In this Episode the Epic Outdoors Crew sits down and talks about their two favorite subjects, Guns and Hunting. We are pretty proud of the guns we use here at Epic, whether it be Fierce, Red Rock Precision or Thompson Long Range we only have good things to say.
April and May are big months for a western hunter, with several application deadlines and draw results being released we know you’re wearing your keyboards thin. How do we keep track of it all? Is there a better way to apply in multiple states for multiple species for your entire family? Of course there is!
The Muleys Matter Giveaway has been growing fast since it was first mentioned a few weeks ago. In this episode we answer a lot of your questions regarding what and how to get entered. With thousands of dollars in prizes already donated and more being added every day, we believe it’s well worth it to get your tag in the hat, and become apart of Muleys Matter.
The Crew also talks about the ongoing discussion and controversy for the Utah DWR Mule Deer tag recommendations and permits.
*Closed Caption Transcription is not perfect, this transcription does not represent the ideals and beliefs of Epic Outdoors or its employees, some statements may be inaccurate. We encourage you to listen to the audio to resolve any confusion.*
Anything to do with Western Big Game.
Welcome to the Epic Outdoors Podcast, powered by Under Armor.
Hey everybody. Jason Carter, Adam Bronson, John Peterson. Devin and Josh, as well as Logan. How you doing Logan? I’m doing pretty good. Can’t complain. Yeah, right on. How’s that truck doing? Hey, it is all right. We like it so far. All right, perfect. Anyway, hope y’all are doing good out there. We’re kind of excited. It’s, I mean, we’re seeing light at the end of the tunnel. Bronson, there’s tag results coming out, like crazy draws coming due.
Despair. What?
Blood red yesterday for
Me?
Blood red.
Some of us saw little tinge of green.
I’ve, it was, I’ve been seeing it for months, guys.
I, I saw a little kittle. I
Proof for it. Didn’t happen.
Jason’s got a little cheat grass on his screen, but that’s
Some, it’s some pretty shizzy. Cheap, cheap grass, whatever. All right. So what, what are we gonna talk about today, guys? What do you guys wanna talk about? Silence.
Bronson, I thought you had the outline. No,
I mean, I got a couple of notes. Okay. We, let’s, let’s talk about optics real quick. We are freaking loaded with optics. We’ve got draw results that have come out, especially in New Mexico, most notably Montana and guys are starting to gear up a little bit and we’re ready for that.
Well, after a few years of being in business, we’ve kind of gotten in our groove, I guess so to speak, in terms of knowing when our peak demand is. And we know that this is getting to that time of year from now through summer. So, yeah, we’re stocked up. Well, that’s basically what we want to tell everybody. We’ve anticipated this and ready to make some deals. So give us a call when you’re ready to upgrade, or if Uncle Joe sent you a check refund back for the taxes that time of year too.
Spend it, spend the true,
Or if the New Mexico put 6, 8, 10 grand back on your card and you think, Hey, I got money to play
With, spend it.
And it’s, it’s true. If you draw a tag, you have to get some form of glass or something, right? I mean, that’s, well,
That’s the Cel Troy
Telling my wife that for a while purchase, I have to upgrade this portion of this. I will not be able to be successful on this hunt.
And you gotta keep up. So
If you need help talking your wife into that, I’ll call, have her call me. I’ll talk to her. I’ll explain why you need, have
Your wife call Josh.
I can explain to her why she needs, why you need a new BTX in your life. Well, let’s, let’s let everybody know his cell phone real quick. Let, can reach
Out to him, him up on the B, come
And
Slide in what is
800
To your wife. Optics. What is your, what is your Instagram handle?
Do we have a beep, Logan, to
Beat that out. Triple Brow Times Productions, llc. Yeah.
I just remember when, when I drew an elk tag a billion years ago, I, which I did, but I told my wife the first thing I needed to do is a new gun. You know, because of this gun that I have that can completely kill a bull elk won’t kill the particular kind of bull elk.
I need to
Shoot on this, this
Hunt. They could kill general season elk, but not a limited entry alcohol.
This, how did you justify this most recent upgrade?
Which one?
That’s the
Question. Which one? It might have been a fierce in the mix.
Well, there’s also some things that they don’t need to know
Too
Well, he’s also got children growing up. True. And they all need guns. And so sometimes they take dad’s gun and now dad needs a new gun. That’s true.
Yes. So there’s, this happens to bro
Sharing and carrying is what that is. Shared
Caring. Josh, you’re in dangerous water right now.
Sharing and carrying.
I’ve had that gun for a while. It just got a new stock put on it.
Which one? Oh,
You mean the new Fierce Fierce?
Yeah. I, it was, yeah. And it’s got a new sling. Yeah.
I’m gonna take spare stop. I
Had that,
I had that scope from my other rifle that I put on this one cuz I
Liked it so
Much. So it’s not a new gun, it’s just, it’s just had a couple upgrades to it. Shoots some bigger bullets, apparently.
The bottom line, whatever your rationale, excuse, need, want, or
If you’d need new guns, otherwise certification. Yeah,
We’ve got it. I can help, I can think of us.
I can help you lie to your wife. They give
Us,
Anyway.
We’re stacked. We’re we’re stacked.
I, I would add to that, don’t procrastinate because we’ve heard of supplier issues. Yeah. I mean, we’re stocked up right now, but in August Yeah. You might not get what you want. Yeah. So.
Well, and we stock heavy. We, we do, we’ve got a lot here. But shoot, I remember last year, some guy, it was a week before his deer hunt, he got a call from the Division of Wildlife and took a turnback tag. And all of a sudden he was like, I need a pair of fifteens from me, my dad and my brother. And all of a sudden there’s three gone off the shelf, you know? And so Yep. Stuff can go very fast
Times it takes a minute to get back, get, get stocked back up. So
Yeah.
Anyway, all right. I like it. That’s awesome. I agree. Josh, I want you to talk a little bit more, or Devin Bronson, Bronson’s one of the most recent purchasers, thermal rival scopes. Oh, how cool are they?
They’re cool. I, I decided I was gonna use a gun that I don’t use a whole lot for a predator gun. And I know that’s some might say that’s excessive.
You mean the six five?
Yeah. For, for years though. Like
Normally 22, 2 50 50
Or No, I just mean having a dedicated predator gun. Like I’m talking dedicated
Wolf. Like I thought you were talking about caliber cartridge.
No, and and for, for wolves, six five is Oh, I know. You gotta have one. I know. I mean, a 22 to 50 you reach shot at 400 yards and hit a wolf.
I mean, but normally when, when people say predator, it indicates Kyles, you know? Well,
Yeah, I, I, and I mean, I meant it for, for wolves in Idaho, which we’ve gone up over time and they’re legal or night hunting coyotes a fun gun. Fun gun, fun gun rolls off the tongue.
Fun gun.
Well, it’s what that you’ve had that thing scope plus for how long now, right? Oh
No, I, I, oh, there was a, I ripped a scope off, but it was, it was a Philly functioning big game gun
That hasn’t been used for a while. Yeah, it wasn’t really in your
Arsenal. It was one of the ones my daughter used. And I hope she didn’t listen to this cuz
Your gun’s gone, gone. I
Heard
It looks, it looks a little different
Now anyway. It looks a little different, a little heavier. But I’ve got guns for her that are bigger and better than ever. And this gun, I just decided, let’s just kind of make it, cuz it’s kind of hard to, to pull the thermal off and put it back on your big game rifle and reset. I just
Want just one or two trips up to Idaho
Or whatever. I, I didn’t, I know that sounds excessive, but I just wanted to get it set up and and that’s what it is. And I could also lend it to my brother or you know, maybe one of y’all or something if you’re going on something.
Not couldn’t,
Huh? Possibly. Well, I would like to
Do state of
The art. I would like to encourage y’all to
Wells. It’s a state of the art pulsar scope, which we now deal in. Yeah. And maybe tell us a few of the features. I look through it, but I, we all look through it, but, but I
Don’t
Intimately I’m familiar with it like you
Are. Yeah, I’m still, I just barely, I mounted it and I cited it in. That’s as much of an expert as I am at this point. I have not
S we range found with it. Yeah.
Oh yeah. Mean it’s
Got an internal rangefinder
In it. It’s got an internal rangefinder, which is kind of a must not as critical. If you’re hunting coyotes, you set a gun at a hundred yards or dead on it, 200. Especially a six five or something. It’s like an inch high at a hundred. Like you’re gonna kill, kill coyotes. But if you’re hunting wolves at say 3, 4, 500 yards, if you can see that far and all that, you need a rangefinder built in. You know, and sometimes you might
Need a, you know what, radical to
Hold on. Yeah. You might need a spotter with you with, you know, thermal bindals or something. Because otherwise you’re panning with your rifle scope all the time.
This is only if you’re na or whatever. It’s all, that’s all, it’d be good in the broad daylight too. Yeah. It’s not night
Vision in certain, in certain, you know, conditions. Especially winter months, which is when, when we usually hunt, we use the hunt wolves or coyotes. We, we hunt cows in the early fall sometimes too.
You kill a coyo whenever you see it.
Yeah. But when it’s, but when it’s hot, it, that’s not gonna work as well cuz rocks and everything’s, you know, glow in the summer. Yeah. But anyway, my first dabble in this, honestly, very first dabble in the pretty on all things pretty pretty. So it’s kind of cool. It’s pretty fun. Got my suppressor on there. I’ve had one of those for a year too. And I got that on there and it’s, dude, it’s,
And it’ll allow you to kill the whole pack maybe,
Huh? Who knows? I hope to find out. I’m really excited for next winter. It’s kind of too late for this winter, but next year I’m gonna, well
Maybe someday you’ll end up having to go to Texas and
Well this is kind of one of those guns. Like this would be the, the fun gun. Yeah, the fun gun would be awesome in Texas. Yeah.
The fuck
That. We had a guy, it would be, it’d be awesome. Yesterday we sold, picks a pair of the merger binos range finding binoculars that they have that are thermal. We sold a pair of those to a guy up
Idaho. Just top shelf stuff.
We sold a pair of those and that’s what he has. He lives kind of right on the, the end of town I guess has a big basically hillside that the deer and elk and stuff are wintering on. And he said every night worse, coming down, picking, picking stuff off. And he’s, he’s tired of it,
So wants to do something about it.
He had his, his brothers head, his brother had sent him,
Loaned him his gun, a
Gun winner, but it wasn’t a range finding gun or anything like that. And he’s like, yeah, you can kind of see in it works or whatever, but he’s like, I need a rangefinder and I need binoculars. And so he was gonna set it up
And he’s leveling to play.
Yeah, we, we sent him a pair of those range fighting binoculars.
How awesome is that? Geez.
Well keep that in mind, I guess if you guys are all anybody’s interested in a fun gun.
Yeah. Yes. We’ve got,
I like, I like
It. We’ve got some rifle scopes, we’ve got binoculars, some handheld, you know, binoculars I guess that we’re carrying of pulsars.
Devin, why don’t you talk to us a little bit about guns, gun cells and a few things like that.
Rifles. Yeah. Yeah, we’ve been cranking on rifles. Yeah, we ordering a bunch. It’s been good. Yeah,
It’s
Good. Yeah, it’s fun. I, it’s been a while since I sold the rifle, but it comes back me prior to
This
Year.
Several years. Yes. Yeah.
Yes. Back in it, back in the saddle.
Yeah. We’ve helped a lot of guys in there. I don’t know, on average, back in the day, any custom rifle you would order was always meant if you got it six months, it was like yippie could be a year and a half. We’ve been getting them three months probably on average. Two, three months. Yeah. It’s awesome. And a
Lot of those are stocking and so there’s no weight at all. We just got ’em in stock. So
We’ll have a couple on the shelf and then any custom order scope, combo, whatever you want,
Get a great deal. Maybe the best deal right here. Epic outdoor. So pretty awesome. Kind of fun. I that, that thermal scopes is next level. When I look through it, it’s like, geez, you know, it’s neat and I can justify about anything. I’m coughing for just a quick sec on that one. Mostly because Jan’s editing the podcast,
You just, you just wait if I go out and shoot something with it, oh, done. I guarantee we’ll get a ding ding kill next morning. So it’s probably true. I go make that happen.
Probably true. All right, well let’s move on. We want to talk about this mules matter movement a little bit. We kind of have initiated that and a lot of that was brought on you guys, you know, as we talked about winter kill droughts, extended droughts that we’ve been in in some of the states. And then now we’ve got an excessive winter, which is good in parts, but really bad in northern Utah, you know, southern Wyoming, parts of Idaho along the Wyoming border, Northwest Colorado country like that. And so anyway, we just thought, well, you know, and some of the states are somewhat, you know, dealing with budget constraints and things like that. And, and at times in our minds are potentially issuing still too many tags. Not necessarily saying we should shut hunting down altogether in those areas. But, but as an incentive to, you know, if you get a tag and not to shoot a dink or whatevers to, you know, we want you to go hunt, we want you to hunt aggressively and try to kill something. Yeah.
Let’s clarify that. There’s been some people, I don’t know, bark at us, I guess, and just say, Hey, you’re, you know, you just wanna eliminate the competition out there in the hunt field by that’s draw your tag and send ’em to us in the summer and don’t go hunt. That’s not what we’re saying at all. Well,
That’s a small
Thinking. We want everybody to go hunt their guts out. That’s what this is about. Go hunt hard, but maybe in the back of your mind it, you know, is the hunt’s progressing if it’s not the way you’re liking it to go, if, if, if you don’t need to just shoot a buck to shoot a buck, say you shot a buck, maybe this is give somebody incentive to hold onto that tag and set it into us. We’re gonna have it load a prizes. That’s what this is for. We’re not trying to, you know, impose our, our thought processor will on everybody else. Of course there’s all levels of hunters with young hunters, old hunters, meat hunters, it doesn’t matter. Everybody’s fine. But if this is a in the back of your mind then stops you maybe from shooting a buck here and there. That’s all. It’s, that’s all it’s for.
We’re not trying to make anybody feel bad if you shoot something, but if you don’t send your tag in, it has to be a 2023 tag. Wanna put that out there? We already got one in the mail the other day. Yeah, it was cool last year. Cool. It was cool. And that was awesome. We’re gonna have to send it back. Probably didn’t clarify that, but we haven’t even started, the hunts aren’t even here yet, so it will have to be a 2023 original tag, not a duplicate tag either. We’ve, we’ve kind of got into some of that stuff. Gotta be an original tag. Yeah.
2023. You sent it in by December 1st. Yeah. And then we’re gonna have different categories of draws. Yeah,
Yeah, yeah. We’ve, we’ve decided, you know, there’s, you know, of course a lot of states are limited entry, you know, you know, that’s how the issue all their tags. There’s some states that have general season tags over the counter, you know, for residents in like, Idaho, Wyoming, you know, Montana or places like that. But anyway, we’re gonna define that a little bit and may even fine tune it a little bit more. We, if we want to go into it today, we can, but
I think we should, I think we should
Just give our initial thoughts maybe today. Yeah. And then we’re gonna have some categories. We’re gonna have some general season categories. We might even have, like, we banner this around, might even have a epic staff pick, like for somebody that turns in an unused tag that we think is like, oh,
The most amazing tag 13
B. Yeah. I mean, I don’t know, I I don’t know. I I’m just throwing that out. Or a, some elite 44 third
Something and and the guy might be like, yeah, I passed 200 inches, but here you go. I’m
No, well that you, that guy’s an idiot.
Well, well
I’m just saying you’re passing the 200 cuz you might win, you know, a, a trail camera cutting and wrap, cutting wrap pork. Hey,
Hey. So let’s talk about some of that. So when we first started this, Bronson, remember, remember we were just talking really localized heavy winter kill areas, but then we had a lot of feedback. You know, you guys, I mean, you, you were dealing with Devin, you were dealing with it as, as guys were saying, what about Nevada? We’ve been in long term drought and by the way, area six, seven and area 10 or, or hammered with snow and, and maybe what about other parts of Colorado? We’ve got localized problems over here and then south
Southeast Idaho and other parts of Idaho
Guys in Arizona are like, what about Arizona guys? You know, and we’re like in Mexico, pretty amazing in Arizona this year, but they have been dealing with drought. They’re coming on a long term drought and, and you know, not so bad to save a few lives down there. And so, so this is what we’ve thought initially. We, we have adjusted, we’ve listened to it, we’ve heard it, and we’ve, and and and to, to preface all this, there, there’s, there’s no cost to enter. Yeah. If you, if are you,
We, if you don’t like it, just forget you ever heard what we’re talking about.
Yeah. It’s no big deal.
It’s no big, you’re not having to pay to enter. And a hundred percent of things that we’re donating or anybody’s donating, a hundred percent will be drawn by people at,
So there’s no over there. So there’s no no financial gain from, from Epic whatsoever. None. There’s no entry other than just getting us your tag. The price of a postage stamp in an envelope. Okay. So get us your tag and then, and then we’ve included other states and we’ll just talk about those real quick. So for like the limited draws as far as, you know, if you drew a limited draw tag, it’s a limited draw tag. It’s, it requires you to have points or not whatever. And you drew it, it was limited in nature. Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Whamming. If you drew a limited draw tag and you didn’t harvest a a buck, then send it in and the, you know, there’s gonna be a great good chunk of prizes.
We’ll call that a yeah, we’ll call it that. A draw tag category, you know,
Draw tag category,
Limited entry. Some generals remember like Utah and for non-residents in Wyoming or Wyoming, herb draw. Yeah. So they’re gonna be in that category.
And so in the, in the general, no, and the general and the over-the-counter type tags would be Arizona, Idaho, and Wyoming. So if you, if you ended up with an over-the-counter general in nature over-the-counter, you can just go get one. Arizona archery or or Idaho has that, especially for residents and, and in Wyoming for residents. And so if it’s general in nature, that’s a category and there’s gonna be prizes associated with that. And then the bombs on mom’s do, do tag category. Let’s clarify
Save. We’re talking mules matter Of course.
Mules. No, no. Whites we’re not talking about right.
Or antelope. No, I know they’re struggling. But this is, see what
You’re saying? Not Yeah. This is
Mule. This is not a croy matter movement, not
Spoons matter. So anyway, that’s what we’re dealing with. So that’s, you’ve kind of, you’ve kind of heard it, the, the DO tags. Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming in large part. Yeah. We’re trying to like, why, why are we doing this? And maybe it’s to offset some of the effects of drought, heavy winter conditions, hoping to kill less potentially increase, foster a higher age class of game out there on the landscape and, and just encourage people to think twice before smashing a two by three because, and we’re okay with people harvesting box if you want it. Like you should harvest it. But there’s some guys that absolutely just don’t, they’ve done a lot of that. Their freezers are full. Just to kill one, just to kill one. Well maybe you, maybe maybe you don’t, maybe you’ll let that one live, right? Yeah. Kids kill whatever you want. Like, we’re good with that. And again, this is not to do anything other than just cause a little bit of awareness. Like we can do something if you think your state is given too many tags after this heavy winter, which some of ’em are, in our opinion some places, this is one thing we can do.
Yeah. Well, and and like I said, we’ve seen severe tag cut recommendations already outta Wyoming, outta Colorado that are being proposed. A lot of dough tags are being eliminated, which is probably in our minds overdue, but good to see finally. But yeah, just gives you a chance, like we’ve said, fun entry doesn’t cost you a thing. Think it’s stupid, forget about it and just go hunt everybody. Hunt your guts out. We wanna see your pitches of great big bucks and awesome bucks or medium size bucks or whatever. But before you just crush something just to say, I kill the buck in Colorado and he is a, you know, whatever, a buck that you know, you’ve shot a million up before in your life, just think about
That. And it’s fun to harvest stuff, right? And it’s,
It is, yeah, it is. But as the light’s fading on the last night and you’re frantically driving around and you see a little for key out there, a button buck, maybe trying to get, get his hair
Two inch three before
Yeah. Whatever. And and you just say like, you know, this 30 pounds of high, high quality protein, best meat in the world of venison. Or should I maybe take, send this tag in for a brand new rifle? Yeah. Or a brand new bow. Oh, and this list, take that rifle or bow or whatever else. We got some pretty amazing some hunts. Whatever. We’ve got stuff coming in. Maybe you ought take that over those 30 pounds of glorious buck meat. But
You
Don’t have a thought
And you don’t have to gut it in the dead of over there. Course of
Third season. No, I just had a good thought. Somebody, we should have some big box of jerky as prizes. Cuz some people I love to kill about for jerky.
Let’s write that. Yeah. Jerky.
We, we may even, maybe we use some of our cash donations that we get if people want to donate something like that or donate jerky, send it Senate
It. Hey, there’s a guy out there, Brandon Maha. I like it because there’s people that maha’s meats, he, he’d be all into this. He’s a hard hardcore hunter, super good guy. Maybe we’ll reach out to him. He’s, he’s a great guy. Moral meat. Look him up. They, they make some incredible
Jerky by the way. We’ll replace the six pounds of jerky. You would’ve got off that two point. Yeah.
With
12, with 12 pounds of high quality beef.
Some people choose a forte, by the way, bunch of beef, the meat meat’s. Amazing. Huh. How about Fons? Yeah. Geez. Could you imagine eating a f It would be tasty.
Ooh.
Oh, my wife lambs be all over her. Huh? My wife loves the little, Jen wouldn’t
Even cook it.
She loves the babies.
Oh yeah. Loves to eat them a thing in Europe.
Oh yeah. Like, like veal and lamb you mean? Yeah,
Absolutely. And and she just, she’s shocked that here we don’t eat anything that’s, you know, that’s, that’s undercooked. And she’s like, your government’s just brainwashing you if you freeze it before it kills everything. And, and they, I mean, she gets filet mignon, we grind it up into hamburger and she eats it raw. Yeah. And it’s, it’s amazing. If you can get past the thought of it, it’s, it’s really good. Like dances with wolves like eating a liver, man, I don’t know. No, that’s, I i we haven’t gone that far, but no. Okay,
Well
That’s like eating an oil filtered.
All right,
Well, let’s, I know. Let’s keep,
Let’s, okay, so we, we did talk about you must, we must have a way to contact you on the tag. So write your phone number on the tag or your, you know, with a sharp ear.
And it’s gotta have, we’ve, it’s gotta have your name and address. We not gotta know who it is. You can’t have blur all that out. Cut it out. If you wanna cut out your, your social, which I don’t know how many tags have that, but date of birth, c i d numbers, punch those out, cut ’em out, whatever. But
Lot,
Lot of ’em just don’t have a lot.
Gotta have your name and address
On nothing to worry about. And we’re not gonna, anyway, we’re not gonna go around posting all these personal information. It’s not gonna happen. So anyway. And then this is kind of an interesting, we reserve the right to verify fraudulent stuff that’s going on. Who knows? With these kind of things. You never know. Again, there’s not a dime in it as far as, you know, we’re concerned. And, and
We’re just saying if somebody’s trying to take advantage of the system, we’ll we reserve the right to
Look at, people will find a way. Right. And we’re gonna look into everybody that’s drawn and we reserve the right, go ahead Josh. I think you wrote this.
No I did
Not. That you said lamb based, your fun on social media. Yeah. So you’re not gonna get out of this sco free. Everybody’s gonna know who you are. Anybody that’s cheating the
System, try to cheat the system.
We’re putting you out on the podcast. We’re doing,
Might,
Might wait. Make the wall of shame. We’re
Not screwing around with this beat. Just be honest us send in your
Tags. This is a fun contest. Don’t make it into, you know, hey, I’m trying to get the best of somebody by
Not
Shoot the buck and sending a tag at the same time.
All right. So I just wanna throw out Bronson, we, we just wanna throw out some of the prizes. It’s pretty crazy. It’s
Gonna be, and this is grown by the, the week. Absolutely.
It’s nuts. We’ve had great response and it’s, we’ve been a little bit quiet since we talked about this. It’s not on purpose. We’ve just been grinding on magazine stuff. But anyway, there’s cash.
I’m kind of interested to see this third one, when you let him know what he’s doing. Oh
Yeah, John,
I must have missed that podcast. I’m donating 500 bucks. Right? I don’t care. You
Yeah, you don’t have a choice.
I’m, I’m
All over it. Me and Adam voted and it’s a two outta three.
So do I get to choose what pot that goes into? I might, might come up with something. You
Know, we can let John
Do that. Yeah. Like, you know, I don’t, it’s
It’s one of those three
Pots, you know, like what? No, I don’t know. There’s
General, a limited draw general or bombs on moms
That might be like kids under 18 John or something. My five hundreds.
We just can’t, I know what’s, we can’t have 14,000 categories
Pretty
Soon. Well, you got 14,000 prizes, so,
Oh, well there’s not that many, but there’s
Maybe 14 hundreds
All So we,
So John, you re you reserve the right to pick the bin. You want your
Price? Maybe? Yeah. I don’t, I’ll give you that. I, I’ll just think it over. This is, this is new to me. I didn’t know I was donating. So
Just, just write the check
And you,
I don’t know why it has to be difficult. John. We want your five binges. That’s about it. So we got cash prizes, we got backpack Logistics for a five day backpack meal kit. Yeah. I mean, that’s legit. Yeah, it’s no joke. Dustin Whitworth, thanks for stepping up. We’re gonna also post all this on social media throughout the fall,
Throughout the summer and fall.
He already basically just ruined that though. What, on a way we kind of posted, hey, heads up this is coming out. And what did, we just couldn’t wait. Did he said, Hey, we’re donating this. So
He
Did already.
Yeah, we had to make sure we hit him back. So
Basically, and he’s gonna wanna do the Reynolds,
You peaked at the presence under
The tree. He’s gonna want to do the spit spits, the spit rentals, the llamas. And, but he knows nobody’s gonna want that prize.
That’s true.
So maybe it’s a good one to donate. Cuz he wouldn’t have to, nobody would take him up on that.
Does it come with one of those Face shield mask,
Like a wetsuit? Just hold a rain jacket.
Slicker,
Slicker and a face shield.
Anyway, what a, he’s a good friend of ours. We can give him a little grief. It’s awesome. Appreciate you Dustin. Dustin, yeah. Fierce rifle. That’s
Epic outdoors. That’s
From us, don’t we? We paid for this. Same with the Hoyt VTM 34 KU pattern. We’ll also be reaching out to these companies as well. So I’m thinking there’s gonna be some more coming. An entire vortex package that is from Vortex. We’ve got Colton Banks trigger finger replicas. I mean,
Can’t replicate the buck you shoot on the tag you’re sending in. Of course. But another buck
Like the Yeah. The two by three, whatever. No, but if, but he will do a replica or potentially we’re talking to mini bronze. I mean, there’s, it’s awesome. He’s such a, a good advocate of, of hunters and, and just has a great business and good thing going. Mike dLAN. We’ve got a, a good chunk of, of his books as well as a, a painting coming. So that’s gonna be pretty awesome. Yeah, he’s a lover of mule there. He likes the big ones as well as sheep, obviously. But anyway, great guy. We’ve got an ano a couple anonymous donors, new and box type optics. Pretty awesome. You know what I mean? Guys just want to throw it out there. Trail cams obviously. Steal Cam and Epic. What’s this Josh?
That, that’s a tattoo.
What is it?
We, we had one of our faithful followers up north as a tattoo artist and she reached out and she says, Hey, I’m gonna donate a session, part of a session. Something like that. So we were thinking, yeah, sweet mule deer tattoo.
Maybe the Epic logo.
Yeah, potentially. I
Don’t know. Better be deer oriented mule
Probably should, probably shouldn’t be like a little honeybee or something on your lower back. Jason. Come on.
Good
Grief. And hey, just before we say that, we should, this goes without saying, but in each pool as we drive prizes, we’re gonna let the winners pick of the available prizes on the table in that
Category.
If you’re someone that, that as life’s tattoos and wants ’em, that will appeal to you. You’re not gonna say, Hey Jason, you want a tattoo? You know, you know, not, not that you can apply, but
That,
But, but in other words, all of these prizes, if you’re not a bow hunter, you don’t want the, the White Bowl. You might want the rifle or you want a rangefinder, you want optic pick, you want show camera, you’re gonna get a pick and order. So just don’t, maybe you
Don’t freak out a five day lion hunt with Mecu
Outfitters. Oh, who doesn’t want that? Ooh, yeah. Mecu Outfitters here in southern Utah.
Wow. Hunter Mecu. They’re awesome. They’re, I mean, just unbelievable stepping up to the plate like that. And these guys are reaching out to us. We haven’t reached out to ’em. Yeah.
It’s just people that hear the initial
Guys that love idea, no love mules and want to do their part more so than turning in their tag. They want to donate something.
Talk to Mark Thompson up there, Thompson Long Range. He’s doing a couple of two-day shooting courses. You don’t need to buy the gun. You can go there, learn from mark, shoot, shoot you, you gonna shoot long range, but learn a lot. Learn the system. I mean, super good guys. Mark and Scotty just awesome. They’re up there in the heart of some of that heavy
Hard winter
Stuff. Yeah. We got a traditional bow package, an entire bow package with cell salway, Archer Archery. A guy that actually drew a tag here in Utah and, and just an awesome guy. And he reached out. We’ve got from gun work, so Revic, BR four Rangefinder. Yeah. I mean, you know, just, there’s just a lot going on. More, more coming. A lot of guys are still wrapping their head around what they want to do. So anyway,
Anyway. Yeah, we are, this is growing. And of course this is, the prizes are gonna grow up until November 30th.
We’re in April,
You know. Yeah, that’s right. So this is just a little, we’re we’re probably up probably 20 Gs or something like that. Seriously.
We’re mourn that was gun archery, multiple archery packaged package gonna be Lion Hunt.
We’re not giving away hats and t-shirts.
I mean Yeah, it’s, and we may have, how about that? We may,
Yeah. I, huh,
No,
Some
Epic,
Epic. Maybe a $500 type package
Individual, but with
Packages. Yeah, maybe with the package. But these aren’t gonna be, you know, a key chain. We’re not doing any stuff
Like that. Ronson. Well,
I’m just saying these are, I, I need a key chain actually, Phil, go buy one for 3 cents, $2 and 50 cents. Okay. We’re not giving those
Plus cheer
Anyway.
All right. Anyway, pretty, pretty fun stuff. Just wanted to throw a few more things out there. We’re gonna, you can go on to Instagram. It’s me’s underscore matter, right?
Yeah.
That’ll be probably the best way. And we’re gonna highlight all these guys individually and kind of show you guys a little more in depth of what they’re,
You’re follow along off
Of it. Yeah. Yeah. Keep following along. We’re gonna keep posting on there pretty regular. Any updates or anything like that? We’ll, we’re gonna post these official rules with the states. We kind of went over ’em fast. So we’re gonna, we’re gonna post that as well. So you can go back and reference that to make sure that your doe tag comes from the correct state that it needs to in order to send it in or whatever.
Here’s, I like, here’s an angle for the business out there, John.
I’m scared right now. Well, Bronson, I’m thankful there’s a two to three vol.
There’s, I saw the light bulb just gloss fed up above your head. Spirit, his eyes lit up. John
Loves competitions and he loves intricate rules
And details. Okay. Here, if you are a business, right, and, and you’re, you’re you, you tend to love mules and you think mules matter and you
Want to
Donate and you want to donate, you can we’ll put, you know, put your name out there. You can call it an advertising cost. Donate to to the cause. And you can write it off. Yeah. As business expense. As as an business expense. And if you don’t have something again Yeah. If you’re an office supply company, what
John’s now,
Not even
John’s now advising in tax right
Off. It’s fresh on his mind.
John, did you, did you have to pay some tax? I
Had to pay some tax. I cried a little bit, but never,
I don’t think there was just
A little bit of, yeah, there was a lot. But anyway. No, that’s, that’s totally legit. You, you know, you’ll get, we’ll, we’ll talk about you on the podcast. We’ll promote your business for donating and like, it’s kind of like our nonprofit, but it’s kind of like our loss organization. Our, it just cost us our four loss. Oh geez. Yeah. Oh
Five two
C3. But I think it’s fun. We’re gonna have one of those post office things that envelopes to zip around in different categories. John will be going to the youth ones. Yeah.
John, this is funny that he’s talking about the youth cuz he doesn’t think anybody under 30 should have a sheep down all sudden. He cares about stick
To sheep. This is here, it’s, it’s what’s a lifetime text?
Yeah. John thinks any special text shouldn’t be given to
Kids. Well, you know, I sometimes I just say stuff to get a rise out of people, but geez, you do. It’s a little, it is hard for me to see a 12 year old killer sheep when he got an 80 year old that’s put in his whole life and just gonna die. The 80 year old came mind
Had the most amazing opportunities life ever gave. That’s true. It’s, I mean, they had over the counter tags. They had
Four buck tags a year. Yes. Send your party
Hunting. They had legal partying, hu hunting and then illegal partying. Hunting.
Nobody cared about. That’s, that’s the problem. Because
They took part in that and they felt the need to feed the
Community. And then now
They’re saying, now look what they to us don’t, we don’t get special treatment
People either. We’re 80. I’m 80 and I don’t get special treatment. You’ve had special treatment your whole life.
Exactly. But but for the record, if my 12 year old, old drew a sheep, tager the heck. Yes. We’re going. You know, so yeah. I’m
Not turning back,
But just, yeah.
Okay. So to John’s point though, if you’re, if you’re a business that wants to donate to this and you don’t have something that your business makes that is maybe a natural fit for a, a hunting giveaway, you know, shoot John an email or something like that. You
Knowers 4 35 2
I, we’ll put you in the jerky pile. We’ll buy jerky with it. I, I’m serious.
Who knows? There’s, or we’ll give away non-hunting. Hunting items.
Yeah, absolutely. Who
Cares? We’ve, we’ve talked about giving away like a, you know, cutting and wrap pork pig cutting
And wrap. I like that idea a lot actually. I like that idea. Yeah. Beef and pork, whatever. Or maybe, maybe one of our deer. Right?
I dunno if we
Could do that. Oh, you didn’t kill a deer. I got plenty. Here you go. Just
Sign a donation. You signed a donation form him. It’s all legal, so it doesn’t matter. One
Of the cool things that Maha Mahara majaro meets. Can’t say it, but they’ve got Turkey jerky and all kinds of, like,
He’s getting a lot of love and he doesn’t even know it yet. Yeah.
But anyway, kind of cool. Maybe we’ll come up with some
Stuff. We’re he’s, we’re he’s donating. He will. He’s a good guy. All right. Well anyway, so pretty fun. Pretty fun stuff. Go ahead Bronson.
No, that’s all we’ve said. Enough about
It. It’s awesome.
If you got something, donate contact us. We should
Come up with logo and, and a shirt and hat mules matter. Huh?
Key chain. I in. Come on Bronson. Where do we get We’re on. Maybe. Maybe.
What do you guys think? Devin can’t have enough T-shirts.
Yeah, T-shirts are good hats. I don’t know about key chains.
I know he just,
He
Said he needed, minimizes everything. This guy
Said
He needed one. I need shirts
In the, in the market for a key chain.
All right, well anyway, pretty, pretty fun stuff. Devin, why don’t you talk to us a little bit about, you deal with our outfitters heavily and you’re helping guys find outfitters. Why don’t you talk to us a little bit about Montana, New Mexico results, all the things that are going
On. Yeah, it’s been an exciting week to say the least. It’s been awesome. I love it. Yeah. I mean, I called so many people yesterday that drew tags. It’s just fun. Yeah. It’s the favorite part.
Yeah. So one of the most unique draw tag experiences, one of our members got, one of our license application guys ended up with was he ended up with a deer tag, an elk tag and an antelope tag
In New Mexico.
No, Joe, one of the best deer. One of the best elk, one of the best
Antelope. He’ll kill a Boer
Envelope in in the unguided RA trial.
Yeah,
Right. Who does
The called him so many times and Yeah. Finally got ahold of him. He’s on his honeymoon and where’s that? It’s like, Hey Devin, I’m on my honeymoon. Yeah, stop calling. It’s Italy. He’s in Italy. Answer. He’s like, what time is it there dude? Sorry. But you drew three tags like I have to tell you, I
And I have to talk to you. Yes guys.
He’s a pork cup.
Yeah. These were not junk.
He’s like, well my wife’s taking it up here in, in a minute. I’ll call ’em all here in a
Minute. So like one of the best two elk tags in the state. One of the best two or three deer tags in the state and elite antelope tag in the state. Believe
The regular draw. Yeah. Who has those kind of,
I’ve never dropped one my entire life.
Yeah. Anyway. Pretty pretty fun stuff. We’ve also dealt with a lot of Montana. We got a lot coming up too. Bronson. Oh
Man. I
Think you, you’ve been really quiet in your office and I, I don’t know, I feel like you were replying 14 women and children
One. One woman. One woman.
I had some sticky notes I was gonna
Bring,
Remember the sticky? I was gonna bring some cuz I’ve heard some things. I remember
The one outta me. Yeah.
Coming outta that office. Alaska.
I heard the word Boer goal. An antelope, something like
That. Oh, that’s right. I am gonna kill a Boer antelope this year.
Well, what you’re gonna draw. I’m the go with you. It’s gonna happen.
How are you gonna
Do that? The reason that I’m a little bit bombed is I have enough points to do a bunch of damage in Wyoming and it’s just getting crushed. And it’s unfortunate that it’s not just crushed in certain areas. It’s crushed in the best public land dominant trophy units in the state.
No
Question. And so I’m probably gonna set it out. I don’t want be the gu nip pig. I’ve got double digit plus
Points. And you and I talked about it like some of those, her, they’re, they’re decimated by half. So Yeah. We’re not in one area. They have 28,000 animals they figure and half of them are laying down,
Are not
Talking about as
Of as of
A week ago.
April 10th. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and they’re getting snow today and tomorrow. O so I’m probably sitting it out. So it, it’s, that went from a guarantee. I should have done it last year. Like you aren’t jabal. But I didn’t and I was too busy in other stuff. But
Now
I want to kill, I, I’m kind of got a handker for a big, big sp Spooner spoon, whatever you call it.
Spoon big spoons. Whoever’s called
Them Go Cutters. I’ve never called him spoons. But Jason said that’s another name, name for him. Somebody’s go
Wrote a story in and he called him Spoon. I was like, yeah, they are kind of like that. Yeah. His
Strong
Shape, like
Spoons. But yeah, I’ve got a bunch of points. Said, well, where else I guess Nevada, I’m double double digit there. But that doesn’t mean a lot.
I just know I get to share that window right there. I’d like to
Know what can hear
Your, I can hear, I can just hear every time the draw results. Like, we’ll one more will come out and it’s like, okay, this is it. All right. Oh,
What did he say about New Mexico? I’m feeling green. I don’t know. What was it?
Yeah, something
Like that. And it was like, and then I’m the only one that got a little
Tempted last, last night when we stopped dancing phones. I, I could just hear that keyboard over there. Just,
Oh, it was,
There was smoke coming through was,
And then this morning really quiet. I’ll look over there and I like to see the Utah, the Utah
Site was
Up
Three states for a family of five or six.
The nice thing is once you get ’em in there, then it’s an easy plug and play. I
Tell you that’s been, that’s been nice with Utah and that though.
And I already, from last night to this morning, changed both might have had antelope and deer.
And it’s nice to do. I love it. I did. I’ve changed a lot too. Well,
I, I, I invited,
Leave it how it is now. I like it.
Cause I’m afraid if something bad happens and I’m in the hospital and can’t change. You know what I mean? And so I’m always like, Kate, if I think it, I’m gonna go in and change right now. Yeah. Because if so, if I
End up slipped into a coma Yes.
And wake and then I come out in July, I’m gonna be like, what was I thinking?
This is why, this is why we’re trying to tell you. Just give us your logins. Yeah. We’ll take care of
You. We will do good
Things. You guys,
There’s a, there’s some guys
In this room. Wyatt has him and I don’t even know it. He knows everything.
Have you noticed, noticed that He never asked us what we apply for.
Why, because you’re gonna return the
Question. No, because he knows. That’s
My, he’s he, he picks up on a lot. He’s smart
Guy. Snuck into the
HR department.
Thumb through some
That’s burned out.
No, no, no.
Anyway, got a new nickname name for him, by the way. But I think he likes this.
Come
On. The dude is this me for breakfast the other morning. Yeah. Remember we’re going to breakfast like 25 degrees the other morning, which
Oh,
It’s springtime. And Wyatt doesn’t even have it, Jack.
No, he has, he’s
A short, short sleeve. Short sleeve. Short sleeve. A light one. We could see we’re all up. It’s air breath, it’s cold. We go to breakfast. Wyatt’s in a t-shirt like John Wayne did. We go in where he sit down. What does he sit down under the picture of? John Wayne with a 30 30 with. Yeah. So he’s the Duke man. Call him the Duke. I love, he likes this one much better than the one we tried to give him that he, he really didn’t, he didn’t have anything for. So he’s the Duke.
I’m not, I’m not even going there. What,
How could you,
I’m not even
Going there. How could you argue against that nickname?
How, I
Don’t
Know.
If you’re a red-blooded American and you fight that one, you’re not a red blooded American. Come on. You can’t kinda like elk copy town or something like that. I mean, geez.
All right. Well anyway, we’re right in the right in the throes of things. If anybody out there needs any help and you’re a member of Epic Outdoors, you’re welcome to call us. We’ll surely help you. We’ll crank through some Nevada options for you. We always, I’d love, there’s a few guys that, that are like Jason, just gimme something out of the box, out of the ordinary that you would consider doing yourself. But that you can’t really print or you don’t, it hasn’t been proven. We usually try to print proven stuff that we can back up. Right.
Well, and yeah. And there are outlier places that, that you can overachieve with either luck or a lot of work that, that’s hard to convey that all in, in print because somebody will just key in on some three 50 bulls have been come from this unit. Well, yeah. One or two a year. You know.
Well, I had a guy today, he’s like, we printed three 30 to three 50. He’s like, well, tell me like, how many am I gonna see? You know, am I, you know, and it’s, those are hard things. Like, I don’t know. I don’t know how you’re gonna hunt or what you, how good a glass you got. I don’t know anything. I don’t know. I mean, we’ve had guys, we’ve went out to Nevada and helped and they, they don’t even hunt in the evenings or, or the next morning or not. You know what I mean? And so you just, I don’t know. But it’s a good unit. It’s a really good unit. And so some of that’s just subjective. You just don’t know. But what I’m so excited about is all the skews in Utah, all the, what we’ve talked about, options, they’re
Pretty endless. Endless.
There’s a lot of stuff that’s gonna get overlooked.
Yeah. And for residents here, it’s a little bit difficult. Cause most of those skews that got added were, were for elk. And, and I think most of us are, are applying for deer. Well, seriously
Here
In this room, in their office is what I mean. So like, but we, I have family members. Yeah. You know, oh my, my woman and children that, that I’m playing around with some of these elk options. They’re really, they’re really interesting to think about what, there’s gonna be some that are overlooked, completely forgot about your job is to figure out which one that might be.
Well and even for non-residents where they can apply for everything, there’s things that are
Overlooked. Totally different for, for them. But, but yeah, it’s not as exciting for me as a resident. Cause I’m putting it for deer and I’m putting it for the quality deer.
You had to choose some things for your daughter. Like, and same thing with me and in-laws and
Outlaws and all that.
Yeah. It’s just, it’s just, it’s kind of fun and, and it’s gonna be interesting. And then after, you know, this is one of those times a unique period in history, when you’re gonna find that there’s surprises next,
Then the next year year’s gonna be uncovered when the draw goes out. And then it’s gonna be overcompensated and you’re done forever.
Well the results speak for themselves. Now. There’s precedent set. There’s this one
Took seven. Well that must be awesome. Yeah. Kline Valley takes seven general dear points. That must be incredible. No. Well
Hey how about delicious. Go there. Let’s talk about the first, let’s talk about
That meeting before we go to the general Deer Point. Bri, did you, speaking of excuses, did anybody in your jurisdiction stewardship,
Women and
Children get applied for any December archery elk? Yes or no? Yes.
Whoa.
More than one person?
No.
Oh wow.
Hey, good. You have to be really careful. Cause that’s a busy time of year for all of us. And they need to really want it. Ah, yeah. You know what I mean? Because it’s gonna be cold and all of those things. But yes. If you don’t have a lot of points,
So you’re spreading some skews, well, people
Out, you know. Yeah. They don’t even know it
Poor
When I was a kid, if you were excited about it, you figured out how to apply yourself or work with your parents and work off some application fees, whatever you
Do, lawn mowing, whatever.
Now it’s just, they get applied and they don’t, hey, and I can’t stop.
Well, dad does my combo watches. I’m going fishing
In Nevada. I don’t even want ’em to have the ability cuz I get to choose. You know, I’m like, I don’t know what it is. I love that. Ever since. So it’s my Christmas gift to ’em, like, to all my kids is just, I’m gonna apply at you and take care of your tags. And it gives me an opportunity to hunt with them and be, have family time. That’s the way I justify it in my mind. And it’s, it’s a Christmas gift in the tree. Absolutely.
I don’t know. I need start. I, I need to, I don’t do that. It’s just a given. It’s
A no, it’s a free gift
For me. I need to give it in a card.
I need to do that. And that’s what I do. Yeah. And, and just basically dad’s taking care of this and we’re gonna, we’re gonna go on hunting guarantee you’ll thank me later a year. You thank me later. Yeah. I guarantee ’em a honey year. Sometimes they get three and we don’t
Guarantee,
Well sometimes we accidentally get three. But I try to guarantee ’em and I hunt with dad and sometimes mom, you know, is a group or family or whatever. Take the meat wagon that rarely gets filled.
Speaking. Have you got a new meat wagon? How do you like it? So haul a lot more meat. How do you like it come so far?
It’s good. Huh? Best truck I’ve ever owned.
Sorry,
John had it for a week.
It’s not true.
I was just gonna say that was used yesterday when I saw a title signing going on or something. This is the best truck.
I, I gave John a deal. He couldn’t refuse. I couldn’t refuse. It’s actually the best truck I’ve ever had. Yeah.
So, yeah. I forget. Yeah, John has a new truck because Jason Truck has a new truck. So anyway, it’s pretty awesome.
Yeah,
Don’t try to pan.
I thought you were talking about a box trailer. The meat
Wagon. Well, the meat hauling wagon. Yeah. How’s that?
Yeah, it, it’s all good. There’s a lot, lot of moving parts, right John? Yep. A lot of
Moving parts. What do you, whoa. What do you mean Should be cut and dried? Anything the state tax commission needs to know about what?
No, no. Devin, you’re selling a truck.
We’ll see.
And we just wanna know when we need to be on the lookout for the next one.
Not for a while. Because I
Love You’re just gonna
The not for a walk. You’re just gonna use the one
Truck. What if it breaks down?
It’s brand new. Jason.
I should be
All right. And isn’t
It, well one, I would need some hunts before I worry about that. That’s, that’s
Priority one. We can help with that.
Need to draw some stuff and then we’ll cross that
Bridge. But Bronson mine’s and I just replaced motor mounts.
Yeah,
Yeah. But mine’s a
Yours just taken care
Of mine. Mine’s a Toyota dude.
Oh
Geez. I’ve seen a lot of Toyotas with their front end flat to the ground like that. The front end parts
Are a little weird. Luckily for me, that never happened
To me. Not on yours. Yeah. All right. So Bronson, where does that leave us? Let’s move on. Where are we going? I don’t know. Okay. We talked about SKUs, Utah, lots of options. Deer options
I have to add for people, we start doing optics and now we’re calling hunt SKUs.
I don’t know.
Yeah, if you don’t know what Aku is.
Yeah, go ahead.
There’s a product skew. That means this is that product. The
UPC code? Yes. Black and white.
I like it. Scannable thing. Hunt. Hunt skews. I
Just love the hunt skews cuz there’s so many options to partake in and and of you and analyze and consider applying for. So anyway. And wouldn’t you agree?
I love it. Skews.
So Bronson, let’s, let’s talk about the permit recommendations for Utah. And John had some questions, things
With you John.
So I am a little bit disgusted that we, we talked about Pine Valley specifically. I’m just a little disgusted that even our recommendation down here in the south, it felt like there was a 90% opinion, public opinion that we should leave the tag numbers where they were at least not increase ’em and they went with the re, the regular recommendation and increasing ’em a large portion, percentage wise, brown, some.
Yeah. Is that where your question comes in, John?
Yes. Well, so I, I, I missed the podcast where you guys talked about a lot of the, the changes coming and, you know, the discussion on technology, the discussion on primitive weapons. And there were a couple of overall themes I just wanted to ask about. And it, it kind of felt like some inferences that the state, what they, they need more revenue,
But they, or to, or to
Maintain. Or to maintain. And, and I just wanted to see what’s the bottom line, you know, are, are they okay, we need to come up with a way to issue more tags to get more revenue, yet we need to conserve the resource, so we need to figure out how to make unsuccessful hunts. No, no. You know what I mean? Like what,
What if you have, what is that? If you, if you limit technology and you, and then, and you curtail harvest a little bit because of that, you could issue more tags on, allow more people to be out on the landscape enjoying hunting.
Yeah, well there’s
Successfully, right.
But
Yes, you can’t just continue the increase efficacy of hunters by adding technology, guns, everything else and not have a consequence at some point Yeah. Of reducing tags because you’re killing too many, so,
Right. You’d have to reduce, so let’s, you can’t kill
Too many. Let’s take it to the other extreme and say that tag or you were, you were guaranteed an animal because you drew, right? You have 365 days.
Yes. Go until you
Kill. I don’t care how it
Dies. So
In that, go until you
Kill one in that case. So that would be
The opposite end of the, you’d have to read titles you to an animal.
You’d have to decrease how many those you do, you
Wouldn’t put anybody on the
Landscape. Right? Well, I mean you, you’d put five or whatever you actually wanted to kill.
And so
Is that fun? So no, I’m not saying whether it’s fun or not. What I’m getting at is what’s the, what are, what are the drivers behind the, the needs? Is it we really need more revenue or we need to get people up, opportunity increasing, cashing out,
Increasing opportunity and not,
And maintaining quality to a certain acceptable level. Okay. That is, that, that’s hard to define. And it’s, it’s different for general season deer than it is for limited entry elk, limited entry deer once in a lifetime, you know, which have whole different standards for them that, hey, I want to feel like this is, I’m by myself. You know, there’s older age, there’s a bunch of maybe animals to choose from, you know, versus okay, limited entry elk, which we’re pushing the envelope with age objectives, population objectives, weapons skews now from August to December. Excuse. And you’re trying to maximize as many people as can partake in hunting those animals
In the, and still have, and still still have
A pretty good quality and not have quality diminished dramatically year by year. Because that’s the, that’s what you’re not, you
Trying avoid that, that’s something you’re proud of. Yeah. You know, and so then they, they, they throw in the spike hunters to allow people to just be able to go harvest animals. Right. Just be in there and, but yet still have some game animals they’re proud of.
Yeah. A lot of weapon types, season dates, those kind of things. Over time you can gauge harvest success for the most part. A lot of times you, you do rarely don’t see a 70% and a 20%, a 70% and 20, you know, oftentimes it, it’ll, it’ll eventually kind of even out a little bit. So they, they’re trying to be able to keep that harvest cuz they wanna be able to keep that harvest, but allow more permits. And so that’s why you, you, you saw with Utah, when they changed all their elk management plan stuff to different weapon types, adjusted some season dates because you went from a hundred percent success in a rifle season. Right. Smack in the middle of the rut to, they bumped them down to a mid-season rifle hunt, which they’re like a 65% success on those with just some later dates. Those kind of things. So they’re allow, they’re able to give a few more tags during this timeframe with this weapon because the success is less so they can allow more
Tags and maybe satisfy the quote trophy hunters a little bit too is because we’re not so hard on just the top tier Correct. Of game animals. So we can, we’re we as a division are allowing a bunch of people to go out. We are selling a bunch of tags, but then we’re also pacifying Adam or Jason or whoever else that really wants, you know, trophies so to speak. Because yeah, I mean there’s a balance. We shouldn’t all just be trophy hunters and all just want trophy hunting in every single unit
And I’ll just want meat, meat, meat only.
Right. So there’s this, there’s this balance and that, and there’s a social, there’s a biological, biological way to manage and then mixed with social and then where does that meet and how do
We, yeah. And it’s a lot more complicated than I’m that I’m really asking, but Yeah, in some cases it feels like nobody wants to increase tags in a certain area. Right. But yet they do. So there’s gotta be a driver behind it. If it’s revenue, then I would rather they just come out and say, look, we’re short on revenue, we need more revenue. You know what I mean? It’s something else.
1400 programs that generate revenue, dedicated a hundred hours, whatever, all of these different things. And they’re all earmarked and whatnot. And in my opinion, just like your own personal budget or my personal budget, you learn how to live on that budget. You, you take it to the full length and you don’t want that budget cut or you feel like you can’t live within cut budgets at your house or, or in a division or in the government or whatever. And so you just do everything you can to maintain that or increase that
Budget. So at some point, even though nobody wants to increase, you know, tags in a certain area, you’re going to anyway just for the budget.
Well, if you can’t, the numbers have
To somehow Yeah. Justify that too, meaning Yeah, within a management plan guideline, you have in, in this case maybe buck to do ratio or things like that. An anticipated fawn recruitment this year of yearling bucks. And that’s, that’s largely, frankly that was my biggest beef, that it’s, they’re largely based on the increase on yearling buck. The anticipated yearling buck crop.
Yeah.
And that’s based off of an overall population objective number and how many doz are in that population, how much, what the doon ratio is. We’re having 85, 90 5% survival, which they have from a lot of color data. And then, okay, we, you know, 50 50 ratio of fawns and bucks. We, we feel like this is how many yearning bucks we’re recruiting into this population on this unit this year. And therefore we feel like the buck todo ratio will increase because of that. And that’s part of the problem I have. It’s still based on your overall population objective estimate that you have. If that’s way overinflated, you’re also over-inflating the estimated number of yearning bucks that are gonna be coming into the population this year and therefore overestimating how many tags you can be given. Yeah.
And some of ’em are contending that, you know, when you ask them what our carrying capacity is that a unit can handle, they’re like saying, well we are there because what’s theirs? What’s there? And these are the factors we’ve been dealt with for the last 10 years. Yeah. Droughts and, and winter and all these kind of things. And so I don’t know if you
No, I think I I don’t think any of us would argue that we would all like to see permits increased. Honestly, it’s a general season unit and that’s, that’s what it is. Yes. There’s limited entry units where we could argue and say, yeah, that maintains or should be where it’s at. It’s a li it’s a different experience. But a general season unit I look back on, on those units when they had several of these units had several thousand more tags than what they have available now was because we had the deer there to hunt
Them. I think that’s to quantify recent. You initially said we all want ’em to increase. I don’t want see ’em increased right now, but when we can handle it.
But, but we don’t want to see it right now because we are lacking seven thousands and thousands of deer we’re there four years ago.
20 years when you can, 16 to 19,
You when you can justifiably have tons of tags. Yes. There was giants killed.
So, and I think that’s the heart of my question. If everybody, and, and maybe the division has a different opinion, but everybody thinks we don’t have the deer to justify the, the tag.
Yeah. 90
Percents, that’s kind of what it is. That’s
So why are we still,
And then because well, and then Yeah, exactly. And those are questions.
So it’s gotta be revenue. At least that’s where my mind goes so.
Well and some, some, some of ’em they do not like trophy hunters in large part in a lot of departments. They wanna manage for just the masses to go out and be able to hunt. Yeah. And, and there’s justification for that too, but Yeah. But you know, they, and a lot of departments, not just ours, a lot of departments don’t like trophy hunters. They don’t Yeah. You know, cuz we’re never satisfied, you know what I mean? Yeah. It always can be better or whatever. But I have a hard time when we have representatives that represent the public that go with tag increases such as this Pine Valley. They go with that when they know good and well, they’ve had emails, phone calls and, and how many people stood, stood up?
Josh, 80 or 90% of the people in the room are all that said, no, I don’t want that to increase or to the rate that it’s being
Proposed. It’s sometimes those public meetings. I, I guess the only thing I say is things get messy, things forge get forgotten. One person gets up and says something and it kind of can sway,
It resonates.
You know, it’s just, it’s a weird dynamic because the other thing was though, to their, to their credit, they did cut a significant amount of permits off of all bunch of the other units, but it was on units where there was like an increase of a hundred tags or an increase of, you know. Right. So collectively they cut, but they agreed to cut. There
Was only a lot of tags. There was only one person that stood up for Southwest Desert and they, and they went back and went against the division recommendation on that.
Yeah. Well there was some other influencing factors. I potentially, yeah. But yeah, I, I’m just glad I was worried at first when John was talking that he’d seen the invoice for those books. We ordered the Navajo code talkers for dummies books we ordered.
Okay, so this is for the technology. Let’s dive
Into that Was worried. You gotta give a little I was background. See that invoice? That’s, that’s where you’re going. Maybe we have a weekly thing up here, some new vernacular to throw out there on one your hunting party. Should we just go round table right now? Throw out some options.
So we gotta give a little background.
I’m, I’m gonna, I’m gonna start. Don’t you give the background.
Well, I just think basically we’re looking at technology here in Utah and, and we’ve had a technology committee, we’ve, we’ve aired this out on the podcast a nauseum, but, but basically be a, you know, do we use radios or not for stalking, you know what I mean? Or, or whatever. And then define what stalking is. And there’s a lot of, a lot of gray area. And that’s what’s frustrating the public and
Scaring some people. And
It, and it is. And so call
Somebody and say, I got a big buck over here. You can, you can do that and then get
Over there. Okay, so Arizona and, and in part the, the laws and people being prosecuted for, I heard there was a buck over here on this part of the unit. So I’d gotten my truck and drove down gravel county roads to get closer to the buck. You pursued that animal with the truck. Okay. So that there’s cases, there is cases with that, even though it’s ridiculous. So it’s ridiculous, but it actually
Sees court, when does it start where lie does the socks
For us to think that there’s gray areas and that we potentially may be issued citations or whoever. I, we as a public, we not me, we as a, as a group of hunters might have to defend ourselves in court to that and, and you know, the division can say, come on. Anybody in their right mind wouldn’t issue a citation
For that. No, you don’t. No, we don’t go on that.
No. They, they, they are, if the RU law is written like it’s
Be interpreted that way by somebody and not by another, Hey,
There’s an elk over in Hammond Valley and you’re in Pine Valley. Oh, you’re, you drive to Hammond Valley. You know what I mean? For,
I’m at my house and I call you and say, dude, I got a big buck out here. Bed on the tree, get out here.
You could interpret that. And it’s not farfetched because we’ve seen where guys have been issued citations for that because they have been on a watch list or
Whatever. And you get out to me and pull up next to my truck and it’s within range. You get outta your truck and shoot from right there.
And it depends on how it’s interpreted. Like when the law reads this, you pursued that you left your house and you went or you’re
With or you’re not at your house, you verish just within the unit and you said, come over here, come to me right here, say, look right here at the spine scope. Right. You lay down and you smashed
The buck. That’s right. Did
Where did the stock start?
And we’ve used, and like you guys have said, we’ve used radios. We were talking about it in the office. We’ve used radios for 30 years. Yeah. Like, like when is that? They’re still, when is that a 36, you know, principle is, well we’ve always had rifles. You can’t go away from rifles. We’ve always had ’em. Yeah. Like we’ve always had radios. What, what is it, what’s the new age technology that that’s bothering everybody? The the garment site or whatever, the thermal new tactics, whatever baiting, you know, things like that. And so anyway, it’s hard when you bring up subjects like that gotta
Be very easy because Yeah. For you to say one thing in a rack meeting that that’s not the intent. But then when it gets out there on the field and the officer’s really upset because he thinks, you know, it’s bull crap that you called your buddy four ridges over and he got to you and you’re sitting there watching a deer and he’s laid down and smashed the box.
And so he gives you, and he’s mad up, so he gives you a ticket and says, well let’s let the lawyers and judge
Figure it out. Yeah. And now I gotta fight that.
You know what I mean? And all of a sudden you’re like, really?
But is that really the biggest issue?
Exactly.
I mean that’s my No, they go ahead. I don’t know,
I just dive into it.
Devon, I, Utah can’t make a rule that is black and white right and
Wrong. Right. Like, they can’t, do we allow cameras? Yes. If you’re just out there to see a starling and you wanna see it and it’s
Natural, or if you’re not hunting, there’s so much gray area. Or if you’re now,
That’s
Okay. What if my kid never sees a bugling bull? But then when video mode, my camera captures a bugling bull, he got to partake in that and
We, and I radioed him and I forgot, I can’t use that. I had to call him my like cell phone. I mean, yeah. I don’t know. It’s gonna, I don’t wanna hate to see that’s future hunters be scared to hunt because they’re so paranoid. Well,
It’s the most regulated anything I professional sport
There is. Yeah. And I just, I don’t know if you’re gonna make rule make it black and white. That’s be like, we are
All for should the game animal, like honestly, everybody knows our position. We are all for giving game animals a chance to live. Like it’s not no secret that we think
Advocates off muzzle loaders or something. Something like
That. And don’t meet in the middle of the four power that hasn’t tour. No, don’t
CrossBoss that aren’t really, that are totally capable of using a regular bow.
Yeah. Yeah. Like, don’t approve somebody that just tweaked their, you know, was doing CrossFit tweaked their shoulder that year and got a crossbo
Or had a friend that that signed off for ’em. And
It’s happening. I feel like there’s much bigger problems. Yeah. And I mean like when nobody has brought up the fact, like you look at Nevada who has agricultural fields, landowners. Oh yeah. They get compensated. They’re happy. Yeah. You have people in Utah. So I have a neighbor, a guy I know saw some bucks one day and I was talking to him about it and he said, oh, there’s no deer left there. I’m like, well, oh, I saw some deer. He said, oh wait, last year we killed like 60 or 70 doughs. Like, these are problems no one’s talking about, you know, we’re talking about hundred pack No, right here in the valley. Oh geez. All around. He said, oh, we killed like 65 or 70 doughs last year.
Yeah. But the division a lot of, so a lot of ’em are scared of landowners. So they don’t want to go
Incite the guy’s a big problem killing. There’s
60. Honestly, the state owns the wildlife. They Yeah. How many, they shouldn’t be allowed to just go smash
’em. How many Oh, they, they, they, there’s, we, we talk about buck numbers and all these tag cuts, but for me, I’m like, you don’t see as many deer and we’re out there planting grass and buck brush and right down the road we’re not even close. Smashed, smashed 70 dough. Like what the heck are we doing?
Oh, why we think the radio is gonna save.
Yes. That’s my thing. Like we’re talking, it’s like trying to solve a homeless problem when we’re talking about know, you know, it’s, you gotta talk about, I don’t know, the big picture to me. And that’s like nobody, I haven’t heard one person bring that up for landowners and farms and Josh, you know, all about that.
A lot of, a lot of it, they, they don’t know how to fix it.
Yeah. It’s, it’s a
But you gotta fight the
Landowners. I’d rather be talking about that than two-way radios personally.
Yeah. And I think with the technology, for me part of it is my, you know, deep mistrust and hate for government.
Well John, John doesn’t want any rules and regulations
As well. That’s not true. It’s not true. But on one
Side of it, I love to tease you about it. It’s
Hard, it’s hard for me to have all these rules that are hard to enforce that, that, you know, that, that are just up in the air. And anyway, with the radios, you can like, grandma can,
Your point is no different than ethics. We all have different set of them. Yeah.
And
So how do you regulate
That? On, on one side of it, it’s like, well, you’re just trying to make everyone less effective. Cut tag numbers and you know, don’t worry about, but
The, and the, and I believe there’s a, a me I I I mean on the, on the flip side of that. Yeah. Like, yeah, we don’t just, it goes back to the you were issued a tag, not the, not the the given. Right. To kill an animal whenever you want for the next year. You know, so like, you would have to issue a lot less tags and you can’t function.
No. And and I, and I agree, but some of ’em, I just think it’s, it’s hard to enforce. Yeah. And I don’t know. Well, it’s difficult, like, like the, there’s different situations where you can use a radio, but in this situation you can’t use a radio and it’s up to the officer, you know, like pursuing game, you can get closer to it in your truck and that’s against the law. And in these situations drive above what RPMs getting there quickly. Right, right. Jason, that’s kind of where’s people
Trouble’s. No line. You’ve got, there’s
Driven
Rpre too fast. Who’s looking at the RPMs? You know, especially
On Navajo
Especially, nobody else can see it. It’s un up to interpretation where I was at. Well,
Precedence has been set with some of these things too. Like Arizona, you, you get caught with a camera there, what happens to you? Oh,
Oh, a
Guy lost his privilege. It’s black and
White privileges for life over, over a cellular killer.
Yes. New Mexico scopes, no scopes, Don, who knows? It’s, it’s so plain. The line is drawn. It’s
Black and white, but we don’t have the guts to do it.
We don’t here we can’t.
Nevada Nevada’s cl
The same thing. We
Even relaxed Utah’s tro camera laws this year. Yeah.
It was naughty last year.
Now you can do
Private landowners can do it. Private landowners can do it in
Utah. Yeah. Well, John, are you aware of the rule they made about the Peterson law?
That’s
The Peterson law. Let’s read
Rule. I love this Josh. Let’s read. John Reserves the right to edit. We should do this on every
Podcast. Have
A obscure rule reading for John. We call it the John law.
This one was specifically, it’s in blue. So it’s added to the rule. It’s added. Oh wow. They may have listened to the podcast and, and thought maybe this be an issue. No, this is from rule 6 57 dash five
50. This is Utah.
Utah. Subsection B
Utah. Yes.
Okay. For the purpose of this subsection, making a reasonable effort shall include a person physically going over to the nearest location where the big game animal was. When the person attempted to take the big game animal in order to search for any sign of big game animal, the, the big game animal was wounded or killed. And take a big game animal in possession improperly of that rule. Thus
Case you didn’t learn that in hunter’s ed, you
Uk let’s say John, let’s just say you’re, you’re by yourself. You’re out hunting somewhere.
He’s never
By himself. May end up firing a rounder 10 and
Whoa, that was by myself. Ouch. Ouch. You physically, and you were in Gunnison. And let’s say that that buck say that bucks
Like used a span of a 500 yard side of the ridge in order between
Geez,
For shot and 10, you, you need to physically walk over to every time that buck was standing during that escapade and check for blood. Geez. And
There was snow on the ground.
Well, and oh man, that’s, that’s also my problem. It’s like you, we’ve all shot at an animal and then we get over there and it’s hard to tell exactly where he was standing. Yeah. And so you could have an officer that’s like you were 15 feet away from where he was standing. What is
The word?
They’re reasonable. What’s saying? Making reasonable effort. So you gotta walk. I think that’s the, I think these rules are for, for idiots, man. It
Isn’t
That common sense like you’ve learned it is common
Hunter’s education. It is Devin. And have you seen it? Oh, you’ve
Seen it. I’ve
Seen it. You’ve seen it Where they lob shots and they walk, never walk over there.
Yep. I’ve seen people kill deer and they’re leaving. And I said, dude, I’m pretty sure you hit this deer. And all of a sudden, guess what, 30 yards away you found dead blood everywhere. And there’s the buck. And
I think that’s our, I think that’s the point in, in to the d w r Carta or whoever on the board or whatever. Nobody wants to make that stupid freaking rule. God,
I know. It’s a rule. Rule has to be made. What
Do’s problem. We’ve all witnessed
It. Yeah. But you could make a rule about everything, you know, that’s my point. I,
I get it. And I, I I don’t know. We’ve got
Problems. This is what I think should happen. You go over there and find a dead deer like you did, and then they freaking get cited for wanting waste of wildlife or whatever. And we freaking throw the book out. Felonies. And then, and, and if, if you were to really go to the extent of the law on some of those things where there was blatant disregard then and, and we followed through with it, people might think twice it does get old,
Then that would fix it. Yeah. That that totally
Agree with the other, the other thing you hear a lot too about is people saying, well this is, we’re gonna police ourselves. Which I think as hunters we, we probably should, but it’s also not capable. It’s not our, our responsibility. And I’ve seen instances I remember mean for you to
Mor you mean for you to police a fellow
Hunter? Yes. I, and I, I, I had seen some instances where a guy had called us when I was a game warden a million years ago. And, and we went to go investigate and it was a help stop poaching call. I mean he called it in on the official hotline and whatever. Well, I go up to meet him and I meet him and he says, Hey, this buck got up and these guys went over there, they shot it, they didn’t tag it. The deer’s still laying over there. And I’m like, okay, this is money. You know, like this is gonna be easy. Okay. And I go and he’s like, it’s laying under that tree right over there. And I go walking over there, there was no deer there. And I’m like, which tree did you see? Nothing here. Yeah. And I’m like, what? And the world.
And, and he left and I was just looking and I looked around for three or four hours. There was never a deer there. Basically what had happened, this guy, I I, there was some sort of a argument on the side of some kind. These, these hunters got into a fight. Somebody probably shot a buck, something like that. A couple no evidence that a buck even got shot. And I have no idea what happened. But I went then and I knew who the guy was cuz he’s, they’re camped right down there, down there. So I go down there camp trying and have to grill them. And they’re like, no, we went over there and sat down and had lunch. Like, I don’t know. But this guy saw them gutting a buck and leaving it. They were over there sitting having lunch.
He threw
Him under the bus and it was just like, yeah. It was the weirdest thing. And so we ended up going back and citing that kid for giving a false police report. Oh
No. Nice. Because you’re kind of I like that. Like it
You’re me, dude.
Oh, I like that. But it was just like, what are you doing? Because, and it turns out the kid and talking to him. Well and he wasn’t a kid. He was like a 20 something year old man. Yeah. But turns out, after talking to him, that’s why he got a ticket was cuz he turns out. Yeah. I actually really didn’t see that. I just assumed that’s what they were doing. Cuz the buck jumped and was over there. And then I’m gonna bill you from the last five hours of Yeah. And it was like you were accusing these guys of a third degree felony. That’s, that’s the part that gets a little scary when you try to police. So if you, that’s what it’s gonna be scary is if you have a radio. Cause they’re telling you to have your radio, have your phone, use it, you know, it’s for safety sakes. Continue to use it. Well what if you’re just talking to somebody on the phone about something else completely different. Whatever. Somebody sees you and turns you in. Like, and
Then you kill a deer just by the jump on and kill on the guy Phone scope. Yeah. And he’s like, oh, he definitely was on the phone or on the radio.
It could get so messy. You know? It’s just hard. I
Don’t know. But is that our biggest problem? Yes.
No it’s not. Exactly. That’s, that’s my point. Both we’re out,
We’re stacking up hundreds of dos to touch a field for a month out of the year. That’s, and we’re talking about let’s radio, it’s worked on a
Practice every day that the five new dough I see going up over the mountain but are dead right
Now. Yeah.
I like the John law. That’s
A new section. How about this? What if you’re, what if you’re alone? And I’ve done this, what if you’re alone and you kill a buck or you shoot at a buck and you film it and you watch, you shake a shot. Well
You watch where
It hits 12 feet, whatever your turrets off the tree runs away, beds down, gets up, goes, gets shot, somebody else, whatever happens. And you don’t go look, cuz you already know
You violated
That law. You’re going to jail you.
Well, maybe
Not. And then you’d have to prove
Some of you game. I heard take in jail
For don’t stop. There’s just, there’s so many variables.
If you read, if you read that, does it say make a reasonable effort? Do you have to physically, physically visit? Read that again.
That’s what I’m saying. Or
Can you look at video? That use of the,
Of the show Now don’t back physically. Now I know I missed now when I’m walking back. It uses the word shall physically, shall,
Shall you,
You will
Making a reasonable effort shall include. So it means you have to include a person shall physically, physic person physically going watch it to the nearest location.
You shouldn’t have to make you
That walk. Or you got four people behind you and they’re like, dude, you just missed by 12 feet to the east. Yeah. Will you still gotta go down and I guess whatever. Yeah. Yeah.
But burgers have,
We’ll let the judges burgers have figured out.
Right. Well, and and you talk about police hunters, policing
Hunters.
Burgers have fragments.
Yeah, they do. And you never know where those fragments end up. And I just think there’s just like why we we’re all frustrated with this stuff. But then I also see the flip side of it, we’re so many hunters aren’t, don’t even deserve the Yeah. To be called a hunter. You know? And, and we’ve seen it time and time again. Devin, your your guy walking away, the deer didn’t go 30 yards. Deer didn’t
Go 30 yards. There was his bed and there was blood probably about 20 yards. Yeah.
You know, I mean, and then he would’ve went and shank another one. You know? Yeah. He can see
It both
Ways. So anyway, kind of kind of crazy. But yeah, I just think sometimes I just want the local representatives to represent the majority of the public. That’s what your job is to do. You know? Yeah. You represent the public. And so kind of, kind of frustrated. All right. Well anyway, that’s just a little bit, little bit of something. The fun parts are is what, what can we do to make a difference? Don’t shoot a dink unless you want a dink. If you want a dink, fine. If not, send your tag into MU’s matter. MU’s Lives
Matter 2023 tag
One to 23. We’ll, and it, that mule’s, there’s gonna be all kinds of colors. It’s gonna be fun’s gonna be fun. I’m so excited about it.
Good party. It’s
Gonna be awesome. We’re gonna have
Pizza. Come on. Pizza. Maybe.
Why
Not food? We’ll just leave
It. Lots of food. A variety of of
Food. Yeah. Exactly. Don’t be $500 poorer.
John. John, you can start
Saving that. Hey, it’s a tax write off. Tax write off. Remember you gotta advertised for my business. John,
I saw I, we looked up your, your draw results in New Mexico. Yes. You have a huge refund coming. That’s true. Red. Red. We will keep 500 of that. Okay. It’s already prepaid. Okay.
And you get to pick the bin that goes, that goes towards, remember. Yep. Those use bombs on moms general or limited draw. Any y’all out there that want to match my donation? Feel free. Hey, maybe we can do this. Like the federal Pitman Robertson matching. Let’s do it.
No,
What do you mean?
Somebody matching you saying epic’s gonna match. No, I didn’t say all cash donation
Misinterpreted. Let’s just say, let’s turn it into that. We’ll put ours. Who’s gonna match? Let’s do I just that up.
What
Pitman, what
Pitman. Robinson’s
Like PR money, but the federal, federal money gets state dollars get matched with PR dollars
And I’m thinking he’s going down the road of you donating epic matches. No, I already
Donated. You Match listener. We, we’ve, we’ve donated a bunch. I mean we’ve got, you know, 10 G’s or something already on the table. Oh, we’re from Epic
Bo rifle
Trail. Cameras, sticks, cash, title tax Cashs.
And more to come. More to come. Cuz quite frankly, we believe in it. It it’s gonna be, it’s fun to do. And it’s be
Fun. Jeez. It’s fun. We like give us stuff away.
Love this one. So anyway, no, no cost to enter. Basically just get it, get us your tag. Get it here. You could drive it here.
Okay. If it’s here by November 30th at 1159. Right? Yeah.
Yeah. Right. All right guys. I I think we’ve vetted it out. Pl plenty. We got a lot of draws. Lot of draws. We got a lot of application deadlines coming up too. And we’re cranking like it’s our freaking job. It’s so fun to talk to everybody. Help people develop plans and strategies. I think that’s what we were going to is we were talking about skews and some of the skews. We just don’t have enough paper to print on ’em. They’re in the back of our mind of this could be a great option. Not proven, but it could be a great option because of something we know or just a feeling, gut feeling. We have, I have a lot of those gut feelings. And those end up in un punched tags, guys
Tag soup. Yeah. But
Another one of those tag soup tags with drawn the other day. Maybe
Run through the deadlines real quick the next week. But Utah, the
27th rattle off Bronson. You got it.
This is from the top of my head. Which could get scary. Utah the 27th of April. It’s due if you miss it, they are gonna have a points only period in June. But, but for tags and hunts skews April 27th. I like it’s gonna have that in April 30th is gonna be the Idaho moose, sheep and goat deadline. May 1st Montana moose, sheep, goat, bison deadline, May 10th. Nevada All Species deadline.
My favorite. Nevada, the one thing about Nevada is, you know, we’re talking about 70 something thousand tags here in Utah. Yeah. The, the train’s vastly different. I totally get it. And Habitat and all of those things. Moisture, rainfall, yada yada, yada, yada. We’re talking 14,000 total deer and antelope tags issued statewide. They’re running a budget on that. Oh. And we’re, we’re whining about 71,000. It used to be 95,000, whatever. Right.
Hey, hey. And guess what, the people who own land out there, they want deer on their fields just saying
Because they, for every 50 deer, they count, they get a tag and they can count ’em anytime of the year when they’re in theory, you count ’em in November when the in in large portion of dorm period over there. Yeah. Which is crazy in the Dorma period. There’s no damage. I mean, a little bit. But, but they do get some damage in the summer. They’re not technically counting in the summer, whatever. They’ll count whenever they want to count, whenever the highest numbers are in their field. Some people do count early, but a lot of them count late. And so anyway. Yeah, they do. They get compensated for damage, potential damage, possible damage, whatever. And get to, and the private funds, they get to sell ’em on the open market. They’re not like Idaho where you, you know, you can’t sell a tag, but you can, you sell rights and other things. So you get to sell ’em on the open market. And private, private funds get to take care of degradating animals. That’s kind of cool. Right.
They’re happy.
Yeah. Your point about Nevada being that there’s hardly any tags, that’s why you like, yeah,
Let’s
Go back Generally buy yourself in Nevada.
I like that. But then also Bronson, we’ve looked through all this tag numbers, the new tag numbers for 2023. And in a lot of cases they’re single digits. Deer is al is like elk can’t
Even apply as a group in a lot
Of, yeah. You can’t apply as a group, even though legally you can’t.
You, but you
Should. There’s tag there. There’s one tag or
Two. It’s unbelievable. Real. I’ve never, I’ve never seen quotas being slashed in places like we’re seeing now in, in Nevada to the point it is antelope quotas across Wyoming. It’s single
Year sobering.
Yeah,
It’s sobering. But at the same time, kudos to end out, kudos to the board. You know, Wyoming,
You gotta do what you gotta do. If it’s not there, it’s not there. But
The few people that do have tags, what a world class experience they’re gonna have on a year like this. Especially when we’re talking Mueller.
Yeah.
Nevada, you know, elk, they’ve always got world-class animals, it feels like. And on dry years, a lot of the outfits would contend it’s, it’s even better quality-wise. Just, you know, cause they changed their, what they feed on and whatnot. So anyway, but you know, there’s a lot of theories behind that. But anyway, just interesting. It’s kind of, it’s fun. So it’s a lot of
Fun. A lot of deadline deadlines coming up in the next two weeks. And then the two weeks after that, you’re gonna see an epic wave of draw results from May 15th to the end. It’s like fast and Furious every day or two, there’s a, there’s a new state gonna come out.
And here at Epic Outdoors, we’re here to help you and make the most of those tags. We have a member draw success list where we can give you a list of members who’ve hunted that particular tag in the past. They’re always willing to help you because it’s hard to get those tags. Not like they’re com you know, you’re competing with them in their backyard per se. And then also, Devin, Adam and I, Wyatt, Josh, everybody can help you find an outfitter too and, and make the most of it if you want to go that route. So a lot of options and, and a lot of these units, a a, a good chunk of a lot of these units we have personal knowledge in and, and we were always very, very willing to help guys, we wanna see you succeed
On the outfitter note. Devin mentioned something that, you know, they book up quick after the draw the good ones and so, so be quick to call us and don’t, you know, don’t wait forever. You know, let’s say you, you draw a once in a lifetime tag and you, you wanna make the most of it and you decide, okay, I’m gonna go outfitted on this tag. You may not be able to find an outfitter or, or a good one because you wait too long to, to give us a call and, and, and, and investigate some good outfitters.
If you’re not a member of Epic Outdoors, you should be get on epic outdoors.com. It’s $150 a year. You get a publication nine times a year. It’s monthly December through June talking about all the states that we’re talking about, drawing odds, kill percentages, how the states work, and as well as being able to call in and visit with us about various things. Book hunts with guaranteed tags may not even be draw tag stuff. And, and so it’s a very involved membership, you know, service based, service oriented. And then we also can help you apply if you, there’s a separate service, we’ll actually apply you and then if you need optics, there’s no better optics pricing out there. Plain and simple. Give us a hollerer epic optics. You can just give us a hollerer. Even if you’re not a member, we’ll definitely visit with you about things, options and whatnot. Josh, you can attest to all that. You deal with a lot of optics calls.
Yeah. Yeah, we do. Just talked to a guy a little bit about it yesterday joining and he decided that the ability for us to help him out on some stuff with his optics was well worth the cost of probably membership cost. Couple time’s over. Yeah.
Yeah. Saving hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of dollars. Yep. And so anyway, something we’re proud of. Again, we like to do it. We we like it. So, all right, everybody. I don’t know what else to say. Bronson had to leave. He had a coughing. I
Was gonna pat him on the back, but I was a little worried. He might. Yeah, he he must have,
He inhaled some,
He doesn’t have a drink. Bron’s. That’s his problem.
Oh, oh, yeah,
Yeah, yeah.
He needs a drink. He’ll be all right. All right. But anyway, everybody, if out there, if you’re, if you’re needing some help, let us know. We’re happy to help you. We want to thank Kenk Boots. What a great company they are. Been with us since inception, www.ken.com. K e n e t r e k.com. 1 802 3 2 6 0 6 4. They sell boots and a wide variety of products. Anything you need help, Jim Winham, super good guy, founder, and he just kills it. So we just appreciate their support and
Hundreds of SKUs, love
Hundreds of SKUs. Love to be working with him.
Yeah, we talked a little bit about Thompson Long Range, a little bit is being kind of a sponsor of the mules matter. Then give, give those guys a call up there. They can help you out. Get you a good rifle, get you shooting. Yeah. They’re gonna help you be
Effective. They’re awesome and, and good hunters and personal friends. So we appreciate everybody at Thompson Long Range. If
You’d like to even just check them out, go on our YouTube page, you know, YouTube and search Epic Outdoors. And we’ve got a, a couple of really great videos that explain what that school is like and, and their rifles and their system. So go check that out.
Perfect. We’ll get a shout out to Kuk as well. Ultralight Hunting. I think. Josh, you’re gonna be down there at an event maybe?
Yeah, May 20th. We’re gonna actually, Josh, Josh, nine Bronson and maybe a few other of us. Hey, maybe Devin,
California, maybe, I don’t know. We got deadlines. What do you mean magazines? You don’t wanna be
Surrounded
By the dams. Hey, I don’t need, well, hey, as long as I’m with my battle buddies, you guys, I’ll go, but I’m not going
Alone. We got each other’s
Battles anyways.
They kind of take your arms at the border.
Yeah, but check your trucks before you go. Exactly. But anyways, hey, you guys would be down there. They’re great company, great people. Yeah, we’ll work with ’em all the time.
Cue you.com, you can go out there. They sell a lot. Wide variety of products, again, tents, sleeping bags, gear, clothing, backpacks, all kinds of stuff. Boots, I mean, good people. We appreciate Brendan and Justin and everybody there. They support us here at Epic Outdoors and we support the heck out of those guys and appreciate them. Like, like you said, we will be out there doing a kind of a mulda seminar hunting in general and anything and everything, we’ll just talk about what we want. It’s not, it’s not something we’re out there to generate revenue or anything, it’s just something to support them. They asked us to show up and we’re gonna, we won’t have a booth, but it’s a, it’s a, it’s not gonna be giant and they’ll be a, you know, several hundred people there I’m sure. And we’ll just be able to talk about Mueller or something. We love
May 20th,
I believe is when it Those May 20th. Yep. They have to
Ku you headquarters in Dixon.
Yeah. Pretty awesome. We appreciate the invite. We’ll absolutely be there and go from there. All right, everybody. It it’s way past our lunchtime. I don’t, I can’t believe we, we keep coming in here saying this is gonna be a short podcast.
I’m getting hangry.
When is this ever gonna be a short
Podcast? It’s not. We get on
Rants. Oh, we get on rants. But anyway. All right, everybody. Enjoy your lunches and have a great weekend.
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