Unit 301 (Hyalite-Portal)

Montana FWP draws an exact line around unit 301 and says nothing about where the elk stand inside it. Every place named below sits inside the unit line. Which of them holds animals in your season is for you to find out. It runs to about 327 square miles.

The lines of the unit: Bear Canyon, Trail Creek and Goose Creek

Montana FWP draws unit 301 with a boundary that runs on Interstate 90 and US Highway 191, and on Bear Canyon, Trail Creek, Goose Creek and Gallatin-Yellowstone Divide, walked corner by corner in its hunting district legal 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: Mount Bole, Hyalite Ridge and Hyalite Peak

Named high points inside the unit include Mount Bole at 10,312 feet, Hyalite Ridge at 10,312 feet, Hyalite Peak at 10,291 feet, Overlook Mountain at 10,230 feet and Mount Blackmore at 10,134 feet. Several carry a public-land flag in our data, which makes them the first places to try for a view. Elk want timber to bed in and open ground to feed on, within a short walk of each other.

Holding ground: Dry Gulch, Hodgman Canyon and New World Gulch

Below them sit Dry Gulch at 5,678 feet, Hodgman Canyon at 5,482 feet, New World Gulch at 5,403 feet, Hyalite Canyon at 5,396 feet and Gallatin Canyon at 5,365 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: Langohr Springs

The water inside the unit line comes to 383 mapped stream reaches, 7 lakes and 66 stock tanks. Named sources include Langohr Springs. 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. The unit runs from 4,971 feet to 9,906 feet, averaging 7,271 — that is a lot of vertical to cover, and it means the season you draw decides which half of the unit you hunt.

Montana FWP publishes no elk success figure for unit 301 that we can tie to this unit alone, so we won't quote one. 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 Flanders Mountain, Palace Butte and Maid of the Mist Mountain

Take a position on one of Flanders Mountain (9,946 ft), Palace Butte (9,890 ft), Maid of the Mist Mountain (9,549 ft) and The Mummy (9,541 ft) and be on it before light. Cold air slides downhill in the dark, so keep your scent out of the bowl you mean to watch; expect the thermals to turn uphill an hour after the sun reaches the slope. Give a basin forty minutes before you decide it is empty. 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 383 mapped stream reaches and 66 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

Season normals here run Sep 71/40°F, Oct 56/31°F and Nov 41/21°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 1.5 in. in Sep, 1.7 in. in Oct and 1.2 in. in Nov, and the graded gravel in this unit turns greasy wet.

Getting past the roads: US 191 and Cottonwood Road

US 191 and I 90 / US 191 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 Mount Bole, Hyalite Peak, Overlook Mountain and Mount Blackmore as places to see from, and Tom Lay Prairie, Wheeler Gulch, Dean Gulch and Langohr Springs as ground to watch. Each pin is a named feature verified to fall inside the unit line, not a spot anyone has hunted. Take the pair you can reach on one road and treat the rest as a second trip.

What a day here costs you

327 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 Gallatin Gateway, about 11 miles out, which is an hour of your morning each way if you sleep there. With 4,935 feet between the lowest and highest ground, the walk back up out of a kill site is the part to plan first. Decide the night before where you will be at first light, and go there in the dark.