Unit research · Washington GMU 181

Couse — Washington

13% public across 170,289 ac. Road access is easy — only 5% of the public land is more than a mile from a road. Watch the checkerboard: 1,182 ac of public land has no public route in.

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Black bear draw odds (1)Deer draw odds (2)Elk draw odds (8)Odds and pins: free, no account

GMU 181Full map — ownership, roads, wind →

740–5,000 ft

elevation range

13%

public land

of public >1 mi from a road

1,182 ac

landlocked public

1.27

road miles per mi²

134 mi

maintained trails

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

Tags & season

Draw hunts on this ground.

11 limited-entry black bear, deer and elk hunts are drawn on GMU 181: apply in the Washington draw, by the agency's deadline below.

Black bear tag · 1 draw hunt (2026)$42.47 resident · $458.40 nonresident

Deer tag · 2 draw hunts (2026)$71.31 resident · $751.37 nonresident

Elk tag · 8 draw hunts (2026)$78.90 resident · $837.90 nonresident

Plus: Washington big game hunting licence$61.70 resident · $599.07 nonresident

Season dates: see Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife's regulations

WDFW — Big game hunting licences and tags (2026) ↗

WDFW — Big game hunting licences and tags (2026) ↗Draw odds for Washington black bear →Draw odds for Washington deer →Draw odds for Washington elk →How the Washington draw works →

Fees and draw dates from Washington Department of Fish and 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 gmu that appears in none of them has no limited-entry hunt we know of. Source: WDFW — Big game hunting licences and tags (2026) · WDFW — Special hunt permits.

Land & access

■ SFW 10%■ SDNR 1%■ BLM 1%□ Private 87%

Unit area170,289 ac

Public land22,435 ac (13%)

Landlocked public1,182 ac (5.3%)

Black bear draw pressure0.15 tags/mi² public (0.019 of total area)

Deer draw pressure0.60 tags/mi² public (0.075 of total area)

Elk draw pressure3.0 tags/mi² public (0.37 of total area)

Motorized routes (MVUM + roads)338 mi

Maintained trails134 mi

Backcountry

Public land >1 mi from a road1,127 ac (5% of public)

Road density1.27 mi/mi²

Managed bySFW 17k ac · SDNR 2k ac · BLM 2k ac

Elevation740–5,000 ft

Median elevation2,760 ft

Median slope10°

Where the ground sits

740 ft5,000 ft

Tap or hover the bars for each elevation band

Slope mix

Which way the slopes face

N 22%

E 36%

S 19%

W 24%

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

1,136 ac of this gmu has burned — 1% 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 LEWISTON-NEZ PERCE COUNTY AIRPORT, 22 km from the unit’s center and ~1,300 ft below its median elevation — expect the unit to run colder. NOAA ISD-Lite hourly observations.

Harvest — agency survey estimates

Deer · 2025 · general season

33.8% success

164 taken by 485 hunters

Deer hunter success · 2018–2025 · 36% → 34%

Season breakdown · 2025

Season	Success	Harvest	Hunters
Archery	18%	2	11
Muzzleloader	36%	39	109

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

Elk · 2025 · general season

12.9% success

23 taken by 178 hunters

Elk hunter success · 2018–2025 · 1% → 13%

Season breakdown · 2025

Season	Success	Harvest	Hunters
Archery	13%	2	16
Muzzleloader	17%	13	79

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

Black bear · 2025 · general season

5.3% success

3 taken by 57 hunters

Black bear hunter success · 2013–2025 · 10% → 5%

Harvest estimates from WDFW's hunter reports, published per GAME MANAGEMENT UNIT as HTML tables — the only state we carry that publishes harvest as structured markup rather than as a PDF whose layout has to be recovered from whitespace. Success rates are WDFW's own and are carried verbatim. METHOD IS THE VARIANT. Archery, Modern Firearm and Muzzleloader are separate seasons with separate tags in Washington, so a hunter appears in exactly one and the 'all' row is their sum. "Multiple Weapons" is its own tag type rather than a total, and is carried as its own variant. ⚠️ TWO TABLE SHAPES. Deer and elk put the GMU in the table's caption with one row per method beneath; black bear puts the GMU in the row's first cell with no method column. WDFW also upper-cases unit names in the deer and elk reports ("101 - SHERMAN") and title-cases them in the bear reports ("501 - Lincoln") — an uppercase-only pattern reads deer and elk perfectly and silently skips every bear table. General-season reports only. WDFW's special-permit tables carry harvest by point class but no hunter count and no success rate, so they cannot be turned into a rate and are not ingested; the general-season tables cover the same units. Deer and elk carry eight seasons and black bear thirteen — the older deer and elk reports use a layout this reader does not handle and are omitted whole rather than in part. Source: WDFW Game Harvest Reports (per GMU, per season).

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 GMUs

Grande Ronde · GMU 18659% public · 45% remote Lick Creek · GMU 17578% public · 1% remote Mountain View · GMU 17249% public · 19% remote Peola · GMU 1784% public · 1% remote Tucannon · GMU 16696% public · 18% remote Wenaha · GMU 169100% public · 69% remote

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