Unit G517 (Rock Creek)

Montana FWP's material on unit G517 stops at the boundary — there is no agency account of where its mountain goat live. The country below is verified; where to begin in it is our judgement, not the agency's. The unit lies in Carbon and Park counties.

The lines of the unit: Rock Creek, Big Moose Lake and Russell Creek

Montana FWP draws unit G517 in Carbon and Park counties with a boundary that runs on Route 78, and on Rock Creek, Big Moose Lake, Russell Creek and Dead Horse Lake, 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: Castle Mountain, Castle Rock Spire and Whitetail Peak

Named high points inside the unit include Castle Mountain at 12,625 feet, Castle Rock Spire at 12,537 feet, Whitetail Peak at 12,536 feet, Silver Run Peak at 12,489 feet and Castle Rock Mountain at 12,403 feet. Several carry a public-land flag in our data, which makes them the first places to try for a view. Goats live above the trees on cliff and talus and come down only when weather makes them.

Holding ground: Quinnebaugh Meadows, Woods Gulch and Hakel Gulch

Below them sit Quinnebaugh Meadows at 9,120 feet, Woods Gulch at 6,416 feet, Hakel Gulch at 6,327 feet, Towne Gulch at 6,302 feet and Haywood Gulch at 6,091 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.

Water: Calamity Falls and Sentinel Falls

Named sources include Calamity Falls and Sentinel Falls. Nothing in the data says which of them run in autumn, so a scouting trip earns its fuel.

Montana FWP publishes no mountain goat success figure for unit G517 that we can tie to this unit alone, so we won't quote one. The plan: glass from across the basin, judge the climb honestly, and decide whether a hit animal could be recovered.

Glassing from Sundance Mountain, Elk Mountain and Mount Rearguard

Take a position on one of Sundance Mountain (12,263 ft), Elk Mountain (12,247 ft), Mount Rearguard (12,194 ft) and Snowbank Mountain (12,095 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. Glass the edges first, then the shaded timber, then the edges again as the light goes. On the rut hunts, early hunts find goats higher and later hunts find them pushed down by snow.

A first plan from the pins on this page

The map above marks Castle Mountain, Whitetail Peak, Silver Run Peak and Beartooth Mountain as places to see from, and East Rosebud Plateau, Sundance Pass, Hellroaring Plateau and Calamity Falls as ground to watch. Each pin is a named feature verified to fall inside the unit line, not a spot anyone has hunted. Walk between two of them rather than driving between four, and you will learn more in a day.

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 mountain goat 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.