Montana Pronghorn

Unit A401 (Sweetgrass Hills)

Montana Hunting Guide — Pronghorn

Unit A401 lies in Liberty, Toole and Glacier counties. Montana FWP publishes no per-unit pronghorn success figure we can verify for this unit. Check land status on a current map before you plan a route.

View Draw Odds Montana Hunting Guide

Build your own PDF hunt guide for Unit A401

Answer a few questions about your tag, your season and your rig, and the Field Intelligence Report builds a print-ready Montana Unit A401 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.

Pronghorn guide

Free accounts get one report a year with the top spot unlocked. ProHunt Pro includes unlimited reports, all three spots, the full camp plan, and GPX/KML downloads for onX and Google Earth. Prefer to see one first? Open the builder and pick any unit.

Pronghorn Hunting in Unit A401

Where to Find Pronghorn in Unit A401

What Montana FWP publishes for unit A401 is a boundary, not a pronghorn map. The country below is verified; where to begin in it is our judgement, not the agency's. The unit lies in Liberty, Toole and Glacier counties.

What bounds unit A401

Montana FWP draws unit A401 in Liberty, Toole and Glacier counties with a boundary that runs on US Highway 2, 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: West Butte, Mount Brown and Mount Royal

Named high points inside the unit include West Butte at 6,987 feet, Mount Brown at 6,916 feet, Mount Royal at 6,907 feet, East Butte at 6,555 feet and Gold Butte at 6,490 feet. Several carry a public-land flag in our data, which makes them the first places to try for a view. Pronghorn live in the open and trust their eyes, which is the whole problem.

Holding ground: Miners Coulee, Eclipse Gulch and The Deep Ground

Below them sit Miners Coulee at 4,198 feet, Eclipse Gulch at 4,182 feet, The Deep Ground at 4,011 feet, Snake Coulee at 3,961 feet and Snow Coulee at 3,896 feet. Those are the basins, parks and bottoms this unit has, and they are what you glass into from above. Two you can watch from a single knob is worth more than five you have to drive between.

Unit A401 terrain and land status

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

Named features inside the unit

Glass from: West Butte (6,987 ft), Mount Brown (6,916 ft), East Butte (6,555 ft), Gold Butte (6,490 ft)

Holding ground: Snoose Coulee (3,585 ft), Lily Coulee (3,553 ft), Greens Coulee (3,500 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 Pronghorn in Unit A401

Montana FWP publishes no pronghorn success figure for unit A401 that we can tie to this unit alone, so we won't quote one. The plan: spot from a vehicle or a rise at distance, then plan a stalk that uses the only cover there is — the curve of the ground.

Glassing from Devils Chimney, Rooster Ridge and Black Jack Butte

Take a position on one of Devils Chimney (5,566 ft), Rooster Ridge (5,237 ft), Black Jack Butte (5,207 ft) and Bear Tooth (4,775 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, early-season bucks hold does and can be decoyed where the law allows it.

A first plan from the pins on this page

The map above marks West Butte, Mount Brown, East Butte and Gold Butte as places to see from, and Snoose Coulee, Lily Coulee and Greens Coulee 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 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. We have no pronghorn success figure for this unit that survives checking against Montana FWP's own harvest and hunter counts, and we would rather say so than print a statewide average as though it were measured here.

Montana rules that decide your day

Summarised from FWP 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

Montana has no general off-road retrieval allowance; travel stays on open routes.

Tagging

Validate the tag and attach it to the carcass before moving the animal.

Leaving meat

Wasting game meat is illegal.

Where you may not shoot

Occupied structures — No discharging a firearm within 150 yards of an occupied dwelling without permission, and no shooting from or across a public road.

Pronghorn: where to put the shot

Broadside, straight up the front leg, a third of the way into the body. Pronghorn are shallow-chested and the lungs sit forward.

Shots to refuse

Range it, then range it again. Open country makes 400 yards look like 250.
Wait for the buck to stop. Nobody kills a running pronghorn cleanly on purpose.
Mind the backdrop. A miss carries a long way across a flat.

Plan the carry: roughly 30– 45 lb of boned-out meat, before head and hide — one large cooler with ice already in it. ProHunt planning estimate, not an agency figure.

Pro Members Only

Unlock pronghorn tactics for Unit 401

Upgrade to Pro — $49/yr

Pronghorn Success Rates

Montana FWP's 2023 harvest estimates carry no pronghorn row for unit A401 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.

Pronghorn Draw Odds

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

Search Montana Draw Odds

Montana FWP's draw recap has no pronghorn record we can tie to unit A401. 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

Planning Notes

⛺

Camp Sites

Limited public camping. BLM dispersed camping on scattered public parcels. Motels in Chester and Shelby. BMA ranches may allow camping.

💧

Water

Carry water. Prairie water sources are limited and unreliable for human use.

🛣️

Road Conditions

US-2 provides paved access. County gravel roads across the prairie are generally good. 2WD sufficient in dry conditions. Avoid after rain.

🥾

Terrain Difficulty

Easy. Flat to rolling prairie with gentle terrain. Physical demands are minimal — this is a driving and glassing hunt.

👥

Hunting Pressure

Low. The remote Hi-Line location and vast open prairie spread hunters thin. Pronghorn hunting draws less pressure than big game seasons.

🌦️

Weather

North-central Montana can be brutal. Early season hot, late season can bring arctic cold. Wind is constant and often severe on the open prairie near the Canadian border.

🏘️

Nearest Town

Chester (basic services, 20 min). Shelby (basic services, 30 min). Great Falls (2 hours) for full services.

Pro Members Only

Unlock logistics for unit A401

Upgrade to Pro — $49/yr

Frequently Asked Questions

Where is Colorado unit A401?

Unit A401 lies in Liberty, Toole and Glacier counties. Montana FWP draws unit A401 with a boundary that runs on US Highway 2, walked corner by corner in its hunting district legal descriptions.

What is the pronghorn success rate in unit A401?

Montana FWP publishes no pronghorn success figure we can tie to unit A401 on its own — the 2023 harvest tables either omit the unit or report it in a grouping we could not read back to it reliably. Rather than quote a statewide average as though it were measured here, we say so. Check Montana FWP's current harvest estimates before you apply.

Free Hunt Planning Tools

🎰 Montana Draw Odds Unit-level tag success rates 📅 Application Timeline Deadlines for all 9 states 🦌 Rut Forecast Peak rut timing by species 💰 Hunt Cost Calculator Budget your entire hunt

Plan Your Hunt with ProHunt Pro

Unlock advanced tactics, the Tag-to-Trail Planner, AI hunt strategy assistant, and personalized camp and trip execution plans.

Upgrade to Pro — $49/yr

Sources & Verification

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 — antelope hunting districts (pp. 5-9) — 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