Unit San Juan, Elk Ridge

UDWR's own harvest estimates put mule deer success in unit San Juan, Elk Ridge at rifle 25%, muzzleloader 20% and archery 16%. 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 Deadman Point, South Elk Ridge and North Long Point

Take a position on one of Deadman Point (8,744 ft), South Elk Ridge (8,729 ft), North Long Point (8,723 ft) and East Point (8,703 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-season hunts put bucks with doe groups and moving in daylight.

Water against feed

There are 737 mapped stream reaches and 287 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. Sitting water works where you can see fresh tracks going in, and nowhere else.

Timing the season: Sep, Oct, Nov

Season normals here run Sep 78/52°F, Oct 64/40°F and Nov 51/29°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 1.6 in. in Sep, 1.1 in. in Oct and 0.7 in. in Nov, and the graded gravel in this unit turns greasy wet.

A first plan from the pins on this page

The map above marks Horse Mountain, Bears Ears, Brushy Knoll and Dry Mesa as places to see from, and Sego Flat, Redd Pasture, Babylon Pasture and Soda Spring as ground to watch. Each pin is a named feature verified to fall inside the unit line, not a spot anyone has hunted. Join two of them into a morning: be on the first before light, move to the second once the thermals turn.

What a day here costs you

3,082 square miles is more country than a week will cover, so pick one drainage and learn it rather than driving the unit. With 4,563 feet between the lowest and highest ground, the walk back up out of a kill site is the part to plan first. Decide the night before where you will be at first light, and go there in the dark.

What we can't tell you

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. Settle access before the season rather than during it. Some of the ground named above carries no land-status flag we trust, so check ownership on a current layer before you hunt it.