The elevational patterns of wildlife population and community attract broad interests in ecology research, wherever our knowledge on the patterns of large mammal fauna is poor. To determine the elevational pattern of ungulates in temperate mountainous forest of the southern slope of the Qinling Mountains, China, we conducted a camera-trapping survey on large terrestrial mammals in Changqing National Nature Reserve with systematic sampling. The reserve was divided into 500 m × 500 m grids and one passive infrared-triggered camera was set in each sampling block for a survey duration of 4-6 weeks. We calculated the Relative Abundance Index (RAI) and species richness of detected forest ungulates at 300 m elevational intervals throughout the study area (elevation range 1 400-3 000 m). We surveyed 123 camera locations from March to December, 2008, and detected seven ungulate species with a sampling effort of 4 307 trap-days. Takin (Budorcas taxicolor) was the most abundant ungulate species (mean RAI = 110.66), followed by wild boar (Sus scrofa, RAI = 28.25) and Chinese goral (Naemorhedus goral, RAI = 25.10), whereas forest musk deer (Moschus berezovskii) was the least (RAI = 1.33). We detected a unimodal elevational pattern in the populations of takin and forest musk deer, a liner pattern for Chinese goral (R2 = 0.84), Reeve’s muntjac (Muntiacus reevesi, R2 = 0.94) and serow (Capricornis sumatraensis, R2 = 0.79), and a multiplex pattern for wild boar and tufted deer (Elaphodus cephalophus). The species richness of this ungulate community represented a unimodal pattern along an elevational gradient, with a mid-elevation peak at 1 700-2 300 m, which consisted with the prediction of mid-domain effect hypothesis.