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Units / Washington / GMU 290

Unit research · Washington GMU 290

Desert — Washington

43% public across 184,174 ac. Real backcountry here — 37% of the public land sits more than a mile from any road. Watch the checkerboard: 5,381 ac of public land has no public route in.

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Deer draw odds (7)Odds and pins: free, no account
GMU 290Full map — ownership, roads, wind →
1,040–1,360 ft

elevation range

43%

public land

37%

of public >1 mi from a road

5,381 ac

landlocked public

1.09

road miles per mi²

36 mi

maintained trails

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

Tags & season

Draw hunts on this ground.

7 limited-entry deer hunts are drawn on GMU 290: apply in the Washington draw, by the agency's deadline below.

Deer tag · 7 draw hunts (2026)$71.31 resident · $751.37 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)

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 34%USBR 11%SDNR 3%□ Private 57%
Unit area184,174 ac
Public land79,627 ac (43%)
Landlocked public5,381 ac (6.8%)
Deer draw pressure0.72 tags/mi² public (0.29 of total area)
Motorized routes (MVUM + roads)314 mi
Maintained trails36 mi

Backcountry

Public land >1 mi from a road29,149 ac (37% of public)
Road density1.09 mi/mi²
Managed bySFW 63k ac · USBR 21k ac · SDNR 5k ac
Elevation1,040–1,360 ft
Median elevation1,140 ft
Median slope

Where the ground sits

1,040 ft1,360 ft

Tap or hover the bars for each elevation band

Slope mix

Which way the slopes face

N 19%
E 34%
S 18%
W 28%

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

450 ac of this gmu has burned — 0% 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, °F35° high24° lowJFMAMJJASOND

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

Measured at GRANT COUNTY INTL AIRPORT, 23 km from the unit’s center. NOAA ISD-Lite hourly observations.

Harvest — agency survey estimates

Elk · 2025 · general season

5.4% success

2 taken by 37 hunters

Elk hunter success · 2018–2025 · 0% → 5%

Season breakdown · 2025
SeasonSuccessHarvestHunters
Archery0%013
Muzzleloader33%26

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

Black bear · 2021 · general season

0% success

0 taken by 2 hunters

Black bear hunter success · 2020–2021 · 0% → 0%

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)

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

Wahluke · GMU 27819% public · 8% remoteBeezley · GMU 27216% public · 11% remoteWest Bar · GMU 33082% public · 17% remoteQuilomene · GMU 32979% public · 12% remoteMoses Coulee · GMU 26929% public · 12% remoteRingold · GMU 3797% public · 14% remote

Ready to scout it?

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Take GMU 290 into the field

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