Unit 42 is the big sprawling one north of I-40 between Santa Rosa and San Jon, climbing up through San Miguel, Guadalupe, Quay, Harding, and Mora counties toward Las Vegas and the Canadian River breaks. Call it around 4,300 square miles of high country that doesn't look like much from the interstate—big flat valleys and rolling mesa tops that suddenly fall off into rugged, steep-walled canyons where Canon Largo and the Canadian River cut down through colorful sandstone. The flats are brush and desert grass; the higher ground wears pinyon and juniper, and the canyon bottoms hold cottonwoods and water. You get a mixed bag here: antelope and mule deer mainly, with a scatter of whitetail and a few elk, and enough buck quality in the rough country to make the canyons worth the work if you can reach them. Access is the whole story, because only about a tenth of the unit is public—state trust and BLM, much of it landlocked behind deeded ranches. The crown jewel is the Sabinoso Wilderness in the Canon Largo / Canadian River country, a genuine chunk of public BLM canyon, but it's walk-in only and historically ringed by private—you reach it from the west past Trujillo on San Miguel County Road C51A, dirt the whole way, and once your in there's no vehicles, period. That's a backpack-and-boots hunt, not a drive-up. Elsewhere look at the public near the eastern boundary and down toward the south line. New Mexico's Open Gate program opens some private here, worth checking before you apply. Las Vegas and Santa Rosa are your service towns, San Jon sits on the southeast corner, and the dirt turns greasy when the weather rolls. No reservation ground touches this unit—the access fight is private lockup and getting into Sabinoso the hard way. Cell dies fast off the pavement, especially down in the canyons where you wont see a bar at all.