Montana Bighorn Sheep

Unit S680 (Chouteau-Blaine-Phillips)

Montana Hunting Guide — Bighorn Sheep

Unit S680 lies in Gallatin and Madison counties. 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.

View Draw Odds Montana Hunting Guide

Build your own PDF hunt guide for Unit S680

Answer a few questions about your tag, your season and your rig, and the Field Intelligence Report builds a print-ready Montana Unit S680 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

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.

Bighorn Sheep Hunting in Unit S680

Where to Find Bighorn Sheep in Unit S680

What Montana FWP publishes for unit S680 is a boundary, not a bighorn sheep map. The country below is verified; where to begin in it is our judgement, not the agency's. The unit lies in Gallatin and Madison counties.

The lines of the unit: Missouri River, Upper Missouri River and Cow Creek

Montana FWP draws unit S680 in Gallatin and Madison counties with a boundary that runs on Highway 236, Highway 66, US Highway 191 and Highway 191, and on Missouri River, Upper Missouri River, Cow Creek and Suction Creek, walked corner by corner in its hunting district legal descriptions. It tells you the shape of the unit and nothing about its inhabitants. What it does give you is the way in: the rivers and highways you cross, and the divides that decide which drainage you end up in.

High ground inside the line: Thornhill Butte, Williamson Butte and Goat Mountain

Named high points inside the unit include Thornhill Butte at 4,612 feet, Williamson Butte at 4,555 feet, Goat Mountain at 4,060 feet, Gannon Ridge at 3,898 feet and Threemile Ridge at 3,761 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: Davidson Coulee, Clutchbaugh Coulee and Coyote Coulee

Below them sit Davidson Coulee at 2,798 feet, Clutchbaugh Coulee at 2,794 feet, Coyote Coulee at 2,753 feet, Kings Coulee at 2,735 feet and John Coulee at 2,729 feet. Those are the basins, parks and bottoms this unit has, and they are what you glass into from above. Work out which of them you can see from one position before you pick a camp.

Unit S680 terrain and land status

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

Named features inside the unit

Glass from: Thornhill Butte (4,612 ft), Threemile Ridge (3,761 ft), T U Bench (3,731 ft), Gumbo Butte (3,529 ft)

Holding ground: Buck Coulee (2,986 ft), Coyote Coulee (2,753 ft), John Coulee (2,729 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 Bighorn Sheep in Unit S680

Montana FWP publishes no bighorn sheep success figure for unit S680 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 Lone Tree Bench, Shetland Divide and Barnard Ridge

Take a position on one of Lone Tree Bench (3,527 ft), Shetland Divide (3,484 ft), Barnard Ridge (3,478 ft) and Pendell Ridge (3,460 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. 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, late hunts put rams with ewe groups on the same rock.

The way in: Highway 236, Highway 66 and US Highway 191

We have no road inventory for this unit, so the only routes we can name are the ones Montana FWP draws the boundary with: Highway 236, Highway 66, US Highway 191 and Highway 191. 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 Thornhill Butte, Threemile Ridge, T U Bench and Gumbo Butte as places to see from, and Buck Coulee, Coyote Coulee and John Coulee as ground to watch. Each pin is a named feature verified to fall inside the unit line, not a spot anyone has hunted. Take the pair you can reach on one road and treat the rest as a second trip.

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 S680 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

Season	Tags	Applicants	Draw %	Pts (n/p)
Rifle — General either sex (resident)	9	5,895	0.2%	—
Rifle — General either sex (nonresident)	1	2,595	0.0%	—

Data from 2025 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 bighorn sheep record we can tie to unit S680. 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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Road Conditions

Access relies on a mix of county and Forest Service or BLM secondary roads. Spur roads often require high-clearance or 4WD, and conditions can degrade quickly with weather changes.

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Hunting Pressure

Hunter density is extremely low because of the limited number of permits, but each permit holder scouts intensively, which can concentrate activity in the most productive pockets.

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Weather

Expect cool fall conditions early, shifting to cold, snowy weather later in the season. Sudden mountain storms are common, so pack layered insulation and gear that performs in wet and windy conditions.

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Permit Notes

Access this HD requires a limited-entry bighorn sheep permit drawn through FWP. Review the current regulations and drawing information before applying.

Note: Review FWP's Plan-a-Hunt tool and Block Management listings for the most current public access information inside the district.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Where is Colorado unit S680?

Unit S680 lies in Gallatin and Madison counties. Montana FWP draws unit S680 with a boundary that runs on Highway 236, Highway 66, US Highway 191 and Highway 191, and on Missouri River, Upper Missouri River, Cow Creek and Suction Creek, walked corner by corner in its hunting district legal descriptions.

What is the bighorn sheep success rate in unit S680?

Montana FWP publishes no bighorn sheep success figure we can tie to unit S680 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