Unit 412 (Judith and Moccasin Mountains)

What Montana FWP publishes for unit 412 is a boundary, not a elk map. So the ground below is the unit's own and the read on where to start is ours, labelled as such. The unit lies in Fergus County. It runs to about 655 square miles.

The lines of the unit: Grass Range, Salt Creek and Plum Creek

Montana FWP draws unit 412 in Fergus County with a boundary that runs on US Highway 87, State Route 200, Highway 19 and US Highway 191, and on Grass Range, Salt Creek, Plum Creek and Judith River, 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: Judith Mountains, Judith Peak and Red Mountain

Named high points inside the unit include Judith Mountains at 6,427 feet, Judith Peak at 6,427 feet, Red Mountain at 6,168 feet, Crystal Peak at 6,135 feet and Collar Peak at 6,128 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: Whisky Gulch, Devils Canyon and Lincoln Gulch

Below them sit Whisky Gulch at 4,672 feet, Devils Canyon at 4,650 feet, Lincoln Gulch at 4,632 feet, Alpine Gulch at 4,622 feet and Chicago Gulch at 4,604 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 94 mapped stream reaches, 13 lakes, 366 stock tanks and 3 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 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. The unit runs from 3,529 feet to 5,440 feet, averaging 4,149 — not much relief, so the animals move laterally rather than up and down.

Montana FWP publishes no elk success figure for unit 412 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 Burnette Peak, Pekay Peak and Elk Peak

Take a position on one of Burnette Peak (6,038 ft), Pekay Peak (6,017 ft), Elk Peak (6,011 ft) and New Year Peak (6,004 ft) and be on it before light. In the dark the air runs downhill. Pick an approach that doesn't send it into the country you want to see, and plan to move once the slope warms. 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 94 mapped stream reaches and 366 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 69/43°F, Oct 55/33°F and Nov 42/23°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, 1.4 in. in Oct and 0.9 in. in Nov, and the graded gravel in this unit turns greasy wet.

Getting past the roads: US 191 and US 87 / MT 200

US 191, US 87 / MT 200 and MT 19 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 Judith Mountains, Red Mountain, Crystal Peak and Pyramid Peak as places to see from, and Lincoln Gulch, US 87;MT 200 @ unit boundary, MT 19 @ unit boundary and Lewistown 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

655 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 Lewistown, about 15 miles out, which is an hour of your morning each way if you sleep there. The ground is gentle enough that the pack-out is a distance problem rather than a climbing one. Leave the truck earlier than you want to and you will hunt the best half-hour of the day.