Colorado public hunting land

Colorado public land by kind

Colorado hunters have two big pools of public ground. The federal pool is huge: 13,853,852 acres of national forest across 12 forests, 636,591 acres on the Pawnee and Comanche national grasslands, and about 8.3 million acres of BLM land by the BLM Colorado figure. The state pool is smaller but scattered everywhere: 224 State Wildlife Areas (570,567 acres on their pages) and 409 State Trust Land parcels leased by CPW for hunting and fishing (959,617 acres). On top of that, 33 state parks and recreation areas allow hunting in designated areas, six national wildlife refuges open parts of their ground under 50 CFR 32.25, and the Walk-In Access program opens leased private fields on the eastern plains to foot hunters with a small game license and a Habitat Stamp.

Acres come from each record: CPW property pages for SWAs and trust land, the USFS EDW statistics for national forest system land, BLM office pages, FWS and NPS GIS layers and the DoD MIRTA boundary for military land. Ranger districts carry the same acres as their forests, so do not add the two rows.

From lands.json (CPW SWA finder, CPW STL finder, USFS, BLM, USFWS, NPS and DoD sources) Checked November 5, 2026.

Colorado public places closed to hunting

These 120 public places look like hunting ground on a map but are not open to hunting. Most are State Wildlife Areas that CPW runs for fishing access or wildlife viewing, where the property page says no hunting opportunities are available. National park units are closed under 36 CFR 2.2 unless a park rule allows hunting; the Great Sand Dunes Preserve and Curecanti NRA are the NPS exceptions and have their own pages. Ten state parks have no hunting designation or prohibit it outright.