Picture a triangle pinned at Raton, Springer, and Clayton and you've basically got Unit 56—high shortgrass prairie in Colfax and Union counties with conical volcanic peaks shoving up out of the flats. This is the heart of the Raton-Clayton volcanic field, so the "mountains" here aren't a range you climb so much as scattered cinder cones and shield volcanoes you glass from the truck: Laughlin Peak around 8,800 feet, Sierra Grande and Turkey Mountain to the east near Des Moines. Most of the country sits between 5,000 and 6,500 feet and runs dry and open—desert grassland with sage and oak brush filling the draws, pinyon and juniper thickening on the mesa edges and in the steep cuts, ponderosa hanging on up high on the better volcanic ground. People sleep on the elk here because it doesnt look like elk country, but there are more bulls in those flats than you'd ever guess, and locals will tell you about big bulls living right out on the volcano and along the highway. Antelope are the real bread-and-butter though, scattered all over the open prairie. Here's the catch that runs the whole hunt: 56 is roughly 78% private and only about 20% public, and that public is mostly state trust sections scattered through a sea of fenced cattle ranches. Some of those state sections you can legally reach off a county road; plenty of others are landlocked behind a gate and you'll never set foot on them without permission. So before you get excited about a draw tag, pull up a land-ownership map and figure out which squares you can actually touch—there's still 100,000-plus acres of public in here, but it's a checkerboard and you have to know your color. US 64 is the main artery running across the unit, with I-25 anchoring the Raton-Springer corner, and Clayton, Springer, and Raton are your only real fuel-and-motel stops, so fill up when your in town. Cell coverage is decent near the highways and the towns and then just quits once you're out on the ranch two-tracks. The dirt out here is the usual northeastern-New-Mexico story—fine when it's dry, a greasy rutted mess after an October rain or an early snow—and the wind on this prairie will flat wear you down. It's good antelope country with a sleeper elk hunt hiding in it, but the access homework is the entire ballgame.