Unit La Sal, La Sal Mtns (La Sal Mtns)
Utah Hunting Guide — Elk, Mountain Goat, Mule Deer
Unit La Sal, La Sal Mtns lies in Grand and San Juan counties and covers about 2,478 square miles. Ground runs from 4,361 to 10,528 feet. UDWR's harvest estimates put elk success here as high as 28%. Most of the unit is private, so access comes before tactics. Check land status on a current map before you plan a route.
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Elk Hunting in Unit La Sal, La Sal Mtns
Unit La Sal, La Sal Mtns lies in Grand and San Juan counties and covers about 2,478 square miles. Ground runs from 4,361 to 10,528 feet. UDWR's harvest estimates put elk success here as high as 28%. Most of the unit is private, so access comes before tactics. Check land status on a current map before you plan a route.
Where to Find Elk in Unit La Sal, La Sal Mtns
UDWR draws an exact line around unit La Sal, La Sal Mtns and says nothing about where the elk stand inside it. The country below is verified; where to begin in it is our judgement, not the agency's. The unit lies in Grand and San Juan counties. It runs to about 2,478 square miles.
The lines of the unit: Green River, Colorado River and Kane Springs Creek
UDWR draws unit La Sal, La Sal Mtns in Grand and San Juan counties with a boundary that runs on I-70, and on Green River, Colorado River, Kane Springs Creek and Dolores River, 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: Mount Peale, Mount Mellenthin and Mount Tukuhnikivatz
Named high points inside the unit include Mount Peale at 12,689 feet, Mount Mellenthin at 12,630 feet, Mount Tukuhnikivatz at 12,456 feet, Mount Waas at 12,292 feet and Manns Peak at 12,250 feet. Several carry a public-land flag in our data, which makes them the first places to try for a view. Elk want timber to bed in and open ground to feed on, within a short walk of each other.
Holding ground: Gold Basin, Miners Basin and Wilcox Flat
Below them sit Gold Basin at 10,066 feet, Miners Basin at 9,946 feet, Wilcox Flat at 9,341 feet, Dark Canyon at 9,009 feet and Carpenter Basin at 8,707 feet. These are the folds worth watching, and the ones other hunters walk past on the way to somewhere steeper. Reaching the edge of one before light beats reaching its middle at noon.
Water: Cabin Spring, Cold Spring and Freshwater Spring
The water inside the unit line comes to 3,296 mapped stream reaches, 12 lakes, 795 stock tanks and 63 springs. Named sources include Cabin Spring, Cold Spring, Freshwater Spring, Coyote Spring, King Bottom Spring and Salt Spring. On ground with that many tanks, knowing which two or three hold water in your season is the most useful thing a scouting trip can tell you.
Before you apply: who owns this unit
A UDWR permit does not authorise hunting on Native American trust lands, on a CWMU without that CWMU's own permit, or on National Park land, and written permission is required to hunt private land. Our ownership read for this unit is approximate — it comes out as National Forest 60%, Private / Other 17%, BLM 15% and State Trust 8%, so treat it as a starting point and check a current land-status layer before you plan a route. The unit runs from 4,361 feet to 10,528 feet, averaging 5,448 — that is a lot of vertical to cover, and it means the season you draw decides which half of the unit you hunt.
Unit La Sal, La Sal Mtns terrain and land status
Measured from the unit boundary, not from the agency write-up
The lay of it
- 4,361–10,528 ft on a terrain sample , averaging 5,448 ft ; peaks can run higher. That spread means you can hunt two seasons in one day — plan clothing for both ends.
- 2,477.5 sq mi inside the boundary. Big enough that picking one drainage beats driving three.
Who owns the ground
- National Forest — 60%
- BLM — 15%
- State Trust — 8%
- Private / Other — 17%
Roughly 83% is public. Carry a land-status layer anyway — these are area percentages, not a map of where the boundaries fall.
Water on the ground
- 795 tanks
- 63 springs
- 3,296 stream segments
- 12 lakes
Counts from mapping data, so this is how many exist, not how many hold water in a dry year. Sitting water only pays where you find fresh tracks.
Named features inside the unit
Glass from: Mount Peale (12,689 ft), Mount Mellenthin (12,630 ft), Mount Tukuhnikivatz (12,456 ft), Mount Waas (12,292 ft)
Holding ground: Burro Pass (11,139 ft), Beaver Basin (10,258 ft), La Sal Pass (10,135 ft), Cabin Spring, Cold 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 Elk in Unit La Sal, La Sal Mtns
Elk Success Rates
UDWR's 2023 harvest estimates carry no elk row for unit La Sal, La Sal Mtns 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. UDWR's current harvest estimates are the place to check before you apply.
Elk Draw Odds
| Season | Tags | Applicants | Draw % | Pts Req |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Archery — Limited Entry bull/buck only (resident) | 7 | 7 | 100.0% | 15 |
| Archery — Limited Entry bull/buck only (nonresident) | 1 | 5 | 20.0% | 15 |
| Rifle — Limited Entry bull/buck only (resident) | 41 | 316 | 13.0% | 18 |
| Rifle — Limited Entry bull/buck only (nonresident) | 5 | 87 | 5.7% | 18 |
| Muzzleloader — Limited Entry bull/buck only (resident) | 22 | 144 | 15.3% | 15 |
| Muzzleloader — Limited Entry bull/buck only (nonresident) | 2 | 59 | 3.4% | 15 |
| Any Legal Weapon — Limited Entry bull/buck only (resident) | 41 | 281 | 14.6% | 14 |
| Any Legal Weapon — Limited Entry bull/buck only (nonresident) | 4 | 93 | 4.3% | 14 |
| Any Legal Weapon — Multi-season bull/buck only (resident) | 5 | 79 | 6.3% | 22 |
| Any Legal Weapon — Multi-season bull/buck only (nonresident) | 0 | 0 | 0.0% | 22 |
| Any Legal Weapon — Antlerless antlerless (resident) | 108 | 330 | 32.7% | — |
| Any Legal Weapon — Antlerless antlerless (nonresident) | 12 | 29 | 41.4% | — |
Data from 2025 draw results. Each row is one residency pool — read the label before the number.
Open in Draw Odds EngineUDWR's 2025 draw recap for elk in unit La Sal, La Sal Mtns, with resident and nonresident kept apart because the two draw from different licence pools:
- Any Legal Weapon, Limited Entry, Bull/Buck Only, resident: 473 applicants for 13 licences, 2.7% drawn, 18 bonus points needed
- Any Legal Weapon, Antlerless, Antlerless, resident: 366 applicants for 145 licences, 39.6% drawn, no bonus points needed
- Any Legal Weapon, Limited Entry, Bull/Buck Only, nonresident: 172 applicants for 2 licences, 1.2% drawn, 18 bonus points needed
- Archery, Limited Entry, Bull/Buck Only, resident: 170 applicants for 35 licences, 20.6% drawn, 8 bonus points needed
Utah draws on bonus points in a weighted random draw, not in point order, so the figure above is what it happened to take that year rather than a threshold you can plan to reach. More points buy more chances, never a turn. There are 5 further season-and-residency combinations in the recap for this unit. These are the figures as published in UDWR's own draw recap; we have not yet checked them back against the agency row by row, so confirm the hunt you mean to apply for before you count on a number.
Unit Logistics & Expectations
Frequently Asked Questions
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Every fact on this page is tied to a primary source below. Last fact-checked 2026-10-24.
- UDWR Hunt Boundaries — boundary descriptions from the Hunt Planner boundary layer — Utah Division of Wildlife Resources · supports: GMU boundary description, Counties the unit lies in, UDWR's private-land note for the unit · accessed 2026-10-24
- UDWR DWR_Hunt_Boundaries_combined feature service — all 687 published hunt boundaries, including the CWMUs — Utah Division of Wildlife Resources · supports: Mapped extent of the unit, Which named ground falls inside the unit line · accessed 2026-10-24