HD 400 covers the country around Ashland and the Custer National Forest's Ashland Ranger District—the legendary southeast Montana ponderosa-pine breaks country between the Tongue River and the Powder River drainages. Elevations run from about 2,800 feet on the Tongue River bottom up to 4,500 feet on the higher pine ridges. The terrain is the classic SE Montana mosaic: long ridges of ponderosa pine and Rocky Mountain juniper, deep coulees with cottonwood and chokecherry in the bottoms, sage-and-grass benches, and sandstone outcrops poking through the timber. The Tongue River and Otter Creek are the named drainages defining the unit. Mule deer are the headline animal—the Ashland country has produced trophy-class bucks for decades, and a knowledgeable hunter who walks the BMA and Forest Service ground can find genuinely good animals. Whitetail concentrate in the Tongue River bottom; elk live the timbered breaks in real numbers (this is a sleeper elk unit by national standards); pronghorn on the open ridges; turkeys—a healthy population of Merriam's—use the ponderosa parks. Custer Gallatin NF (Ashland District) covers a major chunk of the public ground, with BLM tracts scattered through and significant private ranchland in the bottoms and on the bench tops. Block Management is genuinely critical—the program has good participation in the Ashland country. US-212 east-west, MT-484 (the Otter Creek Road), and a network of forest and county roads provide access; gumbo when wet is the standard rule. Ashland has gas, the Cheyenne Ranchers Cafe, basic supplies, the St. Labre Indian Mission; Lame Deer is on the reservation to the west; Broadus is southeast; Miles City is northeast. Cell service is patchy throughout. The pine-breaks country produces mule deer that cruise from sage to timber edges and elk that bed deep in the cool draws.