This unit is located in the northwest corner of Wyoming between Cody and Yellowstone National Park.This unit is virtually all public land with a few homesteaded sections of private land scattered throughout.The boundaries for the unit are the National Forest’s boundaries. Nonresidents will notice that there is a lot of Wilderness Area in this unit, but this should not deter them from hunting this unit. There is plenty of good bear habitat located outside of the Wilderness Area.

This unit is home to a lot of bears, both black bears and grizzlies, so make sure you know for sure if the bear you are looking at is a black bear.

This is some very rugged and unforgiving country. The mountains might not be all towering over 12,000 feet, but they are all steep and rocky. If you aren’t paying attention to your map or GPS, you can get cliffed out very easy. There have been a lot of fires in this unit going back as far as 1988. Due to these fires and a large amount of beetle killed trees, there is a lot of deadfall. This makes traveling in this country difficult but also makes for some great bear habitat.

Wilderness

Under Wyoming law nonresidents are not permitted to hunt big game or trophy game in any federally designated wilderness areas without the presence of a licensed guide or resident companion. The resident companion must first get a free non-commercial guide license from a Game and Fish office. The law does not prohibit nonresidents from hiking, fishing or hunting game birds, small game, or coyotes in wilderness areas.

This whole unit is located on National Forest land. Hunters are still going to see a lot of sagebrush in the mountains. The majority of the trees in this unit are lodgepole pine, as well as small patches of aspens and white pines. Along the rivers, streams, and around some lakes, you are going to find a lot of willows and dense brush. There are a lot of burns in the unit as well. In the Sunlight/Crandall area of this unit, you can still see the aftermath of the huge fire from 1988 that burned most of Yellowstone and the surrounding areas. In these burns, there is a lot of deadfall which can be a pain to hike in, but can be outstanding feeding areas for bears.

There is really only one thing that will limit the amount of land a nonresident can hunt in this unit, and that is the designated Wilderness Areas. There is a lot of Wilderness Area in this unit, but do not let that deter you -there are plenty of good places to hunt outside of these areas. When looking at this unit, you really need to break it down into four different areas to focus on. There is the Northfork, Sunlight, Crandall and the front face. The front face is the front of the mountain range from Cody going North to the Montana border before the top of the mountain down towards State Highway 120. There are only a few access roads to the front face, but those roads go straight into some great bear country. Sunlight is a long county maintained road off of State Highway 296 that travels west all the way to the Yellowstone border. The Crandall area covers the entire area north of Sunlight on 296 and 212 from the Montana border near Cooke City, and east past Beartooth Lake and Top of the World. The last portion of the unit break down is the Northfork, which is State Highway 14 West from Cody towards Yellowstone. The Northfork is mentioned last due to the amount of Wilderness Area in this portion. The Wilderness boundary comes down really close to the road here. You can find bears along the river bottom during the spring when they focus on finding green grass, but there is more nonresident friendly land in the Sunlight/Crandall area. There are quite a few small sections of old homesteaded land scattered throughout this whole unit that you need to be aware of.

If you are hunting in this unit, Cody is really the only town nearby with accommodations and provisions that can be accessed year-round. You can base out of Cody and day hunt anywhere in this unit and be back at a reasonable hour. If you want to set up a campsite in the Sunlight or Crandall area, there are about a dozen established campgrounds. But with this being National Forest, there are a bunch of campsites on just about every road. Same goes for the Northfork, as there are over 10 established campgrounds along Highway 14. When the road from Pilot Peak trailhead to Cooke City opens up, Cooke City has a couple of hotels and a few restaurants.