Unit 37 is the Lincoln County unit that strings together a handful of little island ranges sticking up out of the high desert—the Capitan Range with its wilderness, the Jicarilla Mountains, the Tucsons, and the north end of the Sacramentos around White Oaks and Ancho. It's about 1,600 square miles and it plays as two completely different hunts depending on where your tag puts you: most of the ground is flat desert grassland sitting around 6,000 to 7,000 feet, but the elk live up in the timbered tops where Douglas fir and spruce and aspen take over above the pinyon-juniper, and the Capitan Mountain Wilderness throws up some sheer white cliffs that mean cross-country hiking with no shortcuts. This unit has a quiet reputation as a giant-maker—fewer elk than the famous 34 and 36 next door, but some of the biggest bulls and pronghorn in the whole state have walked out of here, and there's aoudad in the rough rimrock for the folks who like to suffer. The trade is access. More than half the unit is private—a lot of it big working ranches down on the flats—with public land sitting around 38 percent and most of that being the Forest Service ground up in the mountains. Public roads will get you to the base of the ranges off the US 380 corridor through Carrizozo and the country east toward Capitan and Lincoln, but to actually get into the good elk timber, the Capitan Wilderness especially, your hiking in on your own legs. Scout the edges before the season—Padilla Peak, Hoe Cradle Canyon, the high stuff near White Oaks and south of Ancho all get mentioned by people who've done well. Carrizozo and Capitan are your fuel and supply, Ruidoso's the bigger town to the south, and cell service is fine along 380 and dead the moment you drop into a canyon or climb into the firs. The honest knock is that the public is islands in a private sea, so a tag is only as good as the country it lands you in—but draw the right hunt up in those mountains and the bull-quality ceiling here is as high as anywhere in southern New Mexico. No reservation ground touches this one, which is more than you can say for its neighbors to the southwest.