Unit research · Washington GMU 437

Sauk — Washington

61% public across 564,785 ac. Road access is easy — only 20% 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 (1)Elk draw odds (6)Odds and pins: free, no account

GMU 437Full map — ownership, roads, wind →

30–6,810 ft

elevation range

61%

public land

20%

of public >1 mi from a road

6,111 ac

landlocked public

2.28

road miles per mi²

1,335 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 and elk hunts are drawn on GMU 437: apply in the Washington draw, by the agency's deadline below.

Deer tag · 1 draw hunt (2026)$71.31 resident · $751.37 nonresident

Elk tag · 6 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 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

■ USFS 42%■ SDNR 17%■ CITY 1%■ Other public 1%□ Private 39%

Unit area564,785 ac

Public land347,096 ac (61%)

Landlocked public6,111 ac (1.8%)

Deer draw pressure0.047 tags/mi² public (0.028 of total area)

Elk draw pressure0.068 tags/mi² public (0.041 of total area)

Motorized routes (MVUM + roads)2,012 mi

Maintained trails1,335 mi

Backcountry

Public land >1 mi from a road67,717 ac (20% of public)

Road density2.28 mi/mi²

Managed byUSFS 240k ac · SDNR 95k ac · CITY 6k ac

Elevation30–6,810 ft

Median elevation1,970 ft

Median slope18°

Where the ground sits

30 ft6,810 ft

Tap or hover the bars for each elevation band

Slope mix

Which way the slopes face

N 23%

E 22%

S 27%

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

6,452 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 BELLINGHAM INTL AIRPORT, 72 km from the unit’s center and ~1,800 ft below its median elevation — expect the unit to run colder. NOAA ISD-Lite hourly observations.

Harvest — agency survey estimates

Deer · 2025 · general season

15.5% success

318 taken by 2,054 hunters

Deer hunter success · 2018–2025 · 16% → 16%

Season breakdown · 2025

Season	Success	Harvest	Hunters
Archery	21%	26	124
Muzzleloader	30%	8	27

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

Black bear · 2025 · general season

11.4% success

46 taken by 403 hunters

Black bear hunter success · 2013–2025 · 1% → 11%

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

Nooksack · GMU 41872% public · 35% remote Stillaguamish · GMU 44883% public · 33% remote Cascade · GMU 450100% public · 96% remote North Cascades National Park · GMU 51100% public · 97% remote North Sound · GMU 40710% public · 5% remote Diablo · GMU 42699% public · 64% remote

Ready to scout it?

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