Montana Bighorn Sheep

Unit S503 (Pryor Mountains)

Montana Hunting Guide — Bighorn Sheep

Unit S503 lies in Carbon County. Montana FWP publishes no per-unit bighorn sheep success figure we can verify for this unit. Check land status on a current map before you plan a route.

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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 S503 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.

Bighorn Sheep guide

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Bighorn Sheep Hunting in Unit S503

Unit S503 lies in Carbon County. Montana FWP publishes no per-unit bighorn sheep success figure we can verify for this unit. Check land status on a current map before you plan a route.

Where to Find Bighorn Sheep in Unit S503

Montana FWP draws an exact line around unit S503 and says nothing about where the bighorn sheep stand inside it. The country below is verified; where to begin in it is our judgement, not the agency's. The unit lies in Carbon County.

The lines of the unit: Bighorn Lake and Yellowtail Reservoir

Montana FWP draws unit S503 in Carbon County with a boundary that runs on Highway 310, and on Bighorn Lake and Yellowtail Reservoir, walked corner by corner in its hunting district legal descriptions. That is a legal description, not a habitat map. 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: Big Pryor Mountain, East Pryor Mountain and Red Pryor Mountain

Named high points inside the unit include Big Pryor Mountain at 8,779 feet, East Pryor Mountain at 8,771 feet, Red Pryor Mountain at 8,452 feet, Cave Ridge at 8,223 feet and Tony Island at 7,606 feet. Several carry a public-land flag in our data, which makes them the first places to try for a view. Sheep on lower country still need rock, and on a desert unit the rock is the whole hunt.

Holding ground: Gooseberry Hollow, Bridge Hollow and Demijohn Flat

Below them sit Gooseberry Hollow at 5,830 feet, Bridge Hollow at 5,670 feet, Demijohn Flat at 5,340 feet, Cave Canyon at 5,232 feet and Demijohn Hollow at 5,133 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: Tony Island Spring, Petes Spring and Teeples Spring

Named sources include Tony Island Spring, Petes Spring, Teeples Spring, Ingram Spring, Annerer Spring and Red Water Well. Nothing in the data says which of them run in autumn, so a scouting trip earns its fuel.

Unit S503 terrain and land status

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

Named features inside the unit

Glass from: Big Pryor Mountain (8,779 ft), East Pryor Mountain (8,771 ft), Red Pryor Mountain (8,452 ft), Cave Ridge (8,223 ft)

Holding ground: Tie Flat (7,076 ft), Harsten Flat (6,673 ft), Gooseberry Hollow (5,830 ft), Tony Island Spring, Petes 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 Bighorn Sheep in Unit S503

Montana FWP publishes no bighorn sheep success figure for unit S503 that we can tie to this unit alone, so we won't quote one. The plan: pick a glassing position across from the escape terrain and stay on it for hours, not minutes.

Glassing from Roberts Bench, Tillet Ridge and Penney Peak

Take a position on one of Roberts Bench (7,081 ft), Tillet Ridge (5,855 ft), Penney Peak (5,021 ft) and Yellow Hill (4,580 ft) and be on it before light. Work the morning with the air falling away from you, then accept that by mid-morning the wind has reversed and the plan has to change with it. Give a basin forty minutes before you decide it is empty. On the rut hunts, late hunts put rams with ewe groups on the same rock.

A first plan from the pins on this page

The map above marks Big Pryor Mountain, East Pryor Mountain, Red Pryor Mountain and Cave Ridge as places to see from, and Tie Flat, Harsten Flat, Gooseberry Hollow and Tony Island Spring 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 bighorn sheep 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.

Bighorn Sheep: where to put the shot

Broadside or quartering away, on the back edge of the front leg about a third of the way up the body.

Shots to refuse

Nothing behind or overlapping the animal you picked.
Your maximum range is the farthest you have shot a three-shot group into a paper plate from the rest you are carrying.
Pass the shot you are talking yourself into.

Plan the carry: roughly 40– 120 lb of boned-out meat, before head and hide — two large coolers. ProHunt planning estimate, not an agency figure.

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Bighorn Sheep Success Rates

Montana FWP's 2023 harvest estimates carry no bighorn sheep row for unit S503 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.

Bighorn Sheep Draw Odds

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

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Frequently Asked Questions

Where is Colorado unit S503?

Unit S503 lies in Carbon County. Montana FWP draws unit S503 with a boundary that runs on Highway 310, and on Bighorn Lake and Yellowtail Reservoir, walked corner by corner in its hunting district legal descriptions.

What is the bighorn sheep success rate in unit S503?

Montana FWP publishes no bighorn sheep success figure we can tie to unit S503 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 — sheep hunting districts (pp. 10-13) — 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