Unit 31 is big, flat, and unapologetically oilpatch—a giant block of southeastern New Mexico spanning Lea, Eddy, Roosevelt, Curry and Chaves counties, the kind of country where the horizon does most of the work. Most of it is open shortgrass and shinnery with shallow swales and almost no cover, which makes it pronghorn and oryx ground first and foremost, with desert mule deer and a few barbary sheep in the broken edges. The only real relief is on the east side, where the land steps up at the Mescalero Ridge—locally just "the Caprock"—along with the Loco Hills and Nimenim Ridge, and that caprock break is where the deer hunting actually gets interesting. Hunters tend to find the southern end, down toward Carlsbad, the most promising for deer, and big bucks do turn up there. Land status splits the unit in half in a way you have to plan around: the southern portion is largely public, BLM and state, while the northern half is mostly private—roughly 56% public overall, but it isn't spread evenly, so an onX map is the difference between a hunt and a wasted weekend. Resident and nonresident deer hunters can also work Brantley Lake (Seven Rivers) WMA during the seasons. The defining feature of hunting 31 is the oil and gas, and theres no getting around it. The roads are excellent—graded, graveled, built to carry heavy trucks—which means access is easy and you can cover ground fast, but you're also sharing every one of them with tanker and service traffic running hard, and the pump-jack noise and lights are just part of the deal. The flip side is that all that infrastructure makes glassing a giant open unit manageable; you drive the section roads and pick country apart with a tripod rather than busting brush. When it rains the caliche and two-tracks off the main roads go slick fast, so dont get cute in a storm. Cell service is genuinely decent here compared to the canyon units—the oilfield keeps towers up—so you'll have signal most places, with Carlsbad, Artesia, Hobbs and Roswell ringing the unit for fuel and motels. No tribal land in 31. What sets it apart from its neighbors is honest and unglamorous: it's a flat, busy, working landscape, light on scenery and heavy on trucks, but the open country and the public-heavy south end mean a patient hunter who reads the land map can still find a good buck or a quality oryx or pronghorn tag here.