Unit 4 sits up in the north-central Rio Arriba country, wrapped around the northeastern side of the Jicarilla Apache Nation and running clear up to the Colorado line above Chama. This is the Rio Chama drainage—the river comes down out of Colorado through Chama and feeds the Rio Chama Wildlife Area and El Vado Lake tucked into the southwest corner around 6,500 feet—and the unit climbs from sagebrush flats and gravel benches up toward eleven thousand feet, with juniper and pinyon and oak brush on the slopes and cottonwood and willow strung along the bottoms. It's quality-managed elk country and the migration is the whole reason: bulls summer high to the north and slide down through this ground as the snow and cold push them, which is why outfits like the Lodge at Chama and the ranches along Chavez Creek built their reputations here. Rio Arriba puts record-book mule deer on the wall too, so the genetics are real. Now the gut-punch, and it's a big one—this unit is almost entirely private. Public land runs somewhere around twelve percent, mostly the state wildlife management ground, and the rest is locked-up ranch and the Jicarilla Apache Nation boundary, which is sovereign tribal land closed to your New Mexico state tag. So unless you've drawn onto a wildlife area or you're hunting with an outfitter who controls private acreage, the famous migrating-elk picture isnt really yours to chase here. Access on the ground is actually decent where its legal—good gravel and dirt roads thread most of the country—but you'll be sharing them with heavy oilfield truck traffic and looking at pump jacks and gas wells scattered across the landscape, because this is energy country as much as elk country. Chama is your supply town up north with fuel and a motel, and cell service is patchy the moment you leave the highway. The honest read: Unit 4 grows giants, but the public-land hunter is fighting over scraps around the edges of a private-and-tribal map, so know exactly what you've drawn before you get your hopes up.