Utah Bighorn Sheep

Unit San Juan, San Juan River

Utah Hunting Guide — Bighorn Sheep

Unit San Juan, San Juan River lies in San Juan County and covers about 750 square miles. Ground runs from 3,703 to 6,085 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.

View Draw Odds Utah Hunting Guide

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99%

Public Land

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Answer a few questions about your tag, your season and your rig, and the Field Intelligence Report builds a print-ready Utah Unit San Juan, San Juan River 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

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Bighorn Sheep Hunting in Unit San Juan, San Juan River

Where to Find Bighorn Sheep in Unit San Juan, San Juan River

UDWR draws an exact line around unit San Juan, San Juan River and says nothing about where the bighorn sheep stand inside it. The country below is verified; where to begin in it is our judgement, not the agency's. The unit lies in San Juan County. It runs to about 750 square miles.

What bounds unit San Juan, San Juan River

UDWR draws unit San Juan, San Juan River in San Juan County with a boundary that runs on San Juan River, walked corner by corner in its hunting district legal descriptions. That is a legal description, not a habitat map. 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: Polly Mesa, Step Point and Mulley Point

Named high points inside the unit include Polly Mesa at 6,715 feet, Step Point at 6,414 feet, Mulley Point at 6,314 feet, Point Lookout at 6,263 feet and Muley Point at 6,231 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: Sheiks Flat, Hardscrabble and Moki Dugway

Below them sit Sheiks Flat at 6,374 feet, Hardscrabble at 6,071 feet, Moki Dugway at 6,055 feet, Kane Gulch at 5,900 feet and Fortress Canyon at 5,823 feet. Those are the basins, parks and bottoms this unit has, and they are what you glass into from above. Pick the one with the least road on its upwind side.

Water: Green Water Spring and Rock Spring

Named sources include Green Water Spring and Rock 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 Private / Other 100%, so treat it as a starting point and check a current land-status layer before you plan a route. The unit runs from 3,703 feet to 6,085 feet, averaging 4,918 — enough relief to separate summer range from winter range.

Unit San Juan, San Juan River terrain and land status

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

Named features inside the unit

Glass from: Polly Mesa (6,715 ft), Step Point (6,414 ft), Point Lookout (6,263 ft), Nokai Dome (6,066 ft)

Holding ground: Mormon Flat (6,742 ft), Long Flat (6,560 ft), Indian Park (6,556 ft), Green Water Spring, Rock 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 Bighorn Sheep in Unit San Juan, San Juan River

UDWR's own harvest estimates put bighorn sheep success in unit San Juan, San Juan River at rifle 72%. A number like that comes from few tags and a short season, not from easy hunting. The plan: pick a glassing position across from the escape terrain and stay on it for hours, not minutes.

Glassing from The Step, Red House Cliffs and Mikes Mesa

Take a position on one of The Step (6,066 ft), Red House Cliffs (6,060 ft), Mikes Mesa (5,830 ft) and Hat Rock (5,521 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. Glass the edges first, then the shaded timber, then the edges again as the light goes. On the rut hunts, late hunts put rams with ewe groups on the same rock.

Timing the season: Sep, Oct, Nov

Season normals here run Sep 83/57°F, Oct 69/44°F and Nov 55/33°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 1.2 in. in Sep, 1 in. in Oct and 0.6 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 Polly Mesa, Step Point, Point Lookout and Nokai Dome as places to see from, and Mormon Flat, Long Flat, Indian Park and Green Water 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

750 square miles is more country than a week will cover, so pick one drainage and learn it rather than driving the unit. The ground is gentle enough that the pack-out is a distance problem rather than a climbing one. 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.

Utah rules that decide your day

Summarised from UDWR 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 official sunrise to half an hour after official sunset.

Motorized retrieval

Utah requires travel on existing roads and trails; there is no general off-road retrieval allowance. Plan a pack-out from anything you can't reach from an open route.

Tagging

Notch and attach the tag to the carcass before leaving the kill site.

Leaving meat

Wasting protected wildlife is a crime.

Where you may not shoot

Occupied structures — No discharging a firearm within 600 feet of a house, dwelling or other building without permission, and no shooting from a vehicle or across a 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

Rifle72%

UDWR's 2023 harvest estimates carry no bighorn sheep row for unit San Juan, San Juan River 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)	1	69	1.4%	1
Any Legal Weapon — Once-in-a-lifetime bull/buck only (resident)	2	137	1.5%	26
Any Legal Weapon — Once-in-a-lifetime bull/buck only (nonresident)	0	0	0.0%	26

Data from 2024 draw results. Each row is one residency pool — read the label before the number.

Open in Draw Odds Engine

UDWR's 2025 draw recap for bighorn sheep in unit San Juan, San Juan River, with resident and nonresident kept apart because the two draw from different licence pools:

Any Legal Weapon, Once-in-a-lifetime, Bull/Buck Only, resident: 137 applicants for 2 licences, 1.5% drawn, 26 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

Planning Notes

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Camp Sites

No developed campground falls inside the unit in our data — plan on dispersed camping and check the land status first.

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Road Conditions

Roughly 0 mi paved, 0 mi gravel and 0 mi four-wheel-drive.

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Terrain Difficulty

3,703–6,085 ft, averaging 4,918. Enough relief to separate summer from winter range.

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Hunting Pressure

Our land-status read for this unit is approximate, so treat any pressure estimate from it with suspicion and check a current ownership layer.

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Weather

Season normals: Sep 83/57°F, 1.2 in.; Oct 69/44°F, 1 in.; Nov 55/33°F, 0.6 in..

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Cell Service

Verizon 26%, AT&T 17%, T-Mobile 9% of the unit area — modelled coverage, not measured. Assume no signal off the paved road.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Where is Colorado unit San Juan, San Juan River?

Unit San Juan, San Juan River lies in San Juan County. UDWR draws unit San Juan, San Juan River with a boundary that runs on San Juan River, walked corner by corner in its hunting district legal descriptions. It covers about 750 square miles.

What is the bighorn sheep success rate in unit San Juan, San Juan River?

UDWR's 2023 harvest estimates put bighorn sheep success in unit San Juan, San Juan River at rifle 72% by weapon. Those are the agency's own figures for this unit, not a statewide average.

Can you hunt unit San Juan, San Juan River on public land?

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Sources & 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