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Units / Washington / GMU 356

Unit research · Washington GMU 356

Bumping — Washington

100% public across 180,253 ac. Real backcountry here — 58% of the public land sits more than a mile from any road. No landlocked public land.

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Elk draw odds (3)Odds and pins: free, no account
GMU 356Full map — ownership, roads, wind →
2,600–7,640 ft

elevation range

100%

public land

58%

of public >1 mi from a road

0 ac

landlocked public

0.43

road miles per mi²

299 mi

maintained trails

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

Tags & season

Draw hunts on this ground.

3 limited-entry elk hunts are drawn on GMU 356: apply in the Washington draw, by the agency's deadline below.

Elk tag · 3 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)

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

USFS 100%USBR 1%□ Private 0%
Unit area180,253 ac
Public land180,077 ac (100%)
Landlocked public0 ac (0.0%)
Elk draw pressure0.27 tags/mi² public (0.27 of total area)
Motorized routes (MVUM + roads)120 mi
Maintained trails299 mi

Backcountry

Public land >1 mi from a road103,913 ac (58% of public)
Road density0.43 mi/mi²
Managed byUSFS 180k ac · USBR 1k ac
Elevation2,600–7,640 ft
Median elevation4,830 ft
Median slope20°

Where the ground sits

2,600 ft7,640 ft

Tap or hover the bars for each elevation band

Slope mix

Which way the slopes face

N 24%
E 31%
S 24%
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

64,914 ac of this gmu has burned — 36% 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, °F31° high24° lowJFMAMJJASOND

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

Measured at STAMPASS PASS FLTWO, 54 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

Deer · 2025 · general season

1% success

4 taken by 410 hunters

Deer hunter success · 2018–2025 · 0% → 1%

Season breakdown · 2025
SeasonSuccessHarvestHunters
Archery9%223
Muzzleloader0%064

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

Elk · 2025 · general season

3.6% success

90 taken by 2,521 hunters

Elk hunter success · 2018–2025 · 3% → 4%

Season breakdown · 2025
SeasonSuccessHarvestHunters
Archery1%2381
Muzzleloader1%2201

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

Black bear · 2025 · general season

4.1% success

5 taken by 123 hunters

Black bear hunter success · 2013–2025 · 3% → 4%

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

Nile · GMU 35295% public · 9% remoteRimrock · GMU 36496% public · 29% remoteBethel · GMU 36098% public · 0% remoteLittle Naches · GMU 34699% public · 20% remoteMount Rainier National Park · GMU 53100% public · 63% remoteSouth Rainier · GMU 51393% public · 13% remote

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