Unit 43 is the country just south and east of Santa Fe, running southeast toward Santa Rosa and reaching toward Las Vegas and Moriarty—San Miguel, Santa Fe, Guadalupe, and Torrance counties all share it. Don't let the handoff confusion fool you: this is NOT the Pecos Wilderness high country, it's the lower, drier transition unit, roughly 1,900 square miles and 4,800 to 7,500 feet. Most of it is flat dry desert grassland with draws, low foothills, yucca and cholla, but the central third and the north stand up into forested pinyon-juniper hills with ponderosa on the better slopes, and steep-edged mesas—Glorieta Mesa country—rim the northern border and the southeast corner. It carries a smaller, spread-out population of deer, elk, and antelope rather than big concentrations of any one, so it hunts like a unit you have to learn rather than one that hands you animals. The good news for once is that public access is workable—about a quarter of the unit, and you can actually drive to most of the bigger tracts. State ground near Clines Corners comes off I-40 and the US-285 corridor, theres more state land out around Aurora reachable on main roads, and the Santa Fe National Forest piece is gotten to via State Route 34 south of Rowe. That makes 43 friendlier to a public-land hunter than its locked-up neighbors like 42 and 46, but it cuts both ways—during the popular seasons the easy-access ground gets pressure, and with animals thin and scattered you can burn days seeing very little. Santa Fe, Las Vegas, and Santa Rosa are your towns for fuel and a bed, with Villanueva down near the center and Santa Rosa Lake anchoring the southeast. No reservation land sits inside this unit. Cell hangs on near the interstate and the bigger highways and drops off once you climb into the mesa and forest pockets, so your maps better be downloaded before you leave the blacktop.