Colorado elk and deer · Archery first, rifle covered too
Colorado's draw system is scattered across a brochure, a website, and a dozen dates that do not line up the way you would expect. This site puts the two answers you actually need in plain English: when every hunt and deadline happens, and where you should be applying.
If planning a Colorado hunt feels harder than it should, it is not you. Three separate problems are stacked on top of each other:
The calendar answers when. All twelve months on one page: application windows, the April primary deadline in red, results and payment in late May, the June secondary draw, leftover day in August, and the full September to November season blocks. Solid color means a verified CPW 2026 date. Dashed means an expected 2027 date, labeled that way until the official brochure confirms it.
The unit map answers where. Every Colorado game management unit, drawn from CPW's own boundary data. Pick a unit and you get the huntable species, how you get each tag, and the season dates for that unit, with a link straight back to the draw deadline in the calendar.
Your strategy ties them together. As a Colorado resident you can bowhunt elk every September on an over the counter tag while building points. Deer is the opposite: every deer tag is limited, so the April draw is the only front door. The calendar keeps you applying for both, every year.
You have not found Colorado units you like yet, and that is fine. These are the starting areas from your plan, picked for elk numbers and large amounts of public land. They are research starting points, not rankings: judge any unit with CPW harvest and draw statistics before you apply.
Points decide everything about unit strategy, and they are per species, so elk points and deer points are separate numbers. Go to cpwshop.com, log in, and open My Preference Points in the left hand menu. If you have never applied, you are at 0, which is a fine place to start. Until those numbers are known, no unit shortlist is honest.
One row per phase. Tap any bar or dot to open the details.
As a Colorado resident you keep unlimited over the counter archery elk licenses in many units. The recent change that moved archery elk into the draw west of I-25 hit nonresidents, not residents. So you can bowhunt elk every September on an OTC tag while quietly building preference points in the primary draw for a better limited unit later. You never sit out a year.
Deer is the trap. Every deer license in Colorado is limited and allotted per unit, so there is no OTC archery deer fallback like elk. Miss the April primary draw and your deer season shrinks to the June secondary draw or the August leftover scramble.
Points decide everything about unit strategy, and they are per species, so elk points and deer points are separate numbers. You earn one when you apply in the primary draw and do not draw your first choice, or when you apply for a point only. Drawing your first choice resets that species to zero. If you have never applied, you are at 0, which is a fine place to start.
Until those numbers are known, no unit shortlist is honest. A unit list built before your points would be guessing, and guessing is the exact problem this calendar exists to fix.
Every game management unit (GMU) in Colorado, from CPW's official boundary data. Hover or tap a unit to identify it, tap a numbered pin or pick any unit below, and the panel shows what you can hunt there, how you get the tag, and when the seasons run. Colored units are your three starting research areas.
How to read the species panel: a species is listed for a unit only where tags are actually offered for it. Elk and deer have hunt codes across Colorado, but the tag path differs: deer is always limited and draw based, while elk mixes limited units with over the counter seasons in many units. Points needed and harvest success are published by CPW per hunt code, so check the CPW draw recaps and harvest reports for the hunt codes you are considering, and note the year on the report you read.
A shortlist, not the full list. These are the 12 starting units in the three research areas, the places to begin research first. Nothing is missing: all 185 units are on the map above and in the unit finder, and every one of them opens the same panel.