Unit 16C straddles the Catron-Sierra county line in the heart of the Gila, and it's one of the more forgiving trophy-elk units in the state—about 479 square miles and better than 83 percent public, almost all of it Gila National Forest with chunks of the Aldo Leopold and Gila wilderness areas folded in. The thing that surprises people is how gentle most of it is. Elevations run from roughly 6,200 to 9,100 feet, but the mountains here are gently rolling and only sparsely timbered, and the low ground is nearly flat with few deep arroyos to fight. That's a real departure from the brutal Gila country to the south and west—you can cover ground here without breaking yourself in half. The famous part is the southwestern corner up against the Black Range, especially around Black Mountain, where the Gila's reputation for big bulls actually lives. NM 59 is the main access corridor and most of the dirt branches off it, which means once you leave 59 your into ranch-road country that turns greasy when it rains. The honest pitch on 16C is that it's a lot of elk and a lot of mature bulls for a hunt that wont destroy your knees, which is exactly why people who've done it call it a great deal. Mule deer numbers are low, so dont come for those, but antelope hang in the open northern flats and the elk are spread across the whole unit. The catch is there's basically no lodging anywhere near it—virtually everybody camps on Forest Service dirt along the side of a road, so come self-contained. The wilderness sections in the south, the Aldo Leopold and Gila edges, are rougher and that's where you go to escape pressure if the gentle country gets crowded. Cell service is unreliable to nonexistent the moment you're off the pavement, and there's no town inside the unit—you're resupplying out of the small Gila-country communities, so stock up before you commit to a camp. No reservation land touches this one; it's all Forest Service and a thin slice of private, which keeps the access puzzle simpler then most of southern New Mexico.