Unit 360 (Madison Range)

Montana FWP draws an exact line around unit 360 and says nothing about where the elk stand inside it. The country below is verified; where to begin in it is our judgement, not the agency's. The unit lies in Madison and Gallatin counties. It runs to about 677 square miles.

The lines of the unit: Duck Creek, Madison-Gallatin River and Buck Creek

Montana FWP draws unit 360 in Madison and Gallatin counties with a boundary that runs on US Highway 191, Highway 64 and US Highway 287, and on Duck Creek, Madison-Gallatin River, Buck Creek and First Yellow Mule Creek, walked corner by corner in its hunting district legal descriptions. 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: Echo Peak, Hilgard Peak and Lone Mountain

Named high points inside the unit include Echo Peak at 11,269 feet, Hilgard Peak at 11,238 feet, Lone Mountain at 11,130 feet, Dutchman Peak at 10,904 feet and No Man Peak at 10,837 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: Coal Canyon, Bear Trap Canyon and Expedition Pass

Below them sit Coal Canyon at 6,900 feet, Bear Trap Canyon at 4,817 feet, Expedition Pass at 10,186 feet, Hilgard Basin at 9,582 feet and Upper Tepee Basin at 8,699 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 1,105 mapped stream reaches, 21 lakes, 146 stock tanks and 4 springs. On ground with that many tanks, knowing which two or three hold water in your season is the most useful thing a scouting trip can tell you.

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. The unit runs from 5,289 feet to 9,830 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 360 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 Cedar Mountain, Finger Mountain and The Wedge

Take a position on one of Cedar Mountain (10,733 ft), Finger Mountain (10,696 ft), The Wedge (10,668 ft) and Sage Peak (10,614 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. A tripod is worth more here than another hour of walking. 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 1,105 mapped stream reaches and 146 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. Check the ground around it before you commit an evening to it.

Timing the season: Sep, Oct, Nov

Season normals here run Sep 69/35°F, Oct 54/27°F and Nov 38/18°F. By Nov the lows are around 18°F, and the first hard storm after that moves animals off the high ground — a late tag is a bet on that storm arriving. Precipitation runs about 1.5 in. in Sep, 1.7 in. in Oct and 1.6 in. in Nov, and the graded gravel in this unit turns greasy wet.

Getting past the roads: US 287 and North Ennis Lake Road

US 287 and US 191 are the paved frame, which is also where everyone else starts. NFR 10 needs clearance, and that is usually where the boot tracks thin out. 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 Echo Peak, Hilgard Peak, No Man Peak and Sentinel Peak as places to see from, and Expedition Pass, Upper Tepee Basin, McAtee Basin and US 191 @ unit boundary 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

677 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 Big Sky, about 13 miles out, which is an hour of your morning each way if you sleep there. With 4,541 feet between the lowest and highest ground, the walk back up out of a kill site is the part to plan first. Leave the truck earlier than you want to and you will hunt the best half-hour of the day.