Montana Pronghorn

Unit A413 (Sand Coulee)

Montana Hunting Guide — Pronghorn

Unit A413 is a hunt unit. 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 A413

Answer a few questions about your tag, your season and your rig, and the Field Intelligence Report builds a print-ready Montana Unit A413 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 A413

Unit A413 is a hunt unit. 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.

Where to Find Pronghorn in Unit A413

What Montana FWP publishes for unit A413 is a boundary, not a pronghorn map. So the ground below is the unit's own and the read on where to start is ours, labelled as such.

The lines of the unit: Great Falls, Kings Hill and Smith River

Montana FWP draws unit A413 with a boundary that runs on US Highway 87 and US Highway 89, and on Great Falls, Kings Hill, Smith River and Missouri River, walked corner by corner in its hunting district legal descriptions. It tells you the shape of the unit and nothing about its inhabitants. 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: Porphyry Peak, Thunder Mountain and Big Horn Mountain

Named high points inside the unit include Porphyry Peak at 8,196 feet, Thunder Mountain at 8,109 feet, Big Horn Mountain at 7,658 feet, Little Belt Mountains at 7,126 feet and Keegan Peak at 7,021 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: Hidden Canyon, Graveyard Gulch and Compromise Gulch

Below them sit Hidden Canyon at 5,920 feet, Graveyard Gulch at 5,723 feet, Compromise Gulch at 5,606 feet, Deep Creek Park at 5,403 feet and Blanding Gulch at 5,277 feet. That is the low country of the unit — the ground animals drop into when they are pushed or when the weather turns. Work out which of them you can see from one position before you pick a camp.

Water: Paine Spring and Robertson Spring

Named sources include Paine Spring and Robertson Spring. Nothing in the data says which of them run in autumn, so a scouting trip earns its fuel.

Unit A413 terrain and land status

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

Named features inside the unit

Glass from: Porphyry Peak (8,196 ft), Thunder Mountain (8,109 ft), Big Horn Mountain (7,658 ft), Little Belt Mountains (7,126 ft)

Holding ground: Harley Park (7,376 ft), Lone Tree Park (7,099 ft), Wilson Park (6,721 ft), Paine Spring, Robertson Spring

Every one of these was tested against the unit polygon before it went on the map. They are starting points, not agency recommendations.

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How to Hunt Pronghorn in Unit A413

Montana FWP publishes no pronghorn success figure for unit A413 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 Black Butte, Deer Butte and Monarch Mountain

Take a position on one of Black Butte (6,374 ft), Deer Butte (6,305 ft), Monarch Mountain (6,060 ft) and Dutch Bench (4,439 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. Work the glass in strips and go back over ground you already covered — animals appear in country you looked at ten minutes ago. On the rut hunts, early-season bucks hold does and can be decoyed where the law allows it.

The way in: US Highway 87 and US Highway 89

We have no road inventory for this unit, so the only routes we can name are the ones Montana FWP draws the boundary with: US Highway 87 and US Highway 89. Those are its edges, not its interior — useful because they are where you leave the pavement, and useless for telling you what the inside is like. Check each of them on a current motor-vehicle-use map before you count on it, because a line on a boundary description is not a promise of public access.

A first plan from the pins on this page

The map above marks Porphyry Peak, Thunder Mountain, Big Horn Mountain and Little Belt Mountains as places to see from, and Harley Park, Lone Tree Park, Wilson Park and Paine Spring 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.

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Pronghorn Success Rates

Montana FWP's 2023 harvest estimates carry no pronghorn row for unit A413 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

Season	Tags	Applicants	Draw %	Pts (n/p)
Rifle — General either sex (resident)	0	31	0.0%	—
Rifle — General either sex (nonresident)	0	3	0.0%	—

Data from 2022 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 Engine

Montana FWP's draw recap has no pronghorn record we can tie to unit A413. 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

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Water

Scarce. Carry all drinking water. Stock tanks and ponds exist but are unreliable for human use.

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Road Conditions

Improved gravel county roads and BLM two-tracks. High-clearance vehicle recommended. Roads can become impassable when wet.

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Terrain Difficulty

Easy to moderate. Flat to gently rolling shortgrass prairie and sagebrush. Limited vertical terrain.

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Hunting Pressure

Low — eastern MT limited permits see far fewer hunters than western units. Private land dominates much of the region.

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Weather

September temperatures can be warm during early season. Prepare for rapid weather changes and strong prairie winds throughout the hunt.

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Cell Service

Very limited — spotty coverage on ridge tops. Carry a satellite communicator.

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Permit Notes

Limited permit required. Confirm season dates, tag requirements, and check-station obligations in the current Montana Hunting Regulations.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Where is Colorado unit A413?

What is the pronghorn success rate in unit A413?

Montana FWP publishes no pronghorn success figure we can tie to unit A413 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.

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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