Bear Lake County for Idaho Hunters

Bear Lake County unit shares, both ways

Click a unit for its hunt numbers, harvest and season lines.

The county is divided among 4 units, led by Unit 76 with 56% of its land. Small slivers of Unit 77 cross the line too.

Expect to cross into Franklin County on foot; 3 of these units run into it.

Unit shares from the IDFG Game Units layer overlaid on Census county polygons (GIS shares of land area, both ways); elk zone of each unit from the IDFG Elk Zones layer; wolf zones from the IDFG Wolf Zones layer; CWD units from the 2026 brochure; bear tables from the 2026 brochure. Checked November 12, 2026.

Bear Lake County CWD status and wolf seasons

None of the county's units appears in the 2026 CWD rules.

Wolf hunting and trapping in Bear Lake County

For wolf data IDFG groups units into zones, and Bear Lake County falls in 1 wolf zone: Southern Idaho. Wolf seasons themselves are set by unit and land type. Trappers need both the trapping license and the wolf trapper education course, and may watch wolf sets with transmitting cameras since July 1, 2026.

CWD zone, transport and testing rules from the Big Game 2026 Seasons and Rules p. 9; 2026 changes from IDFG, What hunters need to know about CWD requirements for 2026; county units from the IDFG CWD zone rules; wolf rules from the 2026 brochure; wolf zones from the IDFG Wolf Zones layer. Checked November 12, 2026.

Drawn hunts reaching Bear Lake County

Each hunt number links its IDFG Hunt Planner page with the exact boundary.

Counting every species, 23 controlled hunts touch the county this year: 7 deer, 10 elk, 1 pronghorn and 5 moose. Summed across hunt numbers that is 1,835 tags, not all of them used inside the county.

Moose, bighorn sheep and mountain goat applications are taken April 1 to 30; spring bear January 15 to February 15. For moose, sheep and goat the brochure covers two years; the table shows the 2026 hunt.

Deer hunts with units in Bear Lake County (7)

Elk tags drawn around Bear Lake County (10)

Pronghorn tags drawn around Bear Lake County (1)

Controlled moose in Bear Lake County (5)

Hunt numbers, types, units, dates, bags and 2026 tags from the IDFG Hunt Planner hunt pages (each hunt number links its page) matched to the Idaho Big Game 2026 Seasons and Rules and the Moose, Bighorn Sheep and Mountain Goat 2025 and 2026 brochure; counties are whole units, so a hunt area can be smaller. Application periods from the 2026 brochure, the moose, sheep and goat brochure and the spring bear page. Checked November 12, 2026.

Bear Lake County public hunting ground

Tribal, park and monument land is shown so you can plan around it, not on it.

Merge the WMA, national forest, grassland, BLM, refuge and preserve layers, take out tribal land, and Bear Lake County shows 281,798 GIS acres of public hunting ground, 45% of its land. No owner outweighs national forest here: 215,334 acres. National forest ground splits among 2 districts, the biggest being the Montpelier Ranger District at near 215,151 acres.

On the BLM side, the Pocatello Field Office runs 52,257 acres of the county total of 52,258. About 14,031 acres of state endowment land lie in Bear Lake County, shown on its own line rather than in the public total.

Bear Lake County hunting places with their own pages

Bear Lake County: nearby places in other counties

• Aspen Range (Access Yes!)30 miles, Access Yes! property
• Blackfoot River Wildlife Management Area37 miles, IDFG WMA

Bear Lake County ground off the hunting map

• Bear Lake State ParkState park, closed

Acres are GIS measures of polygons with water over 2 square km removed, not official acreage: IDFG WMA layer, PAD-US 4.1 (forest, grassland, BLM, refuge, park, endowment, Reclamation, military, DOE and tribal land), IDFG Access Yes! 2026 layer, IDFG Large Tracts layer; refuges counted only when listed in 50 CFR 32.31; tribal rule from 18 U.S.C. 1165; closures from the 2026 brochure; Craters of the Moon from the NPS laws and policies page. Checked November 12, 2026.

Bear Lake County and its nearest counties

Ranked by the gap between Census interior points, these four Idaho counties lie closest; three statewide topics follow.