for 113 tags, 29% drawn; nonresidents 32 applicants for 12 tags, 38% 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 2024. Checked against Idaho Fish and Game's hunt planner draw results on 2026-06-09.

Moose Hunting in Unit 60A

Unit 60A lies in Clark, Fremont, Jefferson and Madison counties and covers about 919 square miles. Named ground inside it runs from 4,896 to 6,546 feet. Idaho Fish and Game's harvest estimates put Shiras moose success here as high as 80%. Federal land covers about 34% of it. Check land status on a current map before you plan a route.

Where to Find Shiras Moose in Unit 60A

What Idaho Fish and Game publishes for unit 60A is a boundary, not a Shiras moose map. The country below is verified; where to begin in it is our judgement, not the agency's. The unit lies in Clark, Fremont, Jefferson and Madison counties. It runs to about 919 square miles.

How Idaho Fish and Game sets up Shiras moose hunting in unit 60A

Idaho Fish and Game hunts Shiras moose here only by controlled hunt, and describes its moose hunt area 60A as all of Unit 60A.

The lines of the unit: Split Butte, Red Creek and Sand Creek

Idaho Fish and Game draws unit 60A in Clark, Fremont, Jefferson and Madison counties on a line that runs along Interstate 15, U.S. 191-20 and State Highway 33, and past Split Butte, Red Creek and Sand Creek, written out corner by corner in its unit boundary descriptions. 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: Split Rock, Chicken Ridge and Snowshoe Butte

Named high points inside the unit include Split Rock at 6,179 feet, Chicken Ridge at 5,984 feet, Snowshoe Butte at 5,981 feet, Big Grassy Ridge at 5,875 feet and South Junipers at 5,867 feet. None carries a public-land flag we trust, so settle the ownership question before you plan to stand on one. Moose need standing water and willow, so on dry country they are tied to the few drainages that hold both.

Holding ground: Hansen Basin

Below them sit Hansen Basin at 5,798 feet. That is the low country of the unit — the ground animals drop into when they are pushed or when the weather turns. Reaching the edge of one before light beats reaching its middle at noon.

Water in this unit

The water inside the unit line comes to 54 mapped stream reaches, 12 lakes and 71 stock tanks. Nothing in the data says which of them run in autumn, so a scouting trip earns its fuel.

Reading the land status

Unit 60A terrain and land status

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

The lay of it

4,834–6,396 ft on a terrain sample , averaging 5,384 ft ; peaks can run higher.
918.6 sq mi inside the boundary. Big enough that picking one drainage beats driving three.

Who owns the ground

BLM — 15%
Private / Other — 85%

Roughly 15% is public. Carry a land-status layer anyway — these are area percentages, not a map of where the boundaries fall.

Water on the ground

71 tanks
54 stream segments
12 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: Cinder Butte (6,407 ft), Split Butte (6,224 ft), West Butte (6,184 ft), North Junipers (5,764 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 Shiras Moose in Unit 60A

Idaho Fish and Game's own harvest estimates put Shiras moose success in unit 60A at 80% across all manners of take. A number like that comes from few tags and a short season, not from easy hunting. The plan: walk the willow bottoms slowly at first and last light and look for fresh browse before you look for the animal.

The 2025 and 2026 controlled hunts in unit 60A

Idaho Fish and Game's 2025 and 2026 rules list one controlled hunt for Shiras moose on unit 60A under its own number.

Hunt 3062 — 5 tags, Aug 30–Nov 23

Dates and tag numbers are IDFG's as printed for that season, and IDFG changes hunt areas between years, so check the current booklet before you apply.

Applying for a unit 60A tag

Idaho Fish and Game takes moose, bighorn sheep and mountain goat applications together, and anyone who applies for one of the three may not apply for another big game controlled hunt in the same year's first drawing, apart from the unlimited, extra, black bear and depredation hunts IDFG names. A hunter drawn for moose may not apply for a moose tag again for two years except for leftovers, and IDFG allows one antlered and one antlerless moose per hunter in a lifetime. Two hunters may apply together on one application. Idaho's draw is random, with no preference or bonus points to build.

Glassing from Juniper Buttes, Black Knoll and Sand Mountain

Take a position on one of Juniper Buttes (5,586 ft), Black Knoll (5,381 ft), Sand Mountain (5,272 ft) and Gerber Butte (5,211 ft) and be on it before light. Work the morning with the air falling away from you, then accept that by mid-morning the wind has reversed and the plan has to change with it. 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 September bulls answer a cow call near water.

Water against feed

There are 54 mapped stream reaches and 71 tanks inside the unit, so water is rarely the limiting factor. Where water is everywhere, feed is what concentrates animals, so hunt the feed and treat water as a convenience. Sitting water works where you can see fresh tracks going in, and nowhere else.

Timing the season: Sep, Oct, Nov

Getting past the roads: I 15 and Sand Creek Road

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.

Getting in and staying out: unit 60A

Named routes and what they need

I 15 — 40.9 mi · Paved (all rigs)
Sand Creek Road — 9 mi · Graded gravel (2WD / small trailer)
ID 33 — 8.3 mi · Paved (all rigs)
US 20 — 7.9 mi · Paved (all rigs)
North 2500 East — 5.7 mi · Graded gravel (2WD / small trailer)
Spencer-Kilgore Road — 5.2 mi · Graded gravel (2WD / small trailer)

Ratings come from road data, not from a drive this season. Check current conditions with the managing office before you commit a trailer.

Nearest services

Parker — 13 mi · no services listed
Dubois — 15 mi · no services listed
St. Anthony — 15.8 mi · no services listed
Sugar City — 17.8 mi · fuel, groceries
Rexburg — 19.7 mi · fuel, groceries, lodging

Developed camps

Sand Hills Resort RV Campground
Egin Lakes Campground/Day Use Area · reservable

Season weather and signal

Jan29° / 11° · 1.1" precip
Aug85° / 50° · 0.6" precip
Sep75° / 42° · 0.9" precip
Oct59° / 32° · 1" precip
Nov42° / 21° · 0.8" precip
Dec30° / 13° · 1.1" precip

Best signal is Verizon at about 21% of the unit. Plan on being out of contact and tell someone your route.

Idaho rules that decide your day

Summarised from IDFG 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

Idaho has no general off-road retrieval allowance on federal ground; stay on designated routes.

Tagging

Validate the tag by cutting out the month and day, and attach it to the carcass before moving it.

Leaving meat

Wasting edible meat is illegal.

Where you may not shoot

Occupied structures — No shooting from or across a public highway, and no shooting toward an occupied dwelling.

Moose: where to put the shot

Broadside, behind the shoulder and a third up. Moose look slow to react — the first shot has to count.

Shots to refuse

Where it falls decides your next two days. Avoid shots that drop a moose in water or a bog.
A .30-06 class cartridge minimum, with a bullet built for heavy bone.

Plan the carry: roughly 350– 500 lb of boned-out meat, before head and hide — four or more large coolers, or a processor. ProHunt planning estimate, not an agency figure.

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Moose Success Rates

Idaho Fish and Game's 2025 harvest estimates put Shiras moose success in unit 60A at 80% — 4 animals taken by 5 hunters. On a sample that small the percentage moves several points with one animal, so read the hunter count beside it.

Moose Draw Odds

Season	Tags	Applicants	Draw %	Pts (n/p)
Controlled — 1st Drawing either sex (resident)	4	31	13.0%	—
Controlled — 1st Drawing either sex (nonresident)	1	11	9.0%	—

Data from 2026 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 2026 first drawing for Shiras moose in unit 60A, with residents and nonresidents kept apart because they draw from different tag pools:

Hunt 3062 — residents 31 applicants for 4 tags, 13% drawn; nonresidents 11 applicants for 1 tag, 9% 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 2026. Checked against Idaho Fish and Game's hunt planner draw results on 2026-06-09.

Unit Logistics & Expectations

Planning Notes

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Camp Sites

2 developed campgrounds in or beside the unit, including Sand Hills Resort RV Campground and Egin Lakes Campground/Day Use Area.

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Road Conditions

I 15, Sand Creek Road and ID 33 are the named routes in the unit. Roughly 61 mi paved, 35 mi gravel and 0 mi four-wheel-drive.

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Terrain Difficulty

Named features from 4,896 to 6,546 ft. Named heights only — the ground between and below them can run lower.

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Hunting Pressure

Our land-status read for this unit is approximate, so treat any pressure estimate from it with suspicion and check a current ownership layer.

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Weather

Season normals: Sep 75/42°F, 0.9 in.; Oct 59/32°F, 1 in.; Nov 42/21°F, 0.8 in..

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Cell Service

Verizon 21%, AT&T 14%, T-Mobile 7% of the unit area — modelled coverage, not measured. Assume no signal off the paved road.

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Nearest Town

Parker (13 mi), Dubois (15 mi), St. Anthony (16 mi)

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Frequently Asked Questions

Where is Idaho unit 60A?

Unit 60A lies in Clark, Fremont, Jefferson and Madison counties. Idaho Fish and Game draws unit 60A on a line that runs along Interstate 15, U.S. 191-20 and State Highway 33, and past Split Butte, Red Creek and Sand Creek, written out corner by corner in its unit boundary descriptions. It covers about 919 square miles.

What is the elk success rate in unit 60A?

Idaho Fish and Game's 2025 harvest estimates put elk success in unit 60A at 0% 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 60A hunt?

The nearest services our logistics pipeline finds for unit 60A are at Parker, about 13 miles from the unit's centre, with Dubois at about 15 miles. There are also 2 developed campgrounds in or beside the unit.

What is the Shiras moose success rate in unit 60A?

Idaho Fish and Game's 2025 harvest estimates put Shiras moose success in unit 60A at 80% 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.

Idaho Big Game 2026 Seasons & Rules — Idaho Department of Fish and Game · supports: Game management unit boundary description, Counties the unit lies in · accessed 2026-10-24
IDFG Island Park Zone elk tag limits — 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 elk in unit 60A · 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
Moose, Bighorn Sheep & Mountain Goat 2025 & 2026 Seasons & Rules — Idaho Department of Fish and Game · supports: Controlled hunt application periods and eligibility rules · accessed 2026-10-24

Unit 60A (Island Park Zone)

Build your own PDF hunt guide for Unit 60A

Elk Hunting in Unit 60A

Where to Find Elk in Unit 60A

How to Hunt Elk in Unit 60A

Elk Success Rates

Elk Draw Odds

Moose Hunting in Unit 60A

Where to Find Shiras Moose in Unit 60A

How Idaho Fish and Game sets up Shiras moose hunting in unit 60A

The lines of the unit: Split Butte, Red Creek and Sand Creek

High ground inside the line: Split Rock, Chicken Ridge and Snowshoe Butte

Holding ground: Hansen Basin

Water in this unit

Reading the land status

Unit 60A terrain and land status

The lay of it

Who owns the ground

Water on the ground

Named features inside the unit

How to Hunt Shiras Moose in Unit 60A

Moose Success Rates

Moose Draw Odds

Unit Logistics & Expectations

Explore Related Units

Unit 36A — Mule Deer

Frequently Asked Questions

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Sources & Verification