Unit research · Nevada Unit 286

Unit 286 — Nevada

76% public across 336,831 ac. Real backcountry here — 43% of the public land sits more than a mile from any road. Almost none of the public land is landlocked.

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Bighorn sheep draw odds (1)Odds and pins: free, no account

Unit 286Full map — ownership, roads, wind →

1,900–7,250 ft

elevation range

76%

public land

43%

of public >1 mi from a road

173 ac

landlocked public

3.47

road miles per mi²

581 mi

maintained trails

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

Tags & season

Draw hunts on this ground.

One limited-entry bighorn sheep hunt is drawn on Unit 286: apply in the Nevada draw, by the agency's deadline below.

Bighorn sheep tag · 1 draw hunt (2026)$123.00 resident · $1,203.00 nonresident

Plus: Nevada hunting licence$38.00 resident · $155.00 nonresident

Season dates: see Nevada Department of Wildlife's regulations

NDOW — Apply & Buy: hunting licences, tags and application fees ↗

NDOW — Apply & Buy: hunting licences, tags and application fees ↗Draw odds for Nevada bighorn sheep →How the Nevada draw works →

Fees and draw dates from Nevada Department of Wildlife, 2026, verified 2026-08-15 — past its verify-by date, confirm with the agency. Tag type from the agency's published draw statistics: a unit that appears in none of them has no limited-entry hunt we know of. Source: NDOW — Apply & Buy: hunting licences, tags and application fees · NDOW — Big game application FAQ 2026 · NDOW — How do bonus points work in Nevada? · NBWC CR-26-01 — 2026 Application Deadlines and Draw Result Dates (approved January 2026).

Land & access

■ FWS 57%■ BLM 12%■ NPS 5%■ Other public 1%□ Private 24%

Unit area336,831 ac

Public land255,984 ac (76%)

Landlocked public173 ac (0.1%)

Bighorn sheep draw pressure0.008 tags/mi² public (0.006 of total area)

Motorized routes (MVUM + roads)1,825 mi

Maintained trails581 mi

Backcountry

Public land >1 mi from a road111,247 ac (43% of public)

Road density3.47 mi/mi²

Managed byFWS 193k ac · BLM 41k ac · NPS 18k ac

Elevation1,900–7,250 ft

Median elevation3,100 ft

Median slope4°

Where the ground sits

1,900 ft7,250 ft

Tap or hover the bars for each elevation band

Slope mix

Which way the slopes face

N 19%

E 34%

S 26%

W 21%

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

42,216 ac of this unit has burned — 13% 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

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

Measured at MCCARRAN INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, 41 km from the unit’s center and ~900 ft below its median elevation — expect the unit to run colder. NOAA ISD-Lite hourly observations.

Harvest — agency survey estimates

Bighorn sheep · 2025 · draw hunts

66.7% success

2 taken by 3 hunters · 39 days afield

Bighorn sheep hunter success · 2021–2025 · 100% → 67%

NDOW's per-hunt workbook, the richest single table any agency gives us: one row per hunt class, weapon, residency and unit group, carrying both draw and harvest. Hunter success is published by NDOW and carried verbatim; nothing here is derived. Keyed by UNIT GROUP, not a single unit — Nevada draws many hunts across several units at once ("012-014", "021/022"), and splitting a group across its member units would attribute one hunt's harvest to each of them. Hunt days are converted from NDOW's published average-per-hunter to total days afield, so the column means the same thing it does in every other state. That is a unit conversion between two published figures, not an estimate. FIVE SEASONS, 2021-2025, from two publications of the same table. The workbook only ever holds the current season, so the prior four come from NDOW's per-species "Harvest by Unit Group" reports — the identical columns in PDF form, one file per species per season. The two forms disagree in ways that are invisible if you trust either: the PDFs spell residency Res/NonRes in 2022 and 2024 but R/NR in 2023, publish one applicant column in 2022 where later seasons publish two, and re-lay out their columns on EVERY PAGE so a page of narrow figures sits two columns left of page one — and 2021 both renames Hunter Success to Success Rate and abbreviates the three sheep to "<herd> BHS". Each of those, read naively, produces a complete file of confidently wrong numbers rather than an error. The reader therefore derives columns per page and cross-checks NDOW's published success rate against its own hunters and harvest on every row, failing the build on a mismatch. Source: NDOW Hunt Statistics — Big Game Hunt Data workbook · NDOW Harvest by Unit Group (per-species season reports).

How these numbers are made

public_land_pct = public_area / unit_area
landlocked = public ∖ reachable(roads, corners)
remote = public ∖ buffer(roads, 1 mi)
# AGPL — read the pipeline →

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 units

Unit 284100% public · 61% remote Unit 24468% public · 33% remote Unit 26881% public · 28% remote Unit 26986% public · 18% remote Unit 28279% public · 68% remote Unit 26286% public · 18% remote

Ready to scout it?

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