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Units / New Mexico / GMU 16D

Unit research · New Mexico GMU 16D

GMU 16D — New Mexico

88% public across 301,346 ac. Road access is easy — only 10% of the public land is more than a mile from a road. Almost none of the public land is landlocked.

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Deer draw odds (7)Elk draw odds (7)Pronghorn draw odds (5)Odds and pins: free, no account
GMU 16DFull map — ownership, roads, wind →
5,650–9,680 ft

elevation range

88%

public land

10%

of public >1 mi from a road

580 ac

landlocked public

1.96

road miles per mi²

477 mi

maintained trails

Computed from primary government data by the open pipeline. See the code →

Tags & season

Draw hunts on this ground.

19 limited-entry deer, elk and pronghorn hunts are drawn on GMU 16D: apply in the New Mexico draw, by the agency's deadline below.

Deer tag · 7 draw hunts (2026)$67.00 resident · $411.00 nonresident
Elk tag · 7 draw hunts (2026)$107.00 resident · $786.00 nonresident
Pronghorn tag · 5 draw hunts (2026)$77.00 resident · $436.00 nonresident
Plus: New Mexico Game-Hunting Licence$25.00 resident · $90.00 nonresident

Season dates: see New Mexico Department of Game and Fish's regulations

NMDGF — Draw Hunt License Fees (2026-2027)

Fees and draw dates from New Mexico Department of Game and Fish, 2026, verified 2026-08-15 — past its verify-by date, confirm with the agency. Tag type from the agency's published draw statistics: a gmu that appears in none of them has no limited-entry hunt we know of. Source: NMDGF — Draw Hunt License Fees (2026-2027) · NMDGF — Big-game and draw hunts (fee collection and refunds).

Land & access

USFS 80%BLM 5%SLB 3%□ Private 12%
Unit area301,346 ac
Public land266,028 ac (88%)
Landlocked public580 ac (0.2%)
Elk draw pressure0.64 tags/mi² public (0.56 of total area)
Motorized routes (MVUM + roads)924 mi
Maintained trails477 mi

Backcountry

Public land >1 mi from a road26,806 ac (10% of public)
Road density1.96 mi/mi²
Managed byUSFS 243k ac · BLM 15k ac · SLB 8k ac
Elevation5,650–9,680 ft
Median elevation7,560 ft
Median slope10°

Where the ground sits

5,650 ft9,680 ft

Tap or hover the bars for each elevation band

Slope mix

Which way the slopes face

N 27%
E 22%
S 27%
W 25%

Share of ground steeper than 5° — flat ground has no facing

North slopes hold shade, cover and snow; south slopes open first.

USGS 3DEP 1 arc-second (30 m), slope at native resolution in a local metric projection, sampled on a 200 m grid. See the code →

Unit intelligence report

86,429 ac of this gmu has burned — 29% of the unit. The full report assembles it into one printable document and keeps it current as the facts change.

Open the report →

Season conditions — measured, not vibes

Historical temperatures · 2000–2025

Monthly normal highs and lows, °F55° high31° lowJFMAMJJASOND

Normals for 2000–2025 — tap or hover for a month

Measured at TRH OR CONSEQCES MUNI ARPT, 125 km from the unit’s center and ~2,700 ft below its median elevation — expect the unit to run colder. NOAA ISD-Lite hourly observations.

Harvest — agency survey estimates

Deer · 2025 · draw hunts

reported for unit group 16A, 16B, 16C, 16D, 16E

29.9% success

215 taken by 720 hunters

Deer hunter success · 2021–2025 · 24% → 30%

Season breakdown · 2025
SeasonSuccessHarvestHunters
Archery18%34188
Muzzleloader28%70253

Which season is the value play here — same ground, different odds.

Elk · 2025 · draw hunts

25.9% success

49 taken by 189 hunters

Elk hunter success · 2019–2025 · 53% → 26%

Season breakdown · 2025
SeasonSuccessHarvestHunters
Archery15%21140

Which season is the value play here — same ground, different odds.

Pronghorn · 2025 · draw hunts

reported for unit group 16A, 16B, 16C, 16D, 16E

81.9% success

104 taken by 127 hunters

Pronghorn hunter success · 2024–2025 · 76% → 82%

Season breakdown · 2025
SeasonSuccessHarvestHunters
Archery50%918

Which season is the value play here — same ground, different odds.

KEYED BY HUNT CODE, which is what makes New Mexico only the third state where a draw hunt ties to its own harvest. The same ELK-1-132 that appears in the drawing odds appears in the harvest report with what it killed; before this, only Colorado and Arizona managed that, and Colorado has one season of it. Success rates are published by NMDGF and carried verbatim; nothing here is derived. The harvest columns are headed "Estimated Harvest" — extrapolated by the department from the hunters who filed a report — so they will not divide exactly into the published rate, and the reader accepts either denominator rather than pretending to a precision the source does not have. UNITS COME FROM THE DRAW TABLE, not from these reports. NMDGF prints the GMU rotated, and pdftotext splits a single "Public" into "Pu" and "blic" on separate lines beside the rows it labels. Both publications key on the hunt code, so the unit is joined across instead — which also means a season older than the odds archive has no unit to attach to and is not carried. Lettered sub-units are real units: "Unit 2" in a hunt description means 2A, 2B and 2C, so a hunt is keyed to the group of them exactly as Nevada's unit groups are. ONLY THE SEASONS THAT PARSE COMPLETELY ARE SHIPPED. Every species has its own layout and several changed mid-archive; a file where more than 15% of rows fail to reproduce NMDGF's own published success rate is discarded whole rather than in part, because the artifact aggregates hunts to a unit and a half-read year would quietly bias that unit's rate toward whichever hunts happened to parse. Deer carries five seasons and elk seven on that basis; the discarded years are a reader limitation, not an absence of data. Source: NMDGF Harvest Reports (per species, per season) · NMDGF Big Game Drawing Odds, Complete Report (the hunt-code to unit join).

How these numbers are made

public_land_pct = public_area / unit_area
landlocked = public ∖ reachable(roads, corners)
remote = public ∖ buffer(roads, 1 mi)

Computed, not curated: no paid research team, no opinions dressed as data. If a number looks wrong, file an issue — the fix ships for everyone.

Nearby GMUs

GMU 16A97% public · 8% remoteGMU 1577% public · 6% remoteGMU 16E62% public · 16% remoteGMU 16C83% public · 12% remoteGMU 2363% public · 16% remoteGMU 16B100% public · 79% remote

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Take GMU 16D into the field

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Watch this unit — freeReturned and leftover tags, new legal closures, fire near the unit, weather warnings — by email. One unit free, no card.