Last verified Jul. 2026

Colorado hunting, in plain English

The season calendar

Colorado runs its big-game seasons on a fixed structure: archery first, then muzzleloader, then four rifle seasons stacked through October and November. The full season calendar lays out every species and method on one graphic, and what's open right now computes the live status the day you read it. CPW 2025–2029 Season Structure

• Seasons

  Every 2026–2027 season date, by species and method, from the current CPW structure.

• Draw & licenses

  How the draw works, application deadlines, points, OTC tags, and what a license costs.

• Non-resident

  Hunting Colorado from out of state: licenses, caps, costs, and where to start.

• Units

  Game management units explained, plus success rates and public-land access.

• Regulations

  Legal weapons, blaze orange, shooting hours, access rules, and what the law requires after the shot.

• Outfitters

  A directory built on official DORA registration data — the only one that shows the numbers.

The questions people actually arrive with

• What hunting season is open in Colorado right now? A live board, computed at build — no season-date math in your head.
• Can I still buy an over-the-counter elk tag? Yes — but non-resident OTC archery elk was cut for most units, and this is the fact almost every other site still gets wrong.
• What does a Colorado hunting license cost? The full resident and non-resident fee tables, including the qualifying license and habitat stamp nobody warns you about.
• How does the Colorado draw work? Preference points, hunt codes, and the early-April deadline that catches people out every year.
• I live out of state — where do I start? The non-resident path from first decision to tag in hand.
• How do I find a legitimate outfitter? Every listing shows its Colorado DORA registration number and the date we verified it. Look it up yourself against the state's own record.

How this guide works

Every season date here is read from the current CPW Big Game Season Structure into one season calendar, every fee from CPW's own license pages, and every outfitter from Colorado's official DORA registration data. Each page shows the date its claims were last verified — because a regulations page with no date is a page you can't trust, and the older Colorado hunting sites mostly have no dates at all.

Where a rule turns on your specific unit, license, or year, we say so and send you to the primary source rather than guess. This is the plain-English companion to CPW — not a replacement for it. How we source and verify, and the full disclaimer: always confirm against the current CPW brochure before you apply or hunt.