Unit Nine Mile, Gray Canyon
Utah Hunting Guide — Bighorn Sheep
Unit Nine Mile, Gray Canyon lies in Carbon, Duchesne and Emery counties and covers about 511 square miles. Ground runs from 4,089 to 8,776 feet. UDWR's harvest estimates put bighorn sheep success here as high as 72%. Most of the unit is private, so access comes before tactics. Check land status on a current map before you plan a route.
Build your own PDF hunt guide for Unit Nine Mile, Gray Canyon
Answer a few questions about your tag, your season and your rig, and the Field Intelligence Report builds a print-ready Utah Unit Nine Mile, Gray Canyon 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.
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Bighorn Sheep Hunting in Unit Nine Mile, Gray Canyon
Unit Nine Mile, Gray Canyon lies in Carbon, Duchesne and Emery counties and covers about 511 square miles. Ground runs from 4,089 to 8,776 feet. UDWR's harvest estimates put bighorn sheep success here as high as 72%. 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 Bighorn Sheep in Unit Nine Mile, Gray Canyon
UDWR's material on unit Nine Mile, Gray Canyon stops at the boundary — there is no agency account of where its bighorn sheep live. Every place named below sits inside the unit line. Which of them holds animals in your season is for you to find out. The unit lies in Carbon, Duchesne and Emery counties. It runs to about 511 square miles.
The lines of the unit: Green River, Water Canyon and Bruin Point
UDWR draws unit Nine Mile, Gray Canyon in Carbon, Duchesne and Emery counties with a boundary that runs on I-70, and on Green River, Water Canyon, Bruin Point and Range Creek, 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: Patmos Ridge, Patmos Head and Lila Point
Named high points inside the unit include Patmos Ridge at 9,926 feet, Patmos Head at 9,832 feet, Lila Point at 7,955 feet, Mount Elliott at 7,103 feet and Elliott Mesa at 6,980 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: Little Horse Canyon, Number Two Canyon and South Fork Horse Canyon
Below them sit Little Horse Canyon at 6,758 feet, Number Two Canyon at 6,674 feet, South Fork Horse Canyon at 6,595 feet, Whitmore Canyon at 6,594 feet and North Fork Horse Canyon at 6,590 feet. That is the low country of the unit — the ground animals drop into when they are pushed or when the weather turns. Reaching the edge of one before light beats reaching its middle at noon.
Water in this unit
The water inside the unit line comes to 48 mapped stream reaches, 8 lakes, 29 stock tanks and 2 springs. Nothing in the data says which of them run in autumn, so a scouting trip earns its fuel.
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 Private / Other 85% and BLM 15%, so treat it as a starting point and check a current land-status layer before you plan a route. The unit runs from 4,089 feet to 8,776 feet, averaging 5,867 — that is a lot of vertical to cover, and it means the season you draw decides which half of the unit you hunt.
Unit Nine Mile, Gray Canyon terrain and land status
Measured from the unit boundary, not from the agency write-up
The lay of it
- 4,089–8,776 ft on a terrain sample , averaging 5,867 ft ; peaks can run higher. That spread means you can hunt two seasons in one day — plan clothing for both ends.
- 510.6 sq mi inside the boundary.
Who owns the ground
- BLM — 15%
- Private / Other — 85%
Roughly 15% is public. Carry a land-status layer anyway — these are area percentages, not a map of where the boundaries fall.
Water on the ground
- 29 tanks
- 2 springs
- 48 stream segments
- 8 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: Patmos Ridge (9,926 ft), Patmos Head (9,832 ft), Lila Point (7,955 ft), Mount Elliott (7,103 ft)
Holding ground: Little Horse Canyon (6,758 ft), Williams Draw (6,564 ft), Water Canyon (6,342 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 Nine Mile, Gray Canyon
Bighorn Sheep Success Rates
UDWR's 2023 harvest estimates carry no bighorn sheep row for unit Nine Mile, Gray Canyon 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.
Bighorn Sheep Draw Odds
| Season | Tags | Applicants | Draw % | Pts Req |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rifle — Limited Entry ram only (resident) | 6 | 823 | 0.7% | 18 |
| Rifle — Limited Entry ram only (nonresident) | 1 | 3,673 | 0.0% | 18 |
| Any Legal Weapon — Once-in-a-lifetime bull/buck only (resident) | 4 | 806 | 0.5% | 25 |
| Any Legal Weapon — Once-in-a-lifetime bull/buck only (nonresident) | 2 | 2,339 | 0.1% | 25 |
Data from 2024 draw results. Each row is one residency pool — read the label before the number.
Open in Draw Odds EngineUDWR's 2025 draw recap for bighorn sheep in unit Nine Mile, Gray Canyon, with resident and nonresident kept apart because the two draw from different licence pools:
- Any Legal Weapon, Once-in-a-lifetime, Bull/Buck Only, nonresident: 2,339 applicants for 2 licences, 0.1% drawn, 25 bonus points needed
- Any Legal Weapon, Once-in-a-lifetime, Bull/Buck Only, resident: 806 applicants for 4 licences, 0.5% drawn, 25 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. 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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What is the bighorn sheep success rate in unit Nine Mile, Gray Canyon?
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Upgrade to Pro — $49/yrSources & Verification
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