Unit Plateau, Thousand Lakes (Thousand Lakes)

What UDWR publishes for unit Plateau, Thousand Lakes is a boundary, not a mule deer map. So the ground below is the unit's own and the read on where to start is ours, labelled as such. The unit lies in Sevier and Wayne counties. It runs to about 507 square miles.

The lines of the unit: Rock Springs, Willow Springs and Windy Peak

UDWR draws unit Plateau, Thousand Lakes in Sevier and Wayne counties with a boundary that runs on Rock Springs, Willow Springs and Windy Peak, walked corner by corner in its hunting district legal descriptions. Read it as a frame, not as a hint about animals. 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: Flat Top, Thousand Lake Mountain and Hens Hole Peak

Named high points inside the unit include Flat Top at 11,289 feet, Thousand Lake Mountain at 11,282 feet, Hens Hole Peak at 10,855 feet, Geyser Peak at 10,566 feet and Point Lookout at 10,149 feet. Several carry a public-land flag in our data, which makes them the first places to try for a view. Mule deer bed on broken ground with a view and feed on the brush below it.

Holding ground: Hens Hole Flat, Bullings Pass and Billings Pass

Below them sit Hens Hole Flat at 9,310 feet, Bullings Pass at 9,236 feet, Billings Pass at 9,235 feet, Sulphur Basin at 9,120 feet and Lighah Fork at 8,943 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: Alex Spring, Sidehill Spring and Mud Spring

The water inside the unit line comes to 243 mapped stream reaches, 6 lakes, 95 stock tanks and 40 springs. Named sources include Alex Spring, Sidehill Spring, Mud Spring, Indian Spring, Flat Top Spring and Bare Spot Spring. 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 National Forest 60%, Private / Other 32% 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 5,163 feet to 9,159 feet, averaging 7,012 — enough relief to separate summer range from winter range.

UDWR's own harvest estimates put mule deer success in unit Plateau, Thousand Lakes at muzzleloader 20%. That is an ordinary spread for this country, and it rewards whoever scouted. The plan: glass the broken edges at first light, then sit still and keep glassing the same ground.

Glassing from The Ant Hill, Foy Bench and Deer Peak

Take a position on one of The Ant Hill (9,290 ft), Foy Bench (8,725 ft), Deer Peak (8,395 ft) and Little Deer Peak (7,860 ft) and be on it before light. Cold air slides downhill in the dark, so keep your scent out of the bowl you mean to watch; expect the thermals to turn uphill an hour after the sun reaches the slope. 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-season hunts put bucks with doe groups and moving in daylight.

Water against feed

There are 243 mapped stream reaches and 95 tanks inside the unit, so water is rarely the limiting factor. Where water is everywhere, feed is what concentrates animals, so hunt the feed and treat water as a convenience. Check the ground around it before you commit an evening to it.

Timing the season: Sep, Oct, Nov

Season normals here run Sep 77/51°F, Oct 64/39°F and Nov 50/28°F. Warm afternoons compress the hunting into the first and last hour, and make meat care the day's real problem rather than the shot. Precipitation runs about 0.9 in. in Sep, 0.9 in. in Oct and 0.4 in. in Nov, and the graded gravel in this unit turns greasy wet.

Getting past the roads: SR 24 and Caineville Wash Road

SR 24 and SR 72 are the paved frame, which is also where everyone else starts. FR 0206 needs clearance, and that is usually where the boot tracks thin out. There are roughly 15.3 miles of genuine four-wheel-drive road in the unit, and the country past the end of them is the part worth your legs.

A first plan from the pins on this page

The map above marks Flat Top, Hens Hole Peak, Geyser Peak and Point Lookout as places to see from, and Bull Run Flat, Wiffs Pasture, Tub Flat and Alex Spring 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 a day here costs you

507 square miles is more country than a week will cover, so pick one drainage and learn it rather than driving the unit. The nearest services are at Torrey, about 11 miles out, which is an hour of your morning each way if you sleep there. With 3,996 feet between the lowest and highest ground, the walk back up out of a kill site is the part to plan first. Leave the truck earlier than you want to and you will hunt the best half-hour of the day.