Hunting GMU 14: Colorado’s Bear’s Ears Country, Honestly Assessed

GMU 14 is an over-the-counter elk unit in northwest Colorado, in Routt and Moffat counties, roughly between Steamboat Springs, Craig and Maybell. It is part of what Colorado Parks and Wildlife manages as the Bear’s Ears elk herd. If you are looking at it for a first Colorado elk hunt, there are three things worth knowing before you book time off, and only one of them is good news.

Where GMU 14 actually is

CPW groups game management units into Data Analysis Units for herd management. GMU 14 sits in the Bear’s Ears DAU (E-2), alongside units 3, 4, 5, 214, 301 and 441. CPW describes the towns on the periphery of this herd’s range as “Craig, Steamboat Springs and Maybell.”

That is big, open, north-facing country — sage and oak brush breaking into aspen and dark timber as you climb. The elk in it are genuinely migratory. CPW’s herd planning documents note animals moving 60 to 70 miles between summer range and winter range. Where the elk are in October is not where they were in August, and it is not where they will be in December.

This matters more than most unit write-ups admit. Scouting GMU 14 in July tells you something about July.

The number nobody puts in the brochure

CPW sets a population objective for every herd and then estimates the actual post-hunt population each year. For Bear’s Ears:

The herd is running well under the bottom of its own objective range. We are not going to dress that up. Fewer elk on the landscape is fewer elk in front of you, and it is the single most useful fact about this unit that you will not find on a forum thread.

What it does not mean is that the unit is empty. Ten and a half thousand elk is still a lot of elk. It means the odds are honest ones, and that anyone selling you GMU 14 as a slam dunk has not read CPW’s own numbers.

Access is the real constraint

Here is the land ownership picture CPW gives for elk winter range in this herd:

And in CPW’s own stakeholder feedback for this herd, the recurring complaint is blunt: “Access to public land is limited due to being landlocked and surrounded by private land.”

Licenses: what is over the counter and what is not

CPW manages Bear’s Ears as an opportunity herd — the management approach that trades trophy quality for tags being available. In practice:

• Bull licenses for 2nd and 3rd rifle are unlimited in number and sold over the counter. No draw, no preference points.
• Archery and muzzleloader are limited on the National Forest. CPW’s stated reason is specific and worth understanding: it is done “to lessen the effects of hunters moving elk off of public lands prior to the 1st rifle season.”

Read that second point again, because it tells you what CPW believes about this unit: elk here get pushed off public ground and onto private, early, and the agency is actively managing to slow it down. That is a real dynamic you will be hunting inside of.

2026 season dates for this unit

Full statewide breakdown, with a live indicator showing what is open today: 2026 Colorado big game season dates. Planning further out? The 2027 dates are already fixed and we have published them.

What you actually need to bring

Blaze orange — this one is the law, not advice

Colorado requires 500 square inches of solid daylight fluorescent orange or pink above the waist, plus a head covering, during rifle seasons. Camouflage orange does not count toward it. We wrote the full rule up here: Colorado’s blaze orange rule, what actually counts.

The six dollar vest and the seventy dollar vest both make you legal. The difference is pockets, durability and whether you still like it in year three. See all blaze orange →

Glass, because this is glassing country

Open sage and oak brush breaking to timber is exactly the terrain where binoculars beat boot leather. In migratory country where the herd moved last week, the hunter covering ground with glass from a good vantage finds elk that the hunter walking ridges does not.

Honest guidance: 10×42 is the default for a reason, and 8×42 is the better buy if you glass handheld rather than off a tripod. All binoculars → · Rangefinders → · Spotting scopes →

Calls, for the September archery hunt

Buy diaphragms in a three pack and practice in the truck for a month before September. All game calls →

Light, because the walk out is in the dark

Field dressing and packing out both need both hands. That is a headlamp job, not a flashlight job. And if you are trailing an animal after last light, a high-CRI or dedicated tracking light shows the difference between dark red and wet brown far better than raw brightness does.

All flashlights and headlamps →

Cameras, for the scouting you should be doing now

Trail cameras are legal in Colorado year round for scouting — there is no seasonal ban, whatever you have read. We quoted the actual regulation here: Are trail cameras legal in Colorado?

In migratory country a cellular camera earns its money, because it tells you the elk moved without you burning a day driving out to find that they did. All game cameras →

Would we send you here?

Depends what you want.

If you want a tag in your pocket without burning points, and you are willing to do the access homework properly, GMU 14 is a legitimate over-the-counter elk hunt within a couple of hours of Steamboat. Plenty of elk get killed here every year by people who solved the access problem in August.

If you are expecting high odds, look honestly at the herd estimate against the objective and at the neighboring units. Success rates in northwest Colorado vary more between adjacent units than most people expect — some of the units around here have run roughly double the elk success of others. Same country, very different odds. We will publish the unit-by-unit comparison as those guides go up.

What we will not do is tell you it is easy so you buy a vest from us.