Unit M312 (HD 312 Moose (Gallatin))

Montana Hunting Guide — Moose

Permit 312-50 is a limited-entry Shiras moose tag in the Gallatin drainage south of Bozeman. 638 applicants chased just 4 tags over three years — a classic Montana moose lottery. Willow-choked creek bottoms and high-elevation lake basins hold the resident moose population.

View Draw Odds Montana Hunting Guide

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Answer a few questions about your tag, your season and your rig, and the Field Intelligence Report builds a print-ready Montana Unit M312 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.

Moose guide

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Moose Hunting in Unit M312

Where to Find Shiras Moose in Unit M312: the Bridger crest, Flathead Pass and the canyon springs

Moose district 312 covers roughly 1,249 square miles of Gallatin County on the Bridger Range north of Bozeman. FWP's 2026/2027 hunting district legal descriptions carry no entry for moose 312, although its GIS layer maps the district — so there's no agency boundary text to quote here, and no agency account of where the moose are. The ground below is what falls inside FWP's own mapped line.

The crest: Sacagawea, Hardscrabble and Saddle Peak

The high country runs along the Bridger crest and is almost all National Forest in our land-status data. Sacagawea Peak tops the range at 9,653 feet, with Pomp Peak at 9,569, Hardscrabble Peak at 9,559, Naya Nuki Peak at 9,542 and Saddle Peak at 9,142 close behind. Ross Peak reaches 8,992 feet and Baldy Mountain 8,854. None of that is moose ground in itself — it's where you stand to look into the ground that is.

The canyons off the west and east faces

Moose want willow, standing water and shade, and they rarely leave a drainage that has all three. The named canyons inside the district sit between about 5,500 and 6,300 feet: Lang Canyon at 6,282, Johnson Canyon at 6,111, Mill Creek Canyon at 5,923, Green Canyon at 5,794 and Olie Canyon at 5,526. Johnson, Mill Creek and Olie carry a National Forest flag; Lang and Green read as private. The bottoms of those canyons, where the creek slows and the willow thickens, are the first places worth a morning.

Water you can put a name to

Eight named springs fall inside the line — Eastham, Bullrock, Quarry, Williams, Townsend, Mud, Dunbar and Rowland. Nothing in the data says which of them still run in October, which is exactly the sort of thing a scouting trip settles cheaply. A spring with cropped willow and fresh tracks around it is worth more than any amount of map work.

Unit M312 terrain and land status

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

Named features inside the unit

Glass from: Sacagawea Peak (9,653 ft), Saddle Peak (9,142 ft), Ross Peak (8,992 ft), Baldy Mountain (8,854 ft)

Holding ground: Ross Pass (7,591 ft), Flathead Pass (6,868 ft), Battle Ridge Pass (6,297 ft), Eastham Spring, Bullrock 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 Unit M312: walk the willow slowly, and use the passes to cross the range

FWP publishes no moose success figure for district 312 that we can read back to this district on its own, so none is quoted here. A Montana moose licence is once-in-a-lifetime, which changes the calculation: time spent finding the right drainage before the season is worth more than any tactic applied to the wrong one.

Hunt the browse, not the view

The temptation on a range like the Bridgers is to climb and glass, and for elk that would be right. For moose it mostly isn't. Work the canyon bottoms on foot at first and last light, slowly, watching for stripped willow and fresh droppings before you look for the animal itself. A bull feeding in willow shows you a patch of dark hide and an antler tip, not a silhouette. Cover a mile of creek properly rather than five miles of trail.

Use the passes to change drainages

Three named gaps cross the range and all three read as National Forest: Ross Pass at 7,591 feet, Flathead Pass at 6,868 and Battle Ridge Pass at 6,297. They're the cheap way to move from the east face to the west without dropping all the way round the range, and Battle Ridge is low enough to stay open late. Plan a day around one pass and the two drainages it joins, rather than around a summit.

Glass from the shoulders, not the summits

Where you do want elevation, take a shoulder rather than a peak. Blacktail Mountain at 8,366 feet, Zade Mountain at 8,204 and Grassy Mountain at 7,603 all sit on National Forest and all look down into timbered canyon heads instead of across empty rock. Be in position before light, work the glass in strips, and accept that the thermals reverse by mid-morning and the plan has to change with them.

Expect company near Bozeman

This range sits on the edge of a fast-growing town, and the trailheads on the Bozeman side carry traffic all autumn. Pressure drops off with distance from the pavement the way it does everywhere, but here the first two miles are busier than most. If your licence is the one you waited a lifetime for, plan to start further in than feels necessary.

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.

Moose: where to put the shot

Broadside, behind the shoulder and a third up. Moose look slow to react — the first shot has to count.

Shots to refuse

Where it falls decides your next two days. Avoid shots that drop a moose in water or a bog.
A .30-06 class cartridge minimum, with a bullet built for heavy bone.

Plan the carry: roughly 350– 500 lb of boned-out meat, before head and hide — four or more large coolers, or a processor. ProHunt planning estimate, not an agency figure.

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Moose Success Rates

Shiras moose permits in Montana run 80–100% success on average. With 4 tags in 312-50, permit holders typically harvest a bull within the season window.

Moose Draw Odds

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

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Roughly 0.6% raw odds. Once-in-a-lifetime rules apply after harvest. Expect 15+ years of point accumulation. Non-residents face the 10% cap.

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Sources & Verification

Every fact on this page is tied to a primary source below. Last fact-checked 2026-10-24.

2026 Deer, Elk, and Antelope Regulations — Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks · supports: Moose cross-reference, HD 312 area description · accessed 2026-04-17
FWP Hunt Planner — Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks · supports: HD 312 boundary, Custer-Gallatin NF ownership, Trailhead access · accessed 2026-04-17
FWP Drawing Statistics — Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks · supports: 312-50 applicants and quota, Point-level distribution · accessed 2026-04-17