Unit 590 (Bull Mountains-Pine Ridge)
Montana Hunting Guide — Elk
Unit 590 lies in Big Horn, Golden Valley, Musselshell and Yellowstone counties and covers about 2,908 square miles. Ground runs from 2,883 to 4,014 feet. Montana FWP publishes no per-unit elk success figure we can verify for this unit. Check land status on a current map before you plan a route.
Build your own PDF hunt guide for Unit 590
Answer a few questions about your tag, your season and your rig, and the Field Intelligence Report builds a print-ready Montana Unit 590 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.
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Elk Hunting in Unit 590
Unit 590 lies in Big Horn, Golden Valley, Musselshell and Yellowstone counties and covers about 2,908 square miles. Ground runs from 2,883 to 4,014 feet. Montana FWP publishes no per-unit elk success figure we can verify for this unit. Check land status on a current map before you plan a route.
Where to Find Elk in Unit 590
What Montana FWP publishes for unit 590 is a boundary, not a elk map. 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 Big Horn, Golden Valley, Musselshell and Yellowstone counties. It runs to about 2,908 square miles.
What bounds unit 590
Montana FWP draws unit 590 in Big Horn, Golden Valley, Musselshell and Yellowstone counties with a boundary that runs on Highway 3, US Highway 12, State Route 310 and Interstate 94, and on Bighorn River, walked corner by corner in its hunting district legal descriptions. Read it as a frame, not as a hint about animals. Those features are what you will check against the map all week, and the divides among them are the ones that matter.
High ground inside the line: Dunn Mountain, Johnston Mountain and Three Buttes
Named high points inside the unit include Dunn Mountain at 4,725 feet, Johnston Mountain at 4,675 feet, Three Buttes at 4,619 feet, Square Butte at 4,515 feet and Red Bluff at 4,507 feet. None carries a public-land flag we trust, so settle the ownership question before you plan to stand on one. Elk on low, open country live on distance and visibility, so they see you first.
Holding ground: Park Coulee, Ninemile Hill and Cory Flat
Below them sit Park Coulee at 3,501 feet, Ninemile Hill at 3,461 feet, Cory Flat at 3,451 feet, Lamott Coulee at 3,441 feet and Burnt Coulee at 3,407 feet. These are the folds worth watching, and the ones other hunters walk past on the way to somewhere steeper. Reaching the edge of one before light beats reaching its middle at noon.
Water: Blue Spring
The water inside the unit line comes to 128 mapped stream reaches, 55 lakes and 181 stock tanks. Named sources include Blue Spring. 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 2,883 feet to 4,014 feet, averaging 3,375 — not much relief, so the animals move laterally rather than up and down.
Unit 590 terrain and land status
Measured from the unit boundary, not from the agency write-up
The lay of it
- 2,883–4,014 ft on a terrain sample , averaging 3,375 ft ; peaks can run higher.
- 2,907.7 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
- 181 tanks
- 128 stream segments
- 55 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: Steamboat Butte (3,906 ft), Chimney Butte (3,630 ft), Castle Butte (3,550 ft), Pompeys Pillar (2,952 ft)
Holding ground: Burnt Coulee (3,517 ft), Hoskin Basin (3,331 ft), Kendall Coulee (3,073 ft), Blue Spring
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 Elk in Unit 590
Elk Success Rates
Montana FWP's 2023 harvest estimates carry no elk row for unit 590 that we can read back to this unit on its own. Where the agency reports a unit inside a grouping, or prints a table our parser cannot resolve to a single column, we leave the number out rather than publish a statewide average as though it had been measured here. Montana FWP's current harvest estimates are the place to check before you apply.
Elk Draw Odds
| Season | Tags | Applicants | Draw % | Pts (n/p) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rifle — General either sex (resident) | 302 | 1,228 | 24.6% | — |
| Rifle — General either sex (nonresident) | 21 | 133 | 15.8% | — |
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 EngineMontana FWP's draw recap has no elk record we can tie to unit 590. That usually means the licence is sold over the counter, is issued under a hunt code covering several units, or was not offered in the years we hold. Rather than estimate a point requirement, we leave it blank — check Montana FWP's own draw recap for the hunt code you mean to apply for.
Unit Logistics & Expectations
Frequently Asked Questions
Where is Colorado unit 590?
What is the elk success rate in unit 590?
Where do you stay and resupply for a unit 590 hunt?
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Every fact on this page is tied to a primary source below. Last fact-checked 2026-10-24.
- Montana FWP Hunting District Legal Descriptions, 2026/2027 — deer-elk hunting districts (pp. 19-35) — Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks · supports: GMU boundary description, Counties the unit lies in · accessed 2026-10-24
- FWP hunting district feature services — deer/elk, antelope, moose, bighorn sheep and mountain goat districts (2026 and 2027 seasons) — Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks · supports: Mapped extent of the unit, Which named ground falls inside the unit line · accessed 2026-10-24