OpenHunt for Android is on Google Play — take your plan into the field. Send it to your phone →

Units / Washington / GMU 501

Unit research · Washington GMU 501

Lincoln — Washington

22% public across 150,408 ac. Road access is easy — only 0% of the public land is more than a mile from a road. No landlocked public land.

Open in map
Watch this unit — freeReturned and leftover tags, new legal closures, fire near the unit, weather warnings — by email. One unit free, no card.
Bighorn sheep draw odds (2)Deer draw odds (5)Odds and pins: free, no account
GMU 501Full map — ownership, roads, wind →
40–2,450 ft

elevation range

22%

public land

0%

of public >1 mi from a road

0 ac

landlocked public

5.08

road miles per mi²

211 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 bighorn sheep and deer hunts are drawn on GMU 501: apply in the Washington draw, by the agency's deadline below.

Bighorn sheep tag · 2 draw hunts (2026)$467.01 resident · $2,431.30 nonresident
Deer tag · 5 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

SDNR 21%CITY 0%SPR 0%□ Private 78%
Unit area150,408 ac
Public land32,458 ac (22%)
Landlocked public0 ac (0.0%)
Bighorn sheep draw pressure0.059 tags/mi² public (0.013 of total area)
Deer draw pressure0.71 tags/mi² public (0.15 of total area)
Motorized routes (MVUM + roads)1,194 mi
Maintained trails211 mi

Backcountry

Public land >1 mi from a road0 ac (0% of public)
Road density5.08 mi/mi²
Managed bySDNR 32k ac · CITY 0k ac · SPR 0k ac
Elevation40–2,450 ft
Median elevation390 ft
Median slope

Where the ground sits

40 ft2,450 ft

Tap or hover the bars for each elevation band

Slope mix

Which way the slopes face

N 25%
E 26%
S 26%
W 23%

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

68 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, °F45° high34° lowJFMAMJJASOND

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

Measured at OLYMPIA AIRPORT, 35 km from the unit’s center. NOAA ISD-Lite hourly observations.

Harvest — agency survey estimates

Deer · 2025 · general season

29.1% success

378 taken by 1,300 hunters

Deer hunter success · 2018–2025 · 25% → 29%

Season breakdown · 2025
SeasonSuccessHarvestHunters
Archery23%2190
Muzzleloader25%29117

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

Elk · 2025 · general season

0.2% success

2 taken by 1,058 hunters

Elk hunter success · 2018–2025 · 9% → 0%

Season breakdown · 2025
SeasonSuccessHarvestHunters
Archery0%0202
Muzzleloader3%275

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

Black bear · 2025 · general season

1.9% success

6 taken by 313 hunters

Black bear hunter success · 2013–2025 · 2% → 2%

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

Fall River · GMU 67226% public · 1% remoteCapitol Peak · GMU 66370% public · 0% remoteMinot Peak · GMU 66015% public · 0% remoteRyderwood · GMU 53012% public · 0% remoteDeschutes · GMU 6666% public · 3% remoteSkookumchuck · GMU 66713% public · 0% remote

Ready to scout it?

Everything on this page, live on the map — ownership, boundaries, roads, and your own waypoints.

Take GMU 501 into the field

Download Washington’s pack and this unit works with no signal — boundaries, ownership, roads, elevation. Record your hunt with the screen off. Check what’s visible from any ridge.

Scan to install OpenHunt for Android. Open this page on the phone afterwards and it lands in the app.

QR code for openhuntmaps.com/appGet it on Google Play
Open GMU 501 in the map
Watch this unit — freeReturned and leftover tags, new legal closures, fire near the unit, weather warnings — by email. One unit free, no card.