EP 55: Keys to Hunting Success with Randy Ulmer. In this episode of The Epic Outdoors Podcast our hosts, Jason Carter, and, Adam Bronson, talk with archery legend Randy Ulmer. Randy is a Hall of Fame Archer/Bowhunter with mountains of experience as both a competitive target archer and a serious bowhunter. Randy tells us about his journey to becoming one of the most recognized archers of our time. Randy, Jason, and Adam share experiences, tips, and advice for other hunters that are looking to be improve their hunting skills. When it comes to archery success, it takes serious dedication and self discipline. Randy shares some of the secrets to his success and some of the things we can all do to be more successful in the field.
Disclaimer: this podcast has been transcribed from the original audio and likely contains errors. This transcription does not reflect the views and opinions of Epic Outdoors LLC. Please consult the original audio with any concerns.
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Take a spot, use the right pen. Make sure that you know the yard
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I shot and the deer blows out of
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There. You’ve waited your whole life for this moment.
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Anything to do with Western Big Games.
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Welcome to the Epic Outdoors Podcast, powered by Under Armour.
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Hey everybody. Jason Carter here and Adam Bronson with the Epic Outdoors Podcast. We got a special guest lined up for you today. It’s a guy that we’ve had a lot of requests for us to, you know, interview on our podcast. And it’s a guy that I’ve had, I have a ton of respect for. I’ve known him for, geez, since, since basically I’ve started hunting. Same with Adam. And anyway, we’re way excited to jump into this podcast with him. It’s Randy Ulmer, as well as killing many giant bucks, bulls and, and everything else he hunts. Randy was inducted into the Bow Hunters Hall of Fame approximately 20 years ago, and, and as recently as 2016, he was inducted to the Archery Hall of Fame. So, I mean, the, the credentials behind Randy are endless and I know there’s a lot that we can learn from him. Of course, you know, we could probably have a 10 hour podcast with Randy and still not, and still be taking away things that would help us in our hunting careers.
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And so we’re super excited to get into it with him. But before we get started, do wanna thank Under Armour for sponsoring these podcasts, as well as some of the different projects we’ve got going on. They’re a super great company. They’ve supported us for years and years and, and we appreciate them. And this is the time of year that all the different conventions are gonna be taking place. People be gathering, prepping for next year’s hunts here in Utah. We have the Hunt Expo. It’s one of our biggest conventions of the year. It’s a time where it seems like the entire state of Utah gets together as well as surrounding states and just visits about hunting. A lot of booths there, a lot of different tags to buy. There’ll be tags to apply for. There’s a bunch of d different conservation tags that are available for five bucks a piece.
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And you can come and you gotta validate ’em in person. And then it’s a good excuse to come around and visit with everybody at the booth. Speaking of Booth, we’re gonna be at booth number 2, 8 4 5. So the Hunt Expo will take place February 8th through the 11th 2018. And on February 10th there at the Hunt Expo, there is also a meeting with the Full Curl Society February 10th, and they will be giving away 10 sheep hunts fully paid. So the winner’s not even needing to put up a small fee. There’ll be three stone sheep hunts, $5 sheep hunts given away, as well as a desert sheep hunt and a Rocky Mountain Bighorn. And so anyway, it’s a great opportunity for guys to apply basically for, for hunts that otherwise cost lots of thousands of dollars. And you can sign up, you can get [email protected] and great opportunity for guys to, to win some hunts.
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There’ll be 10 hunt winners in the room February 10th during the Western Hunting and Conservation Expo. As we get started here, I’m gonna let it Randy talk. We got him on the line with us, but again, I do wanna introduce him a little bit further. Randy is, is somebody that’s killed, I don’t know how many deer over 200 inch type deer with a bow, but it’s numerous, maybe as many or more than anybody else I know. And, and he is just, he’s a class act. He’s known in the industry for being just one of the best archers to, to have ever lived. So as well as mule deer, he’s killed amazing elk. As we all know, we’ve seen giant 400 inch bulls that Randy’s knocked down seems like year after year after year. So anyway, really appreciate you Randy, being on with us and taking us, taking a little time with us here today.
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Well, thanks for having me. I’m honored to be with you guys.
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You bet. So maybe tell us a little bit about yourself and kind of how you got started into this, this hunting career that you’ve got going and, and of course all your shooting, your shooting competitions. And I just, I don’t even know where to start. There’s so much depth behind Randy Elmer.
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Well, Jason, I think I started out a lot like you. We came from, well, I came from a really small town in, in eastern Arizona, Taylor, which no one knows where it is, but a very small community and, you know, grew up kind of out in the country and had my first bow when I was six years old. And just shot that and shot that and shot that hunting rabbits and birds and doves and quail and that sort of thing. And, and it just progressed. Came from a hunting family. We, we hunted every fall mainly for meat. We never really were trophy hunters at all. And my brother and I started bow hunting in our teens and, and you know, just had a great time with it. And, and so bow hunting’s always been my passion. My dad didn’t really bow hunt at all. We all gun hunted.
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And, and when Rusty and I, rusty actually picked up the, the compound first and started hunting. And then I, I started the next year and, and basically been going ever since. And, and bow hunting’s, what started my target career, actually, I, I joined a bow hunting league and, and Rusty and I, my rusty’s my brother. And we had just shot together. We’d never, we’d been self-taught, shot together for years and really didn’t know if we were good or bad or, and then when we joined the bow hunting league, we found out we were actually pretty good. So we started shooting competition and it kind of just went from there.
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And So just self-taught pretty much? Or is it something, I mean, did you have lessons from anybody or
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Any books back then that you guys read about, about how to hold this thing or let the string
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Go? No, we were absolutely actually completely self-taught. We went into a, a little store and, and bought, well, he bought a compound then I bought a camp compound the next year and that year we upgraded arrows. We bought, we were, we were very poor back then. And so we bought one dozen, 2219 arrows, which are heavy as rocks. And we just practiced in the sand dune all that summer. And by hunting season, you know, they started out at, I can’t remember, they were black or, or dark olive color. And by the time hunting season rolls rolled around, they were completely silver from the point to the fletching because of being shot through the sand so much we’d worn off the anodizing. And that first hunting trip we did, you could shoot cow elk back then. And oh, by, by the first evening, I’d shot all six Meyers, gone back and found a couple of them, straightened them out over my knee, shot ’em again and I hadn’t hit anything.
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And that evening I was outta arrows and I was begging rusty to gimme an arrow. He said, I’ll give you some tomorrow, but I I, why don’t you come hunting with me? So anyway, he shot a bull that evening at about 35 yards, hit him way back and, and this bull wandered over about 30 yards, had just fell over. He had hit the descending aorta way back. Wow. And we both looked at the boat and go, oh man, this is magical. We’ve never seen an elk drop with a rifle that quickly. So anyway, we obviously were hooked and
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The arrows were probably doing 150 feet a second, or I don’t even know back then.
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Yeah, maybe. And, you know, those, those bows, well it was a rainbow. We really couldn’t shoot over 30 yards ’cause there was no range finders. You just had to guess. And we weren’t, we were new to it. So yeah, it, it, it was just, I mean it was so much fun. It was just so much fun being out there chasing. Were
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You guys in high school? Is that roughly the age? 16 or so?
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No, we were just outta high school. Okay. We were in college.
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I gotcha. What to, not to date you or anything, Randy, but like what year are we roughly talking? It just,
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We’re roughly talking about the late seventies.
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Okay. Oh yeah, yeah. Now you’ve been in a, you’ve been out this a while. Just, it’s just,
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I don’t like the way you laugh when you say
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That. No, no. I just mean like, it just shows how much depth, like you’ve seen everything you’ve seen everything from the old Eastern game getters clear back, you know, I had a Carol Bow back in Me Too low, early
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Eighties. I shot Carols too and I was, you know,
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Well, you know, you 10 or 12, if you still had that, it’d be worse than love.
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I know. And you know what? I, I couldn’t get rid of it fast enough. And they actually, you know, and I, and I love the bow, but I mean, as far as once technology started changing and I, and it was, I believe it was like hand painted. It had bright, bright green aspen leaves, you’d brightest green aspen leaves paint from top to bottom. Like that’s all I, I remember about it.
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I remember mine, it had a matte black riser, but the limbs were black but gloss, the highest gloss, like the worst bow hunting bow look you could have. It was a great looking bow. And I shot, you know, shot, you know, first deer and elk with that bow. It was, you know, I’d tape it up and all that. But I just, I always wondering, we went hunting, why did they make this? Well, that solid gloss that equip, you know,
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That equipment, it was good because it made you hunt a long time before you killed anything. Oh yeah. So you got your bow hunting skills down.
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Oh yeah. There’s no doubt about that. The bending arrows over the knees and oh, that’s close enough for, you know, what I’m hunting. I’ve, we’ve all been there, done that back in that day.
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And so did you, as you were going, going forward, your early youth, I mean, were you still trying the gun or using the gun a bit? I mean, you know, I know your dad, you mentioned your dad was kind of a rifle hunter, but you guys, did you guys hunt with a rifle also or just pretty much just be addicted to the bow?
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I kind of switched over fairly quickly. And that’s not to say I didn’t use a rifle, but I think mostly for the most part, by the time the early eighties rolled around, I was pretty much a dedicated bow hunter. Now Rusty, my brother is a coo, deer fanatic. And you know, to quote him, he said he, he would, he would use hand grenades on coo deer if he could. ’cause they’re so hard to kill or find kill
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No question.
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He still hunts. The only thing I think he hunts with the rifle is co deer. But he pretty much hunts co deer every year with a rifle. And yeah. But no, I transitioned fair fairly quickly. Now my family, like my wife and, and one of my sons still hunt with rifles. I got nothing against it. I actually, yeah, it’s kind of a nice change. ’cause you know, you guys have both been there, you guys have been bow hunters each of you for at least 20 years. So you know that, you know, you, you, you bow hunt long enough, you get so frustrated. Oh, you’re
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Just like, sometimes.
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And if I had a rifle, you’d be dead. Yeah, yeah. And if you go out there and, and your kid or your wife or your buddy has a rifle and you’re going to hook this, this is gonna be so sweet. Yeah.
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We’ll be home by dinner.
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Well, and I’ve had, you know, I actually had a guy that professes to just be a bow hunter, strictly a bow hunter. And he came up to me and I’d killed a wolf in Idaho and he’s like, you know, I’d love to kill a wolf. Like I would love to kill a wolf. But he says, I’ve just resolved that I might to myself that I’m not gonna kill one. ’cause I can’t kill one with a bow. We, and I just thought, man, kind of a bummer, you know, like, go kill one with a rifle or, or whatever, you know what I mean? If you want a wolf to but to box yourself into that corner, you know that you,
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Well, you know, it’s, and it’s, it’s it know sometimes I think, ’cause I’ve analyzed that myself because I think, oh, my brother’s gonna Mexico to hunt cos deer. And, and in that country it’s pretty much impossible. Sure. To kill one with a bow, you’d, and I thought, you know, it would be fun just to go down there and hunt with a gun. And, and then I analyze what’s my reasoning behind not doing that. And I think as much as I hate to admit this, I think as a bow hunter, you know, and especially if you’ve, if you’ve had just a little bit of notoriety or all your buddies know that you’re, hey, I’m strictly a bow hunter. Yeah. I really think it’s peer pressure. Yeah. I think why if I wanna go shoot a, a co deer in Mexico with a gun and go have fun with my brother, why don’t I, why can’t I? Yeah. And, and, and I think, you know what, really it’s because I’m afraid of what other people will say. And at my age, that’s a terrible, that’s a terrible thing to say, Randy,
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If you wanna shoot a gun at this point, if you wanna shoot a gun, you should go shoot one. ’cause quite frankly, everybody knows you’re the number one archer you’ve done that’s been raised in the last, last 30 years. It’s not a competition. It couldn’t taint it to all the girls. This movie. I don’t, I don’t, if you’ve listened to a podcast, have not said what I’ve just said to you. And it’s, and it’s true, you’s true your success. Yeah. I mean is proof of, of what you’ve done. And so anyway, I just think, yeah, if you wanna shoot, you should be able to. But I, I totally know what you mean. We all do things out of peer pressure. Sometimes we’re shooting long range. Even if you’re shooting long range archery, you might not profess to do it. But I know Randy, I know you can shoot 150 yards you, but you might not come out and print and say, I shoot 150 yards. You know what I’m saying? Or willing to shoot 150 yards. But as far as the targets, you, you, there’s no, I mean, you have to be able to shoot that far. ’cause you’re, you’re, you look at the competitions you’re winning and, and what you’re doing. And, and so those are fine lines that you might not talk about, you know?
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Well, you know, here’s the deal. And, and, and most people assume that I shoot at, at things at long yardage because, you know, because of my competition background, you’re capable. But here, here, here’s the deal though. And you guys know ’cause you guys are both very accomplished bow hunters. Yeah. Say, say, you know, I and I do shoot at 120 yards at home. Yes. However, and you know what, a hundred, well, at 120 yards, I’m very proficient. However, in a hunting situation, there are so many things that can go wrong that deer can take a step, there can be a gust of wind and 120 yards. I don’t care how good you are, your chances of wounding an animal are extremely high. And I spend, oh, like this summer I spent 45 days scouting for deer. And so I find I found two really big bucks Yeah.
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In my scouting. And, and, and that’s pretty much the same every year. And so I’ve got this deer that I’ve invested and both of those deer i’d, I’d followed Now, now one of those deer, a really good friend of mine in Colorado, Steve Winy had found the year before on a sheep hunt. But anyway, that, that’s neither here nor there. I spent 45 days scouting. So I find this one deer, follow that deer. We’ve been following those two deers, those two deer for two years. Okay. So am I gonna go out there and shoot at that deer at 80 yards and even at 80 yards? Is it, I consider when I shoot a deer, I want Yeah. I want at least a 90% chance that not I’m all gonna hit him, but I’m gonna kill him. I’m gonna kill him now. Yeah. Because otherwise if worst thing I wound him, he’s gone. Yeah. Or if I scare him, you know how these eight year old bucks are? You scare him. You know, it’s gonna be another four days before you see them. Yeah. So my limit, I have a, a very hard limit in that 60 yards. ’cause if I don’t get within 60 yards and he’s standing broadside, there’s no wind, I’m not gonna shoot. Yeah. ’cause I, I’ve got so many days invested in that deer. It’s not,
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You’ll just wait another day or two or five until it comes
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Together another day. And you know, you know, one thing when I was younger, I always thought, well this is the only time I’m ever gonna see that. But ’cause he’s so brilliant because he’s got big antlers that I’m never gonna find him again. I need to do something now. And as you know, both of you know you, that deer is not gonna disappear. Right. You know, he may disappear for a day. Sometimes two or three of this deer I shot this year disappeared for four days. Yeah. But they’re gonna come back. You’re gonna find him. If
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You’re the only one hunting, you probably air gonna get another. So
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You’ve got 45 days invested in them. Why not invest another four? Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, I got off tangent a little bit there. No, that’s perfect.
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But
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I, I’ve got real strong feelings on that.
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Well, I think it’s awesome and I think it, you know, it’s it just a, a test a testament to your ethics and and whatnot and why you’ve been so successful in doing what you’re
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Doing. It’s not a testament my ethics, it’s a testament my testament to my greed over big
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Box.
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Yeah.
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Well it’s kind of reversed probably when a lot of people think, most people would think when you get with an 80, you better let one fly. ’cause that’s your only chance of killing the deer. Where you have a different philosophy of, as, you know, as long as you’re, you know, you’re the one hunting the deer and and it’s you and him, so to speak. If it’s not right back out, let it let it try to happen tomorrow, the next day, eventually you’re gonna get your break Yeah. In your wheelhouse in that 90% zone as you called it. And he’s gonna, he’s gonna be in trouble.
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And on this tangent, when I went off on that, you were capable of shooting that far. Anybody, most bow hunters that are capable of shooting that far tell people that I’m capable of shooting that far. That’s all they do. And people assume that they’re gonna shoot that far. And, and if there’s anybody that’s capable of shooting long distance, it’d be you. And, and yet, you know, a lot of times you’re not willing to do to, to take those shots. And I think it’s awesome. I think it’s great. So, so,
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So Randy af after, I guess through your college years and whatnot, I, I know you’re a veterinarian, I know you, that’s what you’ve done, I guess for practice and profession, whatnot. Did you stick around, you’ve been in Arizona most of your life and, and that kind, I mean I know you’re there now still. So did you always kind of after college come back, stick there and that’s where you’ve based your roots?
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Yeah. After, after veterinary school I went and did some work at Texas a and m you know, postdoctoral work there. And then I came back here and start practice and yeah, so Arizona, my family’s been in Arizona here for, I dunno, four or five generations on both sides. So this is kind of our home and, and you know, Arizona a lot like southern Utah. Arizona’s got a lot to offer you. Oh my god. Oh yeah. You know, trophy feel blessed. Of course everyone’s kind of partial to their home, but I feel really blessed here. We just have so many outdoor opportunities, you know, like you guys do in Utah. There’s just, you can hunt so many species and you can just go out and have fun and you know, we have, we have it nice here ’cause we can Well you guys are kind of the same way right there. You can be down in St. George where it’s warm all winter and, and you know, in two hours you can be up at, at 10,000 feet. And, and we’re the same way here.
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Big variety. That’s right. Well, and it doesn’t hurt that, you know, you got giant bucks and bulls and rams and everything else in your home state and you know, drawing tags, you know, no waiting periods on your elk tags and all those little things are nice benefits if you’re a serious trophy hutter. And then you live right next to states like, you know, Utah, you know, New Mexico, Nevada, which we know and know you’ve spent a lot of time in and yeah, nothing wrong with where living in the, in the southwest. Well,
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No, you know, within 10 hours of me, I can hunt in New Mexico, I can hunt in Nevada, I can hunt in Utah, I can hunt in Colorado. And, and it’s, you know, it really isn’t, isn’t bad at all. And you know, I couldn’t have picked, now there may be a better time in the future, but I doubt it. But I couldn’t have picked a better time to have, you know, if, if you wanna be a bow hunter to have been born and raised in Arizona, which, you know, up until 10, 15 years ago was the best state to kill Big bull. Now you guys have kind of took that crown for, for the last 10 years. But, but really, you know, you, you couldn’t have lived in a better place to have opportunities at truly giant bulls than, than having, you know, been raised in Arizona. Yeah.
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There’s no question. And, and, and still even though, you know, we do have some good animals here, we, it feels like a once in a lifetime tag to be able to hunt some of our units. And so Adam and I and everybody else that lives in the state have, have a tendency to be looking across the border a little bit and really, you know, trying to get tags in Arizona, trying to get tags in Nevada or are going into, into Mexico. And, and so that, that is what’s nice about being centrally located is you get to look around but you know, and guys like you have, have spent your time out scouting and you’ve got a lot of opportunity. Just feels like you got a lot of opportunities in your home state to be able to draw fairly regular, even even the easier to draw units have giant bull potential for guys like you that are putting in their time.
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Oh yeah. A couple. I mean you talk about what they call limited opportunity areas, you know, if you’re willing to go into one of those areas and you know it well and you wanna spend, you know, three or four weeks in there, there are some giant bulls. Yeah. And now we’ve, our, our game and fish department has, has started managing a little bit more for opportunity, well, a whole lot more for opportunity. So it isn’t as good as it was even five years ago. And, and especially as good as it was 10 years ago and 20 years ago, as you guys well know, well you guys keep killing big bulls in New Mexico. I don’t know how you’re doing it, but New Mexico, New Mexico with rifles,
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Archery a little bit too.
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Yeah. That, that is one way I’ve limited myself, but No, but you guys kill, you know, I mean, and other people kill some big bulls still in New Mexico, but 20 years ago, I mean, you guys remember there were just really good bulls over there and it wasn’t that hard to get a tag. And of course they’ve changed their draw system as you guys well know. But, so it’s almost impossible for a non-resident to get a tag, you know, unless you buy a landowner tag. But there’s, they’ve, I think they’ve kind of overdone that land landowner tag and the system. ’cause it seems like there’s too many, but anyway, it doesn’t seem like quality is there like it used to be. But in Arizona, you know, if you’re, if you’re not particular and you know, I’ve kind of got a different philosophy and, and you guys are probably, well you’re always five steps ahead of me, but some of these units that people, okay, 15, 20 years ago people would, would, you know, just draw a tag and go hunting for the opening weekend and then come back on the second weekend and that was it.
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Well now it’s so hard to get a tag and, and all these trophy hunters put in for this specific unit, you know, 9, 10, 3 C one, whatever. And they, they hunt the whole season. Yeah. All of ’em hunt the whole season. Yes. And they’re all looking for a trophy bull. So my, where I’m going with this is some of the lesser units, you know, the unit 4, 5, 6 sevens, eight, you know, they don’t get pounded by the trophy hunters. They’re just the guy that wants to get drawn every three or four years. Yeah. And you know, there are some monster pools in those units because they’re not hammered as hard by the guys that really know what they’re doing. Well and so anyway, you can draw other tags that were you, well look at. Didn’t didn’t, didn’t you go down Adam this year? Or was it last year?
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I did this year I hunted for 15 minutes. Unfortunately it was all, you
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Know, well that,
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That you’re probably not, I showed you how good your
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State is on air, but that really pisses me off
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Then. Hey, I, it’s after some of these years I’ve been through, I, I took that and ran was that bull was coming in basically trying to run me over. It was almost self-defense. I just said, well
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I’m probably not supposed to say what unit but didn’t you weren’t trying 27. 27.
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Yeah. It was like okay the whole time, it’s like
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My son was 16 or 15, I took him down there, we hunted the solid two weeks and never saw a bull as as big as the one, well we finally did on the last day and, and we ran two miles and he actually killed it at seven yards. But my point is with his bow, but my point is we worked our butts off in that unit and you stroll up and, and the elk probably thought, oh geez, that’s Adam Bronson. No, I better just go, I just better go commit suicide.
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Yeah. Whatever he did. I’m glad it happened. Yeah, it was,
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Well that’s
00:23:51:05 –> 00:24:06:24
Never had something like that happen to me. I, you know, I’d been down there scouting for, you know, a week or so prior to that and got the lay of the land. But just one of those, if you do it long enough, something like that is going to more or less jump in the back of your pickup and say, I’m going on. Oh yeah,
00:24:06:24 –> 00:24:11:04
Just like that. Whatever that 90 inch antelope jumped in your back of your truck the year
00:24:11:04 –> 00:24:11:10
Before.
00:24:12:16 –> 00:24:12:19
I
00:24:12:19 –> 00:24:13:22
Dunno, that’s a good thing. That was
00:24:13:22 –> 00:24:14:28
With a, that was with a rifle.
00:24:15:02 –> 00:24:16:28
Randy. Randy where are you coming up with these? Don’t,
00:24:16:28 –> 00:24:17:26
Don’t do that. That was
00:24:17:26 –> 00:24:20:24
A rifle. I had a rifle, you know, that’s cheating. Remember
00:24:21:00 –> 00:24:25:18
That was a, yeah that was a special bow. That was a rifle. But the
00:24:25:18 –> 00:24:26:10
Long bow. But
00:24:26:10 –> 00:24:31:02
He, you know, that 27 has gotten better with the burn and everything else that’s going on there, you know.
00:24:31:10 –> 00:25:08:08
Oh my gosh. Well it, it, you know, if I, and I think I know probably the general vicinity of where you hunted just because of, of your description. I mean I grew up right there. That’s where I grew up and you know, the, the elk have, have, have kind of moved down and around and into all that country and everyone wants to hunt up in the, you know, in the aspens and the, and the fir trees and, and you know, you drop off a little bit and, and you get away from the people and, and that burn went all the way down there. And that feed is just fantastic. And, and I I’m sure you pro well no, you’re only there for 15 minutes. You should see some of the cos deer in that country. Oh my gosh. Trust me.
00:25:08:09 –> 00:25:10:25
My gosh, I I saw a couple, I’m going back. He sent, he sent them,
00:25:10:27 –> 00:25:12:13
I’m going back a video clip and I’m like, really?
00:25:13:03 –> 00:25:32:23
Like, look what I, and the, and the, and here’s the thing about it was when I was down there scouting, so it would’ve been early September, the over the counter our tree hunt was on. And here I, the first animal I had in my fifteens, there’s this co deer and I’m like, okay, I should have got a deer tag. ’cause the hunt is on. Well you can
00:25:33:11 –> 00:25:35:22
Then you can run up to spring or grab
00:25:35:22 –> 00:25:35:28
One.
00:25:36:02 –> 00:25:47:07
And I thought, you know, I’ve only killed two of those in my life with what’s bolts of long range rifles. What are the odds I’m even gonna, yeah, I’m kidding myself. Let’s just keep looking for elk. You know, that’s what I told myself.
00:25:47:09 –> 00:26:06:17
Oh my gosh. Well, you know, the interesting thing is that’s where I grew up hunting mul deer. And when I was a kid and there was a lot of mul there when I was a kid, you shoot a one 60 buck that was a big buck, that burn comes through and all of a sudden there are 180, 190 inch bucks running around in that burn. It’s un Yeah,
00:26:06:17 –> 00:26:08:23
I’ve seen it. We’ve seen a few trail camera pictures. Well,
00:26:08:25 –> 00:26:22:06
And then, you know, you’ve seen it, I’m sure Randy, in all your other states, you know, whether it be Utah or Nevada, I mean you get some of these wow fours and thousand two to five years after when that feed’s just enough mature man, it can be, it’s
00:26:22:06 –> 00:26:25:02
Rare that a burn doesn’t produce big animals. It’s rare.
00:26:25:17 –> 00:26:31:07
Well I, you know, I, that’s why, that’s why in June I’m out there throwing matches.
00:26:32:05 –> 00:26:32:25
You’re not,
00:26:34:14 –> 00:26:44:19
I’m just joking. But boy, you know, it doesn’t really hurt. Well it does hurt your feelings, especially if homes are involved or timber’s involved. Yeah. But that Juniper country in Nevada, it doesn’t hurt my feelings a lot.
00:26:44:25 –> 00:26:45:11
Let it all go,
00:26:45:11 –> 00:26:47:08
Let all to hear about a burn o over there.
00:26:47:13 –> 00:26:53:08
The Juniper country swallowed up so many big deer that we never see again. I I just, I don’t have any affection for Juniper for
00:26:53:08 –> 00:26:54:02
Junipers. No,
00:26:54:18 –> 00:26:55:11
None. Well
00:26:55:11 –> 00:26:55:22
That’s right,
00:26:56:15 –> 00:27:03:26
But well, let’s talk about Randy and Adam we’re the host of this. I don’t understand why Randy’s putting you on the spot talking about, right.
00:27:05:24 –> 00:27:06:22
Yeah. I, well, you
00:27:06:22 –> 00:27:08:25
Know, let’s talk about some of your giant bull, Randy.
00:27:08:26 –> 00:27:14:19
They talk about certain kinds of envy, right. Whatever guys picture. And I get antler envy for an
00:27:14:19 –> 00:27:15:12
Envy. Well it’s like we all are,
00:27:15:22 –> 00:27:23:08
I mean, Bronson shot a shot, a stone sheep. I don’t know when you shot that. It wasn’t that long ago, I don’t think that was a
00:27:23:08 –> 00:27:28:13
Rifle. That was, again, that was a hawg That was again with a rifle, Randy, you probably got one of those just like it was,
00:27:29:04 –> 00:27:30:20
It was what a howitzer,
00:27:30:29 –> 00:27:35:02
We need to give Randy, we need to get Randy A. Long range rifle and make him go with us. We
00:27:35:02 –> 00:27:41:28
Need to break that, break that miss of, Hey, I can’t do this because of what others will say. Well you, it’s funny,
00:27:43:00 –> 00:28:08:25
I spent, geez, I spent like I said, 45 days up in the high country this year and you know, I’m not a spring chicken and you know, but most of those nights you guys know how it is. You’re up there and you’re sleeping on the ridge and, and you know, when you get to be a little older, you, you wake up in the morning and things are a little stiff and you’re going, you know, you know, road hunting down in Mexico, sitting on a high rack with a high powered rifle sounds really good right now.
00:28:09:01 –> 00:28:10:13
Yeah, yeah. I know.
00:28:10:16 –> 00:28:16:23
So you guys might, you guys might see me, you know, you might might see me with a smoke pole here at some point. Yeah,
00:28:17:15 –> 00:28:18:12
Well that’d be good.
00:28:19:08 –> 00:28:19:25
Open sight.
00:28:19:27 –> 00:28:21:07
Well, well-rounded you a little bit.
00:28:21:14 –> 00:28:28:24
Open sight round ball, black flintlock. Right. Maybe we gotta make it just as hard as, as primitive as a muzzle loader can get.
00:28:30:09 –> 00:28:30:19
Let’s,
00:28:30:19 –> 00:29:04:00
Let’s, let’s talk about some of these giant bulls, Randy. And, and you don’t have to say specific numbers, but I like, I don’t know how many giants you’ve killed, but it’s been a lot of ’em and, and you’ve done it in multiple states, not just your backyard, but you’ve done it in Nevada and, and other places. And so just kind of, let’s go through that a little bit. Like, like, you know, calling them versus just spot and stalking ’em and not calling ’em, or how are you doing it? Like what, how does Randy Ulmer hunt giant bulls besides obviously you’re scouting, but, but once it comes to game time.
00:29:05:12 –> 00:29:41:08
Well, and you know, you talk about elk scouting and, and to be honest with you, I scout I, yeah, I used to scout everything and I used to scout everything as much as, as my schedule would allow. And I’ve become maybe lazy. I I like to use the word efficient if I don’t think scouting is gonna do me any good. I I don’t do a lot of scouting. So let’s say you draw an Arizona elk tag, to be honest with you, scouting you very little good.
00:29:41:11 –> 00:29:43:05
Yeah. They’re gonna rutt it’s gonna change.
00:29:43:16 –> 00:30:35:08
I I found that the bulls I found in July or August, early August weren’t there, come September they were somewhere else. And now it’s been proven with these guys that put out all the salt and all the trail cameras. Yeah. You know, they’ll, they’ll have a trail camera picture of a bull say in unit nine right up by the park. And then they’ll kill him in the early rifle or the, the archery hunt. And you know, he’ll be in unit seven, which is, you know, 35, 40 miles south. Isn’t that crazy? And it’s happened over and over again. So my point is you’re we’re talking about elk and big elk and what I’ve found is I go up, it depends on, you know, the season changes every year as you guys well know, it kind of moves a day back every year. Yeah. And so depending, I don’t really start scouting until the 1st of September because then the bulls are probably gonna be in the place.
00:30:35:08 –> 00:31:25:11
They are. Yeah. And I go out and I, I’d really like to spend a long lot of time out at, at, at night listening. And then if I hear what sounds like a good bull, I’ll try to memorize bugle and then look at him in the morning and to try to figure out, you know, if he’s a big one then I’ve, I’ve got his bugle memorized and then I can hunt him. And that’s actually how I’ve killed a lot of my big bulls. But that’s my, and you, you also talked about do I call, don’t I call, I called, I used to actually enter a calling contest back in my twenties and early thirties and I was never any good at it, but I still enter calling contest ’cause I wanted to get better at it. Yeah. But my point is I used to call and call and call and call and I would call in good bull decent bulls, call in decent bulls, but I’d never get those big bulls.
00:31:25:11 –> 00:32:35:12
Just didn’t respond. Yeah. You know, and you hear about guys calling really, really old age class bulls in, but mostly it’s on public or private land or Indian reservations or they just get one that’s particularly dumb. Or maybe they’re just a lot better caller than I’m, but when I started calling, as soon as I stopped calling, I started killing big bulls. That was my number one, I guess my number one thing that just, just kind of opened my eyes and go, oh my gosh. So making too much noise and calling. I pretty much, I have never called a big bull in, I’ve never killed one of my big bulls. I just, I I mean these guys are 9, 10, 11, 12 years old. They’ve heard everything. Yeah. They’ve seen everything. And you know, 90% of the time or more than that, if I hear a call, I can tell you if it’s an elk or a hunter, even a good cow call. Yeah. And if I can tell, what can you imagine? Yeah. What an, what a big bull. An old bull that’s been shot at a few times. So anyway, I I’ve completely quit calling. I I don’t call at all. I carry a readed in my mouth though unstoppable before I shoot him. Yes. But that’s it.
00:32:35:25 –> 00:33:09:10
Well, and what we’ve found too is we’ve thought a lot about it is, is, you know, if you’re a trophy hunter like you are and you’re, you’re looking for a particular animal or a particular size of animal or whatever, you’d have to call in 200 bulls to find the kind of bull you know, that you’re willing to kill. Especially a guy like you that’s, that’s killed, you know, every kind of bull there is. And so, you know, versus just glassing them and, and working the country that way. And so you just can’t call, there’s not enough time to call that many bulls in, even if you were calling in older age class bulls, which, which like you said is, is nearly impossible.
00:33:11:05 –> 00:33:56:09
Well, yeah. What the, the problem is is when you’re calling the vast majority of time is you are going to spend your time on the bulls that answer you. Yeah. And the bulls that answer you aren’t the ones that you wanna kill. Yeah. So you are working these other bulls, and again, I’m talking about, you know, hunted, heavily hunted or at least fairly heavily hunted public land. You’re just not gonna get the bulls you want. You know, it’s interesting. Well, for instance, my son killed a a a really nice bull in unit 1 0 3 years, two years ago, three years ago with a muzzle odor. And you know, and I, and I’m always preaching to my kids as you are, this is what you gotta do. You know, you trying to, of course they don’t believe any of it. Yeah. They don’t think dad’s anything specials.
00:33:56:09 –> 00:35:09:15
Anyway, so, but one, you know, it’s kind of funny when they, they have listened to you and they actually spew some of it back at you. You’re like, oh my gosh. He did listen. Whoa. We’re we’re hunting these, these elk and, and there was, oh geez, it was really good year. And there were 10 or 15 bulls bugling in this basin and, and, and we’re, you know, in there two hours before light and we’re following the, the big herd. And, and all of a sudden the, the one of the kind of the groaners, I’ll call ’em Yeah. Kind of separated out and went up to the left and all the other elk went up to the right. And so I’m following all the other elk and, and my and my son says, dad, you’ve always told me when there’s a bunch of bulls like that and, and one of ’em separates out or right before dawn, he said, and if it sounds like a good bull and he is not bugling very much, he’d follow him. Yeah, yeah. And I thought to myself, but I just wanted to get him an elk, you know, I wasn’t really worried about a giant one. The biggest Yeah. We fo we followed that other bull and he only bugled and just kind of groaned every 15 minutes once it got lighty almost shut up. Anyway, to make a long story short, we got up on that bull. It’s one of the biggest bulls I’ve ever seen in my life. I mean, a net, the net net 400 inch bull. Come on.
00:35:10:18 –> 00:35:52:05
Oh yeah. Well here’s, here’s that, that’s the good part of the story. The, the sad part of the story is we were in this aspens, you know those, those baby aspens after a burn? Oh yeah. And you know, oh jungle, 10 feet hall. And it had been raining all morning and I actually had the muzzle odor in a plastic bag, a black plastic bag. And, and when we got close to that bull, I took it out, but we were still going through those aspens. So that bull came out, stuck his head out at 10, 10 yards is looking all around. So I got to look at every point he owned and every point he owned was pushing 20, he had 24 inch fours. I was dying the magical but finally he stepped out and my son took aim at 10 yards and click. Oh,
00:35:52:20 –> 00:35:53:02
That’s
00:35:53:02 –> 00:35:57:05
Why you hunt the bull. Actually, that’s why you hunt with a bow right there. You, you would’ve
00:35:57:05 –> 00:36:02:01
Killed him. Well, there you go. I’ve never had a, I’ve never had a a a powder get wet on a bow. Yeah,
00:36:02:02 –> 00:36:05:19
That’s right. Wow. Anyway, so we got away. Yeah. Obviously
00:36:05:21 –> 00:36:10:28
It’s kind of funny, you know, you, you teach your kids certain things and, and you know, believe it or not, they occasionally they listen.
00:36:11:26 –> 00:37:06:01
Well I was gonna ask you, you know, you described, you know, normally not hunting some of our archery elk hunts in Utah and, and a little bit in Nevada. I think it’s the 25th or so of August. Our our hunts in Utah start early. They’re 28 days long. But, but they’re really early and, and we’re really high on hunting the opener for the reason you described earlier. You can find a bull before he leaves within that maybe first four to seven days of our archery hunts. But, but as you described, in a lot of units, in a lot of states, you don’t start hunting ’em till September. Do you find yourself, and, and maybe it’s hard to do a quick analysis of the giant bulls you’ve killed, or most of them, or most of them are alone or you, or they got some cows and whatever number and you’re just simply slipping in their bedroom quietly, not calling and killing them that way. Or are they truly alone and they just haven’t really got rut hard yet?
00:37:07:03 –> 00:37:53:19
Here’s what I’ve found and, and it, it’s happened to me over and over again and, and I tell myself this is true and then I’ll quit believing it until I do it again. And, and, and and, and, and, and it, it, it, it really is true. But what has happened with me is exactly what happened with my son. And you know, I, you guys probably know ’cause you’ve hunted so much, but, but it’s very, very difficult to do. The first really big bull I killed the first 400 inch bull I killed. I I I, I was, that’s a long story, but I knew there was a giant bull in there ’cause my buddy had seen it the year before. And then I talked to another guy that’s seen it. I mean, it’s really a special bull because it’s, it’s inside spread is like 50 inches.
00:37:53:22 –> 00:38:46:26
I mean it’s a wide bull. It actually, it’s inside spread’s 55 inches, 56, something like that. It’s unbelievable, but really big bull. Anyway, I I, I followed this bull from before light, just his bugle and again, other bugles were going on and all the other elk went another way and he, he, he went a different way. And anyway, I got, long story short, I got in front of him. He came by me at 35 yards, I shot him. But, but then when I shot that really big bull, that Nevada state record bull, same thing. You know, I’d seen that bull. Well, to start off, you talking about scouting bulls ahead of time, this before I, well, not that I know what I’m doing now, but I really didn’t know as much as I, I think I know now. And, and I went up there to Nevada and I scouted and scouted, scouted and scouted and scouted, I mean, before the season.
00:38:47:01 –> 00:39:41:28
And I had three bulls located that I thought would go balloon Crocket. I mean yeah, this is in the heyday of Nevada and they’re all up high, you know, they’re all way up high and different in different places. You know, they were all within 10 miles of each other. So I thought, well I’m gonna go after that one. And then that one and that one is not my, my number one, number two and number three. And you know, this is, oh, it’d probably be have to be like the 25th of August. I’m gonna say, I could be wrong on that date. But by the time the season started, like five days later, all three of those bulls had absolutely disappeared. And, and I was like, wow. So you know this, that’s got into me absolutely no good. And I talked to the game warden in that area and he said, yeah, you know, he sees bulls, those same bulls and they’ll be on one mountain range in August and they’ll be on a different mountain range running in July.
00:39:41:29 –> 00:40:24:03
Yeah. You know, 25 miles away. September, I mean in, in September. Yeah. So anyway, but where I was going with that is, is during that hunt, I think it was a 21 day hunt. And I had seen a really big bull midway through the hunt, but hadn’t been able to get on him. And, and so I found him again, I found a whole cluster of bulls bugle, you know, three hours before light. And so again, I, I I I, this one bull had a particular bugle and he separated out about an hour before light separated out and went a different way. He would only bugle every 15 or 20 minutes, even though it was dark. And he kind of had a groan. And so I thought, you know what, I’m gonna follow him. And so I followed him and, and he would only bugle every once in a while.
00:40:24:04 –> 00:41:37:24
And the real thick pinon junipers, all of the other elk had bugled and gone the opposite way. Anyway, to make a long story short, I ended up sneaking up on that bull and killing him. And he, he was that one that ended up being the art, the Nevada state non-typical record. So then my point with all this is what I have found is these old, old, old bulls that are dominant. And this is, I mean, there’s nothing scientific in what I’m telling you right now, it’s just my feeling. I think what they do is they’re so dominant that they go into the cluster at night. You know, I’ll call it a fran I call it a frenzy. They go into the frenzy at night, check all the cows. If, if, if there’s a cow in heat, you know, the other bulls will either fight him, but he can take that cow or they’ve already fought him in the past and they know just to leave Maloney gets that cow takes it off. And that has happened so many times to me. Well, this year my same son Levi had a, had another Arizona elk tag. That kid gets, well, you know, you guys know the system. He, he was the youngest grandkid on both sides. So he’s got so many, he’s had seven, he’s right now he’s seven Arizona lts.
00:41:37:24 –> 00:41:38:11
Geez. Yeah.
00:41:38:16 –> 00:41:41:26
Crazy. And he’s, he’s killed seven big bulls. How old is,
00:41:42:08 –> 00:41:42:26
How old is he
00:41:43:07 –> 00:41:56:04
Now? He’s 18 right now, and he’s got seven bulls on his wall. Well, the last two bulls he killed were 3 97 and 3 91. Come on. Oh, you trust me. It drives me crazy. Chip
00:41:56:04 –> 00:41:57:05
Off the old block right
00:41:57:05 –> 00:42:47:25
There. Oh no, he’s, he’s just, he’s, he’s got something, he’s got something special. Anyway, he shot four arrows at elk in his life and he’s killed four giant bulls and they’ve all died with sight. Oh my god. But anyway, my point where I was going with this is, well that bully killed this year would be 3 9 1. It has about 12 inches broken off it’s fourth. Anyway, he, he followed this herd elk, same thing first thing in the morning. There’s 20 cows, maybe 1 3 50 bull. And then there’s this really big bull. Well the big bull pulled right out of the herd all by himself. Walked a mile and a half and Levi trucked along right behind him. And, and the kids really sneaky. I mean, he was in those elk, he was in elk all morning till whatever, eight o’clock in the morning, never spooked an elk.
00:42:48:09 –> 00:43:35:12
And the big bull goes into a cluster of juniper trees and Levi sneaks in thereafter him. And I’m thinking, oh, this is not gonna end well. ’cause you know, I figured the bull is gonna bed and when they bed it’s so hard to sneak up, but they don’t have anything to do to look for you. And, and I’m up on a mountain two miles away, maybe maybe three, and all of a sudden I see that bull come squirting out of those trees. And I thought, oh, that’s what I knew was gonna happen. And it was the la second to the last day of the season and that bull go about 40 yards. And all of a sudden he just started wobbling and tipped over backwards. I’m like, oh my goodness. But my point is, is he left the herd. Yeah, yeah. And he was bigger and stronger and just a, a just a much more dominant looking bull anyway than that other bull.
00:43:35:23 –> 00:43:39:22
And then at night, night again, they’ll go back in and stew it again. I just,
00:43:39:26 –> 00:43:46:19
I think those older bulls, they’re not gonna waste their time managing a herd of cows. No. They do what they want. I mean, that’s a lot of work.
00:43:47:01 –> 00:43:48:25
Yeah, yeah. I can see that’s
00:43:48:25 –> 00:43:49:23
Not what they’re really after.
00:43:50:17 –> 00:43:52:24
I can see what you’re saying. They pretty much do what they want.
00:43:53:25 –> 00:43:54:10
Exactly.
00:43:54:16 –> 00:43:56:29
You mentioned, you mentioned scouting. Oh, go ahead.
00:43:57:15 –> 00:44:08:08
No, no, no. That, that was my whole point is that these bigger age class bulls just, you know, they come in, they take what they want and if what they want’s not there, they’ll leave. They’ll come back tomorrow night and see if it’s there yet.
00:44:08:24 –> 00:44:39:02
Crazy. You mentioned scouting, you know, and, and spending a lot of time early and whatnot. There was a time in Nevada I drove by you and I think you were, you were on a main road, but you were in a chair glassing with the big eyes and Oh yeah. And I’m, and I’m sure you remember the exact time I’m talking about, but, but because you’ve done it so many times, I’m, you know, but tell us a little bit about that as far as your glassing techniques and, and, and just spending time behind the, the glass.
00:44:40:19 –> 00:45:53:18
Well, my wife thinks I have an obsession. I’ll, I’ll let, I’ll let people You can, you can have my bow, you can have my truck, you can have my quad. You can borrow anything. You can’t borrow my wife, but you can borrow almost anything I’ve got. But you can’t touch my optics. I, I’ve been an optic fanatic for, oh geez, 30, 30, 35 years since the size 15 by sixties came out. Yeah. I love optics. It’s just fun. I mean, that’s what I spend all my summer doing is just sitting behind hiking and then sitting behind binocular. So yeah, I’ve pretty much got every good binocular that’s ever been built, and I don’t hardly ever get rid of them either. I, I mean, what they’ve done in the last few years has just been phenomenal with the optics. You know, you guys have all the different optics, you know what I’m talking about. Yeah. It, it’s just phenomenal. But I’ve got everything. I mean, you know, I’ve got swarovski’s, I’ve got like, as I’ve got doctors, I’ve got KOAs and I’m sure there’s a few name brands. Yeah.
00:45:53:19 –> 00:45:55:01
There’s a ton of good stuff.
00:45:55:05 –> 00:46:09:12
Yeah. My wife threatens to cut me off. I said, Hey, you know what this is, this is, this is one of my only obsessions other than hunting. So it’s, it’s good. And they’re related. Yeah. They can what I spend all my extra money on. Absolutely.
00:46:09:21 –> 00:46:32:07
Yeah. Well, good. Is there, so let’s say a guy wants to do what you’re doing, I mean, which is, which is impossible, but let’s just say a guy wants to, you know, do his best to kill a big bull or or whatnot. What would you, what would you tell somebody? Like what would you tell somebody, this is what you need to be doing, obviously applying in the West and whatnot, but, but is there some kind of advice you’d give people?
00:46:33:20 –> 00:47:25:07
Yeah. First of all, I think the most important thing is if, okay, I’m, I’m just gonna talk bow running right now. Yeah. But let’s say, okay, you want to kill the big bo bull and, and really I think bowing is probably one of your best betts if you can become proficient, the, the last thing you wanna do is, let’s say you’re an Arizona resident, okay? It’s gonna take you 15 years to draw a really, really good unit. Well, the last thing you wanna do is, is, is go there, either hire an outfitter or, or go on your own and not know what you’re doing. So my, my advice is go hunting in as many states as you can, become a good elk hunter. Yeah. And in the meantime, start accumulating, you know, get some, some, some good application services. You guys know any that can, that can we know one put you Yeah.
00:47:25:09 –> 00:48:00:14
Put you into, oh, by the way, congratulations on your first year of your magazine. Oh, great. At the anniversary. That’s great. Yeah. But anyway, put in for his, you know, put in for these states, put in for Nevada, put in for Utah, put in for, for all these different states where you can get a good tag. And then when you are able to draw it, you’re not gonna be novice. And I see this in Arizona. These guys wait for 10 years to get a tag and they really don’t know what they’re doing. Yeah. And, and, and not because they’re stupid, it’s just because they don’t have any experience. Yeah.
00:48:00:14 –> 00:48:04:02
Experience is the only way to teach and Yeah, you gotta fail a lot of time. Yeah. I
00:48:04:02 –> 00:48:38:23
Spent 20 years chasing out for, well, 15 years chasing elk hard before I finally shot a big one. It’s ’cause I didn’t know what the heck I was doing. And, and you know, it seems easy when you’re watching, well, when you ask you guys on video, but it, it’s not easy. Yeah. It’s really not easy. And then, and then last of all, if you get a good tag and you truly want to shoot a big bull, you can’t shoot a little bull. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I mean if you, if you wanna shoot a three 50 bull, which I think is incredible elk, that’s my problem. You know, you’re gonna have to pass up a ton of three 10 or 300 to three 20 bulls.
00:48:39:14 –> 00:48:46:05
It’s have to pass. What if we want a 400, how do we, we’re gonna have to pass up the three fifties, which
00:48:46:05 –> 00:49:45:06
Are phenomenal bulls, you know, it’s, to be honest, a true, a true 400 gross officially scored gross bull is so rare. I mean, I will bet you in the state of Arizona, not, I’m not talking about what you see on social media, but I’m talking about an officially measured to our 400 inch bull. Yeah. It’s so rare. I mean, it’s so rare. I really, I think the odds are so far against you. Yeah. I, I really do. I I think it’s almost a, it’s almost a fantasy. And now it can happen obviously, ’cause you know, it happens to people every year. But, but those bulls just don’t hardly exist. If you do wanna shoot one first, you better become very good at hunting elk. And then you’d be better be able to either, and even, I mean, landowner tags, there really just aren’t any, you can hunt a private ranch, but even on a private ranch in Utah at 400, so rare. I mean, really, it’s almost a unicorn. It’s just,
00:49:45:16 –> 00:49:56:12
Just they just sometimes happen. Or you’re hunting in a spot. Exactly. There’s said, you, you get a tip from a buddy, he’s sell one, and then all of a sudden, boom, you or one of your family members draw the same unit and you have a starting place. One thing
00:49:56:15 –> 00:49:58:18
You leads to another and you gotta hunt a specific animal,
00:49:58:19 –> 00:50:02:29
One or two elk. And that’s what you’re hunting. You’re not hunting elk, you’re hunting and elk. Yeah. That’s
00:50:03:08 –> 00:50:13:02
Specific e Exactly. And you better pass up every elk. And, and what’s gonna happen is you’re gonna see a 360 bull and you’re gonna, you know, you’re gonna fold like a taco and that’s me.
00:50:13:02 –> 00:50:16:12
You gonna shoot it? That’s me. I’m the taco fold. That’s me.
00:50:16:26 –> 00:50:28:18
Yeah. You gotta pretty much, you know, to, you know, take the entire season off plus a week before whatever, and, and just live there, which is just not possible in mo for most guys. And then, and then, well, not,
00:50:29:01 –> 00:50:29:07
Not
00:50:29:11 –> 00:50:30:07
Being tacos.
00:50:30:09 –> 00:51:33:21
So it, it really do you, do you want to, okay, let’s say that there is a 400 bull in your unit, and let’s say that you have a 10% chance of killing that bull. Now in a any unit that has a 400 inch bull, there’s gonna be, let’s say 10 or 15 in a decent sized unit. Yeah. Bulls that are 360 plus. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Do you wanna take, and let’s say the biggest bull you’ve ever killed is a three 20. Yeah. Do you really wanna pass up all those 360? No. 90? Would you have a 70 or 80% chance of killing at that 10% chance of killing a 400? That, that’s where you really get into a dilemma. That’s, I now grew up in Arizona, I I got completely spoiled ’cause I got good tags and back in the, when there were those kind of bulls out there. And so for me, it’s a different question if I go home without a bull, you know, so what? Yeah. You know, so what, you know, one of us, somebody in my family’s gonna get an out tag and we’re gonna get some mal meat. Yeah. So that’s not an issue. But, but, you know, but for somebody else that’s never killed a, a bull that they really could be proud of on their wall to, to wait for 400. It’s kind of foolish in my opinion.
00:51:33:22 –> 00:51:54:08
But, and it’s like, yeah, but it’s also like if somebody were telling you right now, there you gotta, there’s one bull and there’s a 10% chance and, and listed it out for you, you wouldn’t even hear that, Randy. You wouldn’t even hear it. You’re gonna be like, where’s he at? I’m gonna take the 10%. Give me the tag. Give me three weeks. And that’s where I’m at. I’ll take my chances. You know? And that’s what I think guys did that. Yeah.
00:51:54:17 –> 00:51:56:13
Yeah. I’m psychotic just like you guys. Well it is
00:51:56:14 –> 00:51:58:19
Psychotic, but the psychotic guys, people,
00:51:58:22 –> 00:52:03:17
Most people aren’t as nuts as you guys are. And I’m, it’s
00:52:03:17 –> 00:52:05:17
Just, it’s, that’s not natural. I mean that’s, and I think
00:52:05:17 –> 00:52:07:29
That’s, it’s by the grace of God, we’re not in the crazy house.
00:52:08:09 –> 00:52:37:27
Well, we should be. But, but it’s, that’s why guys like you are doing what you’re doing. And, and there was guys for mule deer. I had, I, I always wanted to kill giant bucks. And, and you know, I had some of the, what I would call mentors, you know, tell you, you know, it’s not the eighties, it’s not this, it’s not the sixties, fifties, whatever. And, and it’s not possible. And I just kept saying to myself like, they’re dying of old age somewhere. Like they’re dying of old age. I’m not gonna take that for an answer. And anyway. And so it does, you just,
00:52:38:03 –> 00:52:45:25
Well, you are, I mean, if you listen since you started talking about yourself, let me talk about you a little bit. No, you, no, seriously,
00:52:45:28 –> 00:52:47:01
Nice segue. Brutal.
00:52:48:08 –> 00:53:04:16
No, no, no. You are, you are a phenomenon. You’re, you’re not natural because what you’ve done in the last 20 years with a bow, well, with any weapon, really, the, the deer you’ve killed are just, it’s just not, it, it really couldn’t.
00:53:04:16 –> 00:53:06:06
You’ve done it, Randy. You know, you could say, Randy, well
00:53:06:07 –> 00:53:39:08
Listen. No, no. We’re talking about you right now. But the thing is, is, is really, you can’t, you know, you asked me about 400 inch bulls, but you can’t take say a 20 year old kid. However, you were old, you were, when you started shooting those monsters. You can’t take a 20 year old kid right now and, and blow smoke up his skirt and say, you, you could do this. He can’t. Yeah. It’s, it’s like, I mean, it’s like taking a, a kid off the high school basketball team said, you can be Michael Jordan. Yeah. You know, you’ve got a special set of skills. You’ve got the time you’re working in the hunting industry. Yeah.
00:53:39:21 –> 00:53:41:23
The variables. You line the variables. You’re
00:53:41:23 –> 00:54:08:19
Good at kind of everything. And you have the time and you live in the right country and, and all these different skill sets that you have. It’s just, you know, it’s, it’s kind of like winning the lottery to be in the position you’re in and have the skillset you have. Yeah. So you, again, going back to that 400 school, I just, I just, it, it just, I cringe a little bit to, to, to to, to have someone wanting to try to do that. ’cause I just hate to see him disappointed. Well, I wanna
00:54:08:23 –> 00:54:09:28
Try, I wanna try.
00:54:10:03 –> 00:54:11:16
Jason and I talk all the
00:54:11:16 –> 00:54:18:22
Time. I wanna try, but I gotta give up milder and I gotta decide when that is for 20 years. And it might happen once in 20 years. It might. Yeah.
00:54:18:22 –> 00:54:38:06
Like that’s gonna happen. But, you know, you live in Utah and, and, and you have connections and, and you know where those bulls live. And seriously in Utah, I believe that if you waited long enough and, and got a good tag, and I think your odds are probably better in the Bova hunt than any other, well, I don’t know. Not in Utah. You guys are easy. We got an
00:54:38:06 –> 00:54:40:13
Early ride, we got an early archery. It’s
00:54:40:13 –> 00:54:55:19
Kind a bummer. Yeah. Your season, they suck. Yeah. But I think it’s possible there because, you know, obviously all your limited, well, I’d say, and you guys know this better than I do, but I’d say the top five or six or seven units that you guys have, the elk have 400 inch bulls every year. Yeah.
00:54:56:03 –> 00:55:06:05
It’s, it’s not like it once was kinda like when you were talking the heyday of Arizona, the heyday of Nevada, like early 2000 in Nevada and there was nothing like it. And you remember that like it was yesterday
00:55:07:15 –> 00:55:13:22
And it’s good here, it’s just not as good. And, but you’re right. They’re still killing one or two on each unit a year. Yeah.
00:55:13:22 –> 00:55:24:02
And speaking of which, I I, you guys have to tell me where to go. ’cause I can draw any unit right now in, in Utah except San Juan I think. And I may be close to the San Juan, so we’ll talk later about
00:55:24:02 –> 00:55:25:23
That. Don’t want, you don’t want that one anyway. We’ll
00:55:25:23 –> 00:55:26:28
Talk later. Yeah, we can
00:55:26:28 –> 00:55:28:08
Do it. We know a good outfitter.
00:55:29:24 –> 00:55:34:23
Well we, and we and we, you, you non-residents can put in. We can’t even put in for out.
00:55:35:00 –> 00:55:45:06
I, I was looking, I dunno, I just got on, so I started social media about two months ago. I had a young kid got me started on Instagram and oh my gosh, that was the worst thing I ever did. All I did is look at Instagram.
00:55:45:14 –> 00:55:45:20
Oh,
00:55:45:20 –> 00:55:46:00
Addicting.
00:55:46:01 –> 00:55:49:00
And, you know, you thought you were addicted to hunting. It’s nothing. You addicted
00:55:49:00 –> 00:55:49:06
To
00:55:49:06 –> 00:55:49:11
Your phone.
00:55:50:03 –> 00:56:02:00
You know, I, I hope you guys realize that you make every other hunter in the west out there feeling adequate. I mean, I, I’ve hunted for 40 years out Western. I’ve had at my fair share of success. And I look at fair share. Well, shoot, I look at Adam Bron
00:56:02:02 –> 00:56:07:18
In two months, in Bron in two, two months. He hasn’t posted all of this giant bump. Oh my god.
00:56:07:28 –> 00:56:09:17
I remember, I remember when they started.
00:56:10:02 –> 00:56:11:18
Did you guys kill this year, Adam?
00:56:12:03 –> 00:56:27:13
Well, we’re talking about you we’re talking about you. I’m gonna pull that card right now. We’re talking about Randy Omer. So I remember within a month or two ago what all of a sudden, oh, Randy’s on Instagram and it was, was not daily. Multiple times a day. Giant individual
00:56:27:15 –> 00:56:28:01
Bucks after
00:56:28:01 –> 00:56:39:01
Giant after giant. And we knew, and, and and I, we can’t keep up of, and we’re still property to the point, you still haven’t used all of your material. So you’re not even caught up with you what you’ve already killed here.
00:56:39:04 –> 00:56:55:16
For example, five days ago, Randy Elmer’s, Randy Elmer’s account, Randy Ulmer Post posted three monster bucks. Three monster bucks right there with a bow. All with a bow. And, and I’m sure he still hasn’t pulled out all of his, all of his giants. We still 89 posts into it.
00:56:55:19 –> 00:56:56:23
We still haven’t seen the good started.
00:56:56:28 –> 00:57:38:28
I was, I have to tell you a funny story. A fr a friend of mine, well the same friend of mine, Steve Wintery, his son had a, an Arizona unit one tag archery. And, and his, his, his dad’s was working and, and he, and he couldn’t come down. His brother was working, couldn’t come down. So he is down here all by himself. He’s, he’s a young kid. What young? He’s like 20 years old. Very experienced elk hunter. But you know, just first time on his own, really away from not having anybody to help him. So my son could only hunt on the weekends. He started college. He wants to go to med school. And so he, he, he, he could only hunt on Saturday and Sunday. So in the middle of the week, I’d drive from one end of the state to the other, to to, to go help my buddy.
00:57:39:17 –> 00:58:05:18
And so I’m sitting there and he’s just always looking at his phone. He goes, look at this picture. Look at this picture. Look what they just got in Utah. Look what they got here. Geez. And I’m like, oh, this is so cool. He, I said, you know what, my son’s opened a Facebook account for me, whatever, six or seven years ago, but I never used it. Yeah. And I said, can you teach me how to use Facebook so I can look at all this stuff? He goes, he, he said his exact words, Facebook’s for old people. He goes, you gotta get, you
00:58:05:22 –> 00:58:06:18
Gotta get Instagram.
00:58:06:18 –> 00:58:28:12
Get on Instagram. Yeah. He says, also, you don’t have to talk to anybody on Instagram. Yeah. All you have to do is look at pictures. I said, Hey, that’s, that’s more along my intellect there looking at pictures. I can do that. Sure. So he got, he hooked me up on Instagram in about 10 minutes. And so I just started, you know, posting cut loose. I a few family pictures, but mostly just what people really wanna see is just your funny pictures we’re,
00:58:28:12 –> 00:58:31:07
We’re all like, here is, he’s found it. And well, every, every
00:58:31:16 –> 00:58:42:26
Day, every day we pull it up, of course. Like every single other hunter out there. And we’re like, all right, who’s killing what? ’cause we’re going to the office, strapped to an office desk and just wondering who’s having a good time out there. So,
00:58:42:26 –> 00:58:58:19
Well, I wonder how many productive hours in the American economy, how bad the American economy has suffered because people are looking at pictures on Instagram. I know. All I know is we know my personal, my personal workload is, has gone way down because I spent all my time looking at your guys’ pictures.
00:58:59:02 –> 00:59:09:24
All I know is Adam and I get the same amount of work done now in two hour, two, two good work hours that we used to get in 10. So we’re pretty proud of ourselves really. Not only we get the same amount of
00:59:10:11 –> 00:59:10:12
Learners.
00:59:11:21 –> 00:59:44:12
Not only do we get the same amount of workload done, we’re also scrolling Instagram eight out of those 10 hours. Let’s, as we started in on these giant mule deer, let’s transition to that. You’ve, first, I wanna know what your favorite animal is to hunt. And second off, I wanna know how you’re killing all these giant bucks, the stalking. I know you’ve sat with bucks within 40 yards, or who knows what, we’re gonna hear the stories. But for, you know, eight plus hours rainstorms, you’ve, you’ve experienced it all. And so kind of want to transition into that. But, but first off, what is your favorite animal to hunt?
00:59:45:08 –> 01:00:15:07
Oh, definitely mule deer. Now if you ask me that, you know, it’s been my favorite animal to hunt since I was a kid. ’cause it’s really what I started hunting mule deer now. Yeah. But you know, our family, just like you guys back in when I was a kid in Arizona, you know, we got off school opening day of deer season, which was always on a Friday. And so, you know, we grew up hunting mul deer. So it was, you know, there. But I hate when I started bow hunting, I hated mul deer. I hunted them more than anything else. But I hated them because they
01:00:15:07 –> 01:00:16:26
Win. Ever got See they win. All
01:00:17:00 –> 01:00:49:05
I ever got to see was their ass running away, away from. And for 20 years, you know, I, I figured out elk. Not that I figured out elk, but I’ve kind of got a little bit of a handle on elk 15 years before I got a little bit of a handle on meal there. And so for those 15 years, I would’ve, if you would’ve asked me, I said, well, geez, elk is my favorite. Well mule there was still my obsession. But I hated him because I couldn’t kill him. Yeah. Well I can kill a buck every year. I just couldn’t kill. Sure. Yeah. I, I couldn’t kill an older age class buck. Yeah,
01:00:49:11 –> 01:01:03:14
Yeah. Well, and that’s why you want, want, want one more the next year. That’s what it is about mule deer. And then, then you factor in the whole scarcity, for lack of a better word, all the states that’re harder to come by than they were in the seventies and eighties. And so it just,
01:01:03:23 –> 01:01:06:17
Which is part of the addiction though. Yeah. It’s really part of the addiction.
01:01:06:18 –> 01:01:08:17
It’s what you can’t have is what you want the most. And
01:01:08:23 –> 01:01:17:00
Well, anything that’s rare is valuable. And that’s not a reasonable to me. But it’s true. Anything that’s rare is valuable and, and big meal there. Rare,
01:01:17:11 –> 01:01:17:18
But,
01:01:18:01 –> 01:01:28:25
And especially difficult to get. And you can go buy a big elk where well, no, on, on where let’s happen. You guys must be making a lot more money. No,
01:01:28:25 –> 01:01:31:05
I just wanna know where, so we have something to look forward to
01:01:31:23 –> 01:01:35:11
Go to the Walla Pie to have a soup pie. Yeah. Go to the St. Carlos.
01:01:35:27 –> 01:01:46:18
But even those Randy, I know guys go every year and they’re shooting three seventies and maybe it’s because they’re not willing to, they’re the taco, they’re folding. You know, maybe they’re, maybe it’s just because they’re not willing to eat a tag. I don’t, I don’t know.
01:01:47:23 –> 01:01:54:08
Yeah. I don’t know either. But you know, like I say, well, you know, you say three 70, you guys are very jaded at three 70, this a giant
01:01:54:08 –> 01:01:54:17
Know you
01:01:54:23 –> 01:01:59:12
Colorado. You start talking about a three 70 bull and you’re talking about the state record for that year.
01:01:59:12 –> 01:02:28:10
Oh, I know. Yeah. We know. Yeah, I know. But just that 400 inch goal. But let’s go back to Mueller. So you, you hate ’em, but you love them. And it’s part of, part of the game. It’s just the, the more you get your butt kicked by, by mule deer, the more you wanna hunt ’em and, and put your hands on a giant. And so when did you, well, just let’s go back in time a little bit. When did you get serious about Mule Air? When did you harvest your first giant? What
01:02:28:10 –> 01:02:50:02
Do you remember? Well, I was really serious the whole time. They, they didn’t know what I was serious ’cause I didn’t hurt any of ’em. But no, I, I think I shot my first, you know, this is almost a shame because, you know, I grew up in Arizona, but I killed my first really good buck in Utah on the, on the book lists.
01:02:50:02 –> 01:02:51:01
Book Cliffs, wasn’t it? Yeah.
01:02:51:04 –> 01:03:38:27
Yeah. And it was only ’cause he was really dumb. But that was in the nineties. And then, you know, once you shoot a nice one, you get kind of get a little bit more obsessed ’cause you think, oh, I can actually do this. Yeah. And you actually give yourself false hope. But really it kind of cascaded from there. I I started focusing more on them and, and, and I kind of learned a bunch of things that I, well, you know, you make, you guys have been through this, well you, your learning curve is a lot faster than mine. But you, you, you kind of do this, you make the same mistakes over and over and over again. Oh yeah. Finally figure out, you know, you’re just like, really? Am I this stupid? I have to make that mistake again.
01:03:38:28 –> 01:03:40:01
Can’t do that again, again and
01:03:40:01 –> 01:04:10:07
Again before I finally figure out, you gotta stop doing this. So really it was by reducing, not doing, not making all the mistakes that I used to make. And gradually you’re like, okay, you can’t make all those mistakes. You can only kill a buck if you do this. You can only kill a buck if you don’t do that. And, and so it was a really gradual long learning curve. But then once you learn what you can’t do and what you can get away with, all of a sudden it becomes, it doesn’t become easy. Never. It, but it becomes easier.
01:04:10:22 –> 01:04:51:13
Yeah. So you’re, and you’re, you’re primarily, you talked about your optics earlier. The spot in stock that is your, that’s your bread and butter way to hunt me deer. I mean that’s, I mean, that’s how we hunt mul. That’s how I like to hunt me deer. I like to have, not that you’re in control, but I’m not a, I’m not a tree stand hunter. I, I did it when I was a kid a few times probably because my dad knew, just told me stay here. And he knew he could find me again, you know, if I didn’t get outta the tree or the blind. But yeah, spot in stock, having a unit where you can use your optics, hopefully watch a buck until he hits the dirt and then it’s game on. That’s how you, I mean, that’s your, it seems like that’s how you’re hunting mule deer, right, Randy?
01:04:52:12 –> 01:05:57:03
It is. I shot one mule deer out of a blind. I’ve never sat a tree stand. You know, for me, hunting’s always been my fun. You know, it’s sometimes it seems like it’s not fun, but it’s always been my fun. So, and one of the things, to be honest with you, if, if you were to take away my hunting or my scouting right now, I would probably for just for big deer. Yeah. I’d probably let you take away the hunting. ’cause I get to spend whatever, 40, 50 days scouting every year. And there’s no one in the mountains got it all to yourself. It’s beautiful. There’s no pressure. And then hunting season comes along. It’s all public land. And, and it’s like, oh my god. Here, you know, here we go. Yeah. We’re off to the races. Yep. And then comes, I gotta keep up. Comes a bit of a competition. Yeah. But no, that, that’s how I love to hunt because I just love glass milk. I love the country they live in. I love the physical aspect of it. And I mean, almost every deer I kill, well, in, in Colorado almost every deer I kill, you know, I’ve, I’ve backpacked in and, and you know, I’m by myself or, you know, I got my, my nephew Zach on the other ridge, and he’s the one you really guys should be interviewing. He has killed
01:05:57:11 –> 01:05:58:20
Some giants. He has
01:05:58:28 –> 01:06:40:27
In the last six years, he’s killed six bucks. If you average their scores, there’d be well over 200. And, and he is a stone cold killer. But anyway, but we always hunt together. I, you know, I, I have the luxury now and, and that was one of my goals in life, is to be able to get work and family positions so that, you know, I can spend so much time scouting. I finally positioned myself where I get a lot of time scouting. So I go up every year in Colorado and, and you know, try to, you know, and I, I really spread myself out. I always like to, to, I like new country. I like exploring. And so I, I spread out and look at all these different units and try to find a, if I, we try to draw tags, but, you know, you can always turn ’em back in Colorado.
01:06:41:00 –> 01:07:33:21
And then, and then if I find a big buck, try to get a landowner tag in that unit. But I always try to find two big bucks and I have for the last whatever. Yeah. Six. Well, since Zach started hunting, was able to, to get off and start hunting with me six years ago, you know, we found, I found we’ve killed. Geez. You know, I found two big bucks every year and we’ve pretty much killed them. Geez. And you know, Zach’s, Zach’s kind of benefited from that. But I told somebody this year, I told several people, I said, you know what, you know, it’s, it’s time to, to hand over the torch. I mean, he’s kind of, I think he’s, I hope he’s not listening to this. ’cause I’ll deny every word of it. I’ll say you guys coerced me into it. But I, I think he’s, he’s probably the best shot in Arizona right now, competitively. And so he can outshoot me now ’cause I’m getting a little wobbly. He can outshoot me. He can out hike me. He can out glasss me. He can. Yeah, he can.
01:07:34:03 –> 01:07:36:08
He’s the next predator. He can out stalk me. Yeah. He’s the predator.
01:07:36:10 –> 01:07:47:29
Well the only thing he that I have over over him is I have patience. He has none. Well, I shouldn’t say that. He, he’s, he’s developing patients. Yeah. And he’ll probably get better at that, but I’ve got much better patience than he
01:07:47:29 –> 01:08:15:18
Does. But, well, in speaking about patients, tell us about, just give us a couple of these stories. I know and, and I’ve just heard through the grapevine, so I want you to verify. But that you’ve literally sat hours upon hours upon hours on debt, on beded bucks in Nevada and, and different things. And maybe a little bit on how, how is it easier to kill these giant bucks in Colorado? I mean, Nevada kicks my butt and, and, but I love it but I, it, it’s hard on me. And so I wanna know the difference. ’cause I haven’t,
01:08:16:04 –> 01:08:19:10
You know, I would like to see your trophy room if Nevada hadn’t killed your
01:08:19:15 –> 01:08:19:24
Butt.
01:08:20:01 –> 01:08:21:06
Kicked your butt. Me too.
01:08:21:06 –> 01:08:23:05
Because me too. I have a good one. Seen
01:08:23:05 –> 01:08:27:08
It. Deer you’ve killed in Nevada. And if that’s kicking your butt, then you’re completely spoiled.
01:08:27:15 –> 01:08:35:17
Well, I just wanna know, I I a I wanna know, know, am I mi what am I missing in Colorado? And, and not that I’m, but what are we missing? I
01:08:35:17 –> 01:08:36:14
Know Colorado. Colorado,
01:08:36:17 –> 01:08:38:00
I’m always hunting the rut. Adam
01:08:38:00 –> 01:09:43:07
And I are physically, I know if you, if if, if, if I was to give, like if, let’s say if one of my good friends said I, you know, I wanted to really kill a, a good deer. Yeah. I’d and he, he could go to Nevada where you and I hunt where you used to hunt and where I try to hunt and he said, you know, should I go to Colorado? Should I go to Nevada? I’d send him Nevada every time. Yeah. And here’s the reason, Colorado is incredibly physically demanding and, and none of us physically demanding, it’s mentally demanding. Because, you know, we don’t realize those of us that do this all the time, we don’t realize the, let’s call it the fear factor. It’s not really fear, but it’s the, it’s the getting up in the high country and then, and then just the overwhelming feeling that people get and they just wanna go home. Yeah. Especially if it’s physically demanding or if it’s wet and cold or if they get hungry or whatever. Yeah. In Nevada, you know, for the most part, well you pretty much going back in the middle of the day. It’s a long day in your trailer. You day you got the air conditioning on a hundred degrees and
01:09:43:21 –> 01:09:48:12
Air conditioning’s freezing up. Now it’s blowing warm air. It’s just a, it’s a miserable cycle. Oh
01:09:49:15 –> 01:09:56:14
Yeah. Damnit you know, thatit the ice, the ice melted in the cooler. Yes. My sodas are, my sodas are warm
01:09:56:19 –> 01:09:57:05
Every time.
01:09:58:07 –> 01:10:01:02
Course you guys don’t have beer in, in Utah know, right. Nos
01:10:01:13 –> 01:10:02:02
We don’t. No.
01:10:03:17 –> 01:10:04:25
Anyway, you forgot
01:10:04:25 –> 01:10:05:11
The snakes,
01:10:06:02 –> 01:10:34:02
Nevada, it’s just, just a hunt. And, and you know, you can go over there and a lot of units in Nevada, you know, you, you’re gonna find a 180 buck. You’re just gonna find one. And so you’re gonna, now Colorado, you take the same guy and, and you go up there and you say, okay, we’re backpacking in, you know, we’re gonna backpack until we get one. And you know, it’s gonna rain on you. You’re 12,000 feet. You know, it’s, there’ll be a skip snow every once in a while. Yeah. And you know, here sleep in this, sleep in this one man tent, which
01:10:34:02 –> 01:10:34:29
I don’t like tents.
01:10:35:19 –> 01:10:45:28
Yeah. And so, and, and so, but the but just, he’s gonna get altitude sickness, you know? Well I, half the guys end up getting a little aptitude.
01:10:46:07 –> 01:10:50:02
They getting nauseous broin. He is trying to keep us from going to Colorado during the archery season.
01:10:50:08 –> 01:11:01:23
No, you guys would do great. I’m talking about, you know, I’m talking about your, you know, your, your your average human beings. You know, you guys are kind of like superheroes and you got superpowers
01:11:02:01 –> 01:11:02:23
Getting deep. Yeah.
01:11:03:15 –> 01:11:20:19
And so, no. But anyway, no, Colorado is just tough. Now, now there are a lot of places. Like a couple years ago I found a buck down in the sage and you know, I drove down the highway. Yeah. I got outta my truck. You hunt em where they’re at half a mile that day.
01:11:21:27 –> 01:11:25:29
Yeah. You hunt ’em where they’re at. If he’s gonna let you hunt ’em half a mile off a road. I
01:11:25:29 –> 01:12:14:16
Don’t, I don’t care. You know, I found, I did find that deer, a friend of mine was driving down the highway. He’d been at the bar and two o’clock in the morning he was driving down. Come on the highway. Come on. I almost hit this deer. And he knew I had a tag. He called me up and said, man, there’s a deer on the side of the road. Anyway. Did you kill that deer find? I did. We we could only find that deer every few days. ’cause he was in kind of some thick stuff and he was pretty smart. ’cause he, he lived close to civilization. But no, you talk about hunting where you find him. I mean, I have no problem. I have no problem. Wherever, wherever sleeping, sleeping in a, in a camper. I mean, I’ve been there, done that. I don’t need to freeze my butt off. I, I don’t need to be miserable and hungry. I’m just kind of greedy for big bucks. I’ll just hunt ’em wherever I find. Let’s
01:12:14:16 –> 01:12:20:02
Talk about your tennis shoes. Every time I think about Randy Omer, I think about tennis shoes and stocking giant bucks.
01:12:20:14 –> 01:12:24:05
What is he thinking? That’s what, well, you’re the first one, what I mean, and
01:12:24:12 –> 01:12:28:11
Then after about 10 giants, I’m like, I’m gonna get myself a pair of tennis shoes.
01:12:29:14 –> 01:12:32:05
Well, so how did you come across that idea?
01:12:32:24 –> 01:12:41:01
I haven’t had a pair of tennis shoes on come, I killed a deer in 25 years. Really? I I’m always in my socks. Yeah. Oh,
01:12:41:01 –> 01:12:44:04
Oh, okay. All
01:12:44:14 –> 01:12:46:00
Maybe just all the kill pictures.
01:12:46:01 –> 01:13:55:26
Be honest. Yeah. I was, I’ve always been a well, until my, until my frequent knee surgeries, I was always a, a long distance runner. And actually till my late forties, I was, you know, we did those at 24 hour adventure races competitively. And so I’ve always been kind of a mountain runner. Yeah. And so when you, if you stick a boot on my foot, I feel so clunky. Yeah. Yeah. The only time I’ll ever wear boots is if, if I, if, if I think there’s gonna be snow and snow that actually stays because, you know, if you, I always, my tennis shoes are always oversized. So I can get a couple pairs of wool socks in there and really a couple pairs of wool socks and snow for a half a day is no big deal. Yeah. So I don’t, unless I think I’m gonna get sustained snow, snow that’s gonna stick on the ground. I always wear tennis shoes. It’s just, I’m so much more nimble. I can go so much faster. And as you guys well know, especially if you’re hunting out, sometimes you gotta reallys dab. You gotta move. Yeah. To, to get it done. And, and I was watching a video of you guys, I don’t know when, I think it was Chris that was hunting a, an elk. I think it was in Nevada with a rifle. It was at John.
01:13:56:02 –> 01:13:56:16
It might have been
01:13:56:17 –> 01:13:58:10
John through the woods.
01:13:58:11 –> 01:14:01:10
That was John Southwest desert. Yeah. We ran
01:14:01:17 –> 01:14:07:13
And you guys are running through the woods and you were smoking it through the woods. And I thought they could run a lot faster if they had tennis on.
01:14:09:07 –> 01:14:09:28
That’s so true.
01:14:10:26 –> 01:14:15:00
So how many pair do you take on a typical hunt? You can’t just take one. Oh
01:14:15:00 –> 01:14:19:18
My gosh. Now you’re getting into my, my, you know, you, you’re secret. Dating my privacy. Now this is
01:14:19:18 –> 01:14:22:16
The secret sauce, Andy, Randy, we have not mentioned. I
01:14:22:16 –> 01:14:23:17
Have 15 pairs and here’s the reason.
01:14:23:25 –> 01:14:24:17
How many what?
01:14:25:00 –> 01:14:32:20
15. I can take 15 on a, I have a, an action packer Ben, one of the big ones. And it’s full of tennis shoes. Here’s the reason.
01:14:33:20 –> 01:14:35:14
And what what’s that? It’s full of tennis shoes.
01:14:35:28 –> 01:14:40:23
It is full of tennis shoes. They are all black Xa
01:14:41:11 –> 01:14:46:12
The same model, everything size. You just find a right in the left. Every morning you’re gone.
01:14:46:28 –> 01:15:31:08
No, no. ’cause here’s the deal, nothing stinks more than your feet. And, and these guys, and, and you guys may be guilty of this, but you know, hunting elk, well honey muled there too, but specifically elk, their nose is incredible. And you know, I see guys, you know, they put a fresh clothes, set of clothes on every day or whatever, and then they put the same old boots on and they put the same old leather belt that they’ve been sweating on for six years on. And I think, oh my gosh, are you serious? You can sniff their belt and it, you know, it smells like rant sweat. Well, anyway, here’s the, the deal. I, I don’t wear leather belt. I don’t wear leather or anything, but I, I have a fresh set of tennis shoes for every day of an Arizona outcome, which is 14 days brand
01:15:31:09 –> 01:15:31:16
New.
01:15:31:22 –> 01:15:46:06
And, and so what I do is, every day I’ve got fresh tennis shoes. I’ve got a big bin of socks, I have fresh socks, I have a fresh set. I have a 20 sets of camouflage clothes. And, and so I don’t have to go into town to do laundry in the middle of the hunt.
01:15:46:12 –> 01:15:53:22
He’s like one of them wives that, you know, when they have a closet for shoes? A shoe closet. Yeah. Randy’s got that for his hunting tennis shoes.
01:15:53:26 –> 01:16:00:29
He might be one of the only guys that, that his shoes outnumber his wife’s shoes. Yeah. In the closet. Yeah.
01:16:02:04 –> 01:16:03:26
Yeah. It’s a good point. Bron.
01:16:04:06 –> 01:16:04:22
Yeah, you’re,
01:16:04:22 –> 01:16:06:20
You’re right. Women are known for shoes and stuff.
01:16:07:02 –> 01:16:07:13
I keep the,
01:16:07:24 –> 01:16:15:01
He’s got several addictions. I I’m listing ’em out. We, we got hunting, we got ops, now we’re into shoe addiction, sock
01:16:15:01 –> 01:16:18:19
Addictions. I keep my comps in the back part of my closet. You don’t want my friends to see.
01:16:19:17 –> 01:16:28:02
Geez. And so are they new shoes or let’s say you get a pair of shoes. Are you washing ’em, are you putting some kind of, you know, neutralizer baking soda on ’em? What, what are you doing?
01:16:28:05 –> 01:17:02:20
Well, no, no. What I do is I, you know, I wash ’em with Tide free at the beginning of the season. And then like after the end of one hunt, I’ll take ’em all and put ’em in the, you don’t want to put ’em in the dryer, but I, I just, I wash ’em in the washing machine and I take ’em out and put ’em on on the patio or the sun shines and let ’em dry that way. And then, and then every morning when I, when I I I get up, I actually do put probably three or four tablespoons of, of baking soda in each of my shoes before I put ’em on. Because your feet just generate a lot of smell as you guys will,
01:17:02:20 –> 01:17:05:28
Because they, you’re talking three or four tablespoons, that’s a lot. Right?
01:17:06:05 –> 01:17:13:08
Oh it is. Okay. It is. I’m just making sure I heard that. I mean, and it actually seeps through. I mean, you can see it kind of crusting on the outside the
01:17:13:08 –> 01:17:15:23
Shoe. There’s just kind of come permeating the shoe just comes
01:17:15:25 –> 01:17:19:05
Yeah. Permeating the shoe. You know, especially if there’s dew on the ground, you’ll see it
01:17:19:15 –> 01:17:29:29
Out. So if you need to, if you’re early one morning and you just put a fresh pair of tennis shoes on and you wanna check the wind, you just kick your foot up in the air and a little bit of that powder floats out and you
01:17:29:29 –> 01:17:30:11
Check it.
01:17:30:23 –> 01:17:32:01
That’s a good point, bro. Hey,
01:17:32:01 –> 01:17:32:23
It’s your dual
01:17:32:23 –> 01:17:34:22
Purposes. It’s my wind checker. Yeah. Yeah.
01:17:34:22 –> 01:17:36:08
There you go. There you go.
01:17:36:11 –> 01:17:37:23
That’s taking it to the next level.
01:17:37:25 –> 01:17:46:23
Okay. So you’ve spotted a buck. You bet him. Do you s stock him before you before they be, I mean, just, I know what I like to do, but let’s hear what, let’s hear what you like to do.
01:17:47:24 –> 01:18:45:06
Glass of buck up, you know, it’s all, it’s, and, and I know you hate this answer, but it’s situational. Yeah. Backing up a little bit. One thing that I do that that, that, that I get arguments with people over and over again, not arguments, but they disagree with how I do it. And I’m kind of a one trick pony. I I really, it’s taken me so long to kind of figure out how to do it. Yeah. That I don’t wanna vary my routine very much ’cause I know what works. But the one thing that I do is, you know, I used to say okay, years ago, I said, okay, it’s gonna take me 20 stocks to kill a mature bull buck. Then, you know, it’s gone down and down. And, and one, the one thing where I’m going with this is the one thing that I do now that is probably one of the most important things is I do, is I don’t stock a buck unless I’m almost certain I can kill it.
01:18:45:28 –> 01:19:26:24
Now. Now when I say I’m almost certain, so many variables come in, you know, you spook a dough or whatever the wind changes. I mean, but, but given, given that circumstances don’t change, I don’t spook a deer, another deer a hundred doesn’t come over the hill. I don’t stalk a buck unless I’m fairly certain I can kill it. Yeah. And again, that’s for, that’s because I’m lazy. I I I don’t wanna wait two or three days for that deer to come out again. Yeah. And I’ve, I’ve got so many days invested in that particular deer. Yeah. And that’s one of the hardest things that has been for me to teach Zach, is no, I just say, no, we’re
01:19:26:28 –> 01:19:27:11
Watching him this
01:19:27:11 –> 01:20:06:28
Morning. You’re not going after that deer right now. You’re not doing this, you’re not doing that. And that’s why I say patience is so important. But so, so really I wait till that deer’s in a position and, and you know, that really big non-typical I killed in Nevada, you know, whatever, 10 years ago that deer would not get in a when and he was, well he was really big. And so, and he was, you know, on the edge of a burn. And I knew if I spooked to me, I’d probably go in the thick stuff and I’d never see him again. So I, I laid on that deer for four days. When I say laid on it, I was just out there in striking range, you know, within 300 yards or however far I thought I could get away with him not smelling the wind changed.
01:20:07:15 –> 01:21:11:22
And I just waited and waited and waited for him to get in a good position where I thought I had a really good chance in killing. And finally he did. He yeah. Finally went into a place where I could kill him. And I, I zipped in there. It only took me about 20 minutes to get in there and I whacked him. That’s my point. You know, if you’re hunting one deer and if you got ’em deer, so obviously if, if a bunch of other people are hunting them, you might have to take more chances. But this particular deer and and most of the deer that I’m hunting are, are far enough back end that I don’t have a lot of competition. So, you know, I I I I usually am extremely patient. Wait for the deer to get worried. Whether it’s, you asked me originally whether I wait for ’em to bed or not. It depends, it depends on whether they’re, if they’re bed at o in a place where I can slip up on them and, and I think I can sneak in on ’em and shoot ’em in their bed. I have no problems with that. Yeah. I, I have no problem with that. However, if, if, if, you know, if they’re not in a good position, you wait for ’em to get up to feed and then you wait till they feed in a good, into a good position where you
01:21:11:22 –> 01:21:18:11
Can get up, did you get within 70 yards or something and wait for ’em to get up and feed and maybe they move toward you or come toward your, or whatever.
01:21:19:16 –> 01:21:24:18
And no, I’ll never get that close to a deer and wait with
01:21:24:18 –> 01:21:26:01
That without knowing you’re gonna kill
01:21:26:01 –> 01:21:26:16
It. Yeah.
01:21:26:17 –> 01:21:29:08
Without, no, without knowing that, without the wind’s good.
01:21:29:18 –> 01:21:31:00
He’s, yeah. I can kill him right where
01:21:31:00 –> 01:21:41:13
He’s at. I, that’s what I, I mean Yeah, that’s what I mean. I’ve killed, you know, the deer, some of the deer I’ve killed. I mean, if you’ve got a solid wind, that’s not gonna change. I, I, I personally get that close.
01:21:42:16 –> 01:22:30:09
I don’t move. Yeah. Well I, I’ve just had too many bad experiences where Yeah, the wind’s perfect, perfect, perfect. And all of a sudden, you know, in the mountains especially, well yeah. In Colorado you can’t do it because you’re straight up and down and you know how those mountain winds are now in Nevada, you know, you’re hunting more in the desert in Nevada where the winds are more consistent because you don’t have those really big mountains Yep. Strong winds where the winds will come around and wind and, you know, it’s kind of like a, I compare it to a, you know, to a stream. You see a big rock and a stream and the, the, for a long ways past that rock, the, the water’s kind of swirling around now, you know, you get a flat with, with no structure in the bottom of a, a stream and it’s just gonna flow smoothly. And where you’re, where I’m seeing you hunting in Nevada for the most part is kind of more deserty. Yeah, sure. And it’s not as likely. Yeah, totally. The
01:22:30:09 –> 01:22:30:25
Winds different.
01:22:30:25 –> 01:22:33:23
The wind more than likely in the middle of the day be steady. And it’s not that case in
01:22:34:02 –> 01:23:03:05
Colorado. Well, sometimes, yeah. Sometimes it’s, you know, on perfect high pressure systems it’s a lot harder ’cause you swirl a lot more. But if it’s, yeah. You got, sometimes you’re on the end of a front or a, or right at the beginning of a, some kind of front coming through and you just get that real 20 mile an hour stiff one. Yeah. And then they’re dead. Like you’ve, you’ve really got a great opportunity there. Of course. Stuff happens and you bump a boat a a dough, excuse me or something. But anyway, those steady winds like that can, can sure. Help a guy.
01:23:03:25 –> 01:23:27:29
Oh geez. Yeah. Then you, then you’ve got, then you’ve got time. And, and that’s what usually screws something up for me is if I’m too close to a buck for too long a period of time. Yeah. Their senses are just too keen all the way around to Yeah. You know, something’s gonna go wrong. One of their buddies gonna get up and walk over to you or a dough’s gonna move in, you know, or, or an elk’s gonna walk over there or a horse, you know.
01:23:28:13 –> 01:23:36:06
Yeah. Hundred percent. Is there any other tactics you use when you’re, when you’re archery, deer hunting, killing, killing these giants?
01:23:37:22 –> 01:24:20:12
You know, a couple of simple things, but I think they’re important is, is especially, you know, when you’re hunting in the steep country, is using a a, a rangefinder that’s tilt compensated because, you know, up until they kind of could tell they came out with those, it was really difficult and guys would always miss it. You’d over deer all the time. Yeah. So I always carry a tilt compensated range finder, and I will never shoot at a deer without ranging it. The last deer I shot without ranging, it probably shouldn’t say this on the podcast, but I, I had bought one of those, I think it was Roski that only went down to 32 yards, 34 yards
01:24:20:12 –> 01:24:22:01
Or so. That’s the SRO EL tens. Yeah.
01:24:22:15 –> 01:24:30:05
Yeah, exactly. I had one of those. And, and I thought, geez, if I can’t range, if I can’t tell, you know what a deer is it, you know, 31
01:24:30:05 –> 01:24:30:19
Yards. Yeah,
01:24:30:26 –> 01:25:43:12
I agree. Yeah, exactly. Then there’s something wrong with me. So anyway, I had shot this box and I thought I’d made a pretty good shot on it. And I had, it was, it was a good shot, but I was, I could still see him. He went and beded down. I thought, you know what, I, I just need to go shoot him again. So, and it was in a great position. He was beded down and I could come over this little room rocket. Oh geez. It was, I figured 20 or 30 yards, something like that. So I, oh, I, I snuck over there and I tried to range fine with my swarovski’s and it wouldn’t give me any distance. So I thought, well, geez, he’s under 30, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s under 30 yards. I’ll just use my 20 yard pin. Yeah. And I, I still to this day, don’t know what happened, but I put my 20 yard pin on him and I, so that’s, this is the only time in whatever, 15, 20 years I had didn’t use range find armor and deer. And I thought, well, geez, he’s gotta be 20 yards. And you know how it is when you’re looking straight downhill, it’s really hard to judge a yardie. So yeah. Put it right in the middle of his chest and shot and hit the ground right in front of him. I thought, are you serious? For some reason, neither the range. I probably, I was trying to, you know how you peek your head up over the, the, the hill and, and, and it was
01:25:43:12 –> 01:25:44:20
Hitting five yards range
01:25:44:20 –> 01:26:25:23
Of the rock or something. Yeah. Your, yeah, your range finder’s actually hitting a rock five yards away. So it’s not registering well the deer was probably 35 yards away. And anyway, so my point is with that, well he just jumped up and he was sick, so he jumped up, stood there, I gotta shoot him. But my point is, don’t ever shoot his ear. And I’m talking about ever with without range finding, without range finding him first. So that, that’s one of my big tips. ’cause people get excited and they think, oh geez, I gotta shoot him. I right now, I don’t have time to range. Fine. You’re much better off taking the time. ’cause even if he does, you know, walk away, you’ll get another shot at him again. And, and you might as well use the technology that we have to your Yeah. To your benefit.
01:26:26:17 –> 01:26:31:04
How do you, how do you control your nerves on giant animals? Like
01:26:32:07 –> 01:26:33:22
Who told you I control my nerves.
01:26:33:22 –> 01:26:45:28
Well, I don’t know. You’re killing, you’re killing them, you’re killing, maybe your nerves aren’t in your fingers. Maybe you burn those nerves that run to your fingers and your arms. So you’re not shaking too bad, but tell me about that. Like how, how, how do you make it happen?
01:26:45:29 –> 01:27:28:27
You know, if, if I were going to, if someone were to come to me and say, you know, I’d get really buck fever really bad and, and how can I cure it? Well, you, you can never cure. Well, I suppose some guys can’t. I can’t, I, I still get a little nervous, but really it’s not, if you start telling yourself I’m not gonna get nervous, you know, you can’t control your emotions. However, what you can do is learn to shoot well in spite of your emotions. And the way I did that is, is by shooting tournaments, you know, I shot tournaments for however, 20, 30 years. And you know, when you’re shooting in world level, world level competition, you are just as scared as you are when there’s a buck. When you’re shooting that last day or that shootout or whatever, and you, you’re still gonna be very nervous.
01:27:29:02 –> 01:28:37:03
But what I’ve found is, is you can actually teach yourself to, to be extremely nervous and still shoot well, and, and you know, I, I know that sounds counterintuitive, but, but you really can. But it takes a lot of practice and, and what I would suggest to people is, you know, go out and, and shoot competition. You know, you don’t have to be good to shoot competition. You can shoot competition, not be very good at all. Yeah. But you’ve gotta make the competition count. You know, whether it’s betting your buddy 10 bucks on a shot or whatever, you know, you have to, there has to be something at stake. And it might not be as, as intense as it is when you’re shooting at a big buck, but it still teaches you how to perform even when there’s a lot of pressure. And, and that’s the bottom line is, is performing even when there is pressure. And once you’ve taught yourself that it becomes a little more instinctual. So everything is is happening. Whereas a lot of guys, they just melt down ’cause they haven’t practiced a anything that, that creates that same sort of anxiety.
01:28:37:13 –> 01:28:41:12
Yeah. Yeah. It’s hard to duplicate that anxiety. Yeah. When it’s
01:28:41:12 –> 01:29:24:08
Two hundreds, well, you can never duplicate that particular anxiety, but you can get close certain anxiety, you could have the same sort of, and you can burn. Okay. And then, then it becomes really like with a target archer shot, you know, you got the whatever, five, 10 steps of, of shooting a good arrow. And when you go through those steps in your mind as you’re, as you’re shooting, really, you’re gonna be shaken a little bit more. But as long as you, you can actually shake quite a bit. I know because I do it all the time. You can shake quite a bit and make a really good shot. Yeah. If you maintain good form. And the problem people have is they don’t maintain good form when they are nervous. And if you can maintain good form when you’re nervous, you can still make a good shot.
01:29:24:18 –> 01:29:30:29
What, since you brought up the steps, I mean, can you just blurt ’em out real quick? Like what are the steps to shooting a good arrow?
01:29:31:14 –> 01:30:21:22
Well, you know, everyone has a, a different series of steps. But, you know, for me, I’ve shot competition for so long, I kind of skipped the first few steps, which is put your hand in the bow the proper way. Okay. You know, you know, draw the bow back a certain way and then of course you anchor. And those steps have become, and for guys that have shot a lot, those steps are kind of, the steps that are extremely important to me are, are you shooting the right yardage? Do you know the yardage? Are you using the right pen? Yeah. And, and I know this sounds simple, but I have used the wrong pen. I have not picked a spot I’ve shot at the whole animal. So pick a spot, use the right pen, make sure that you know the yard, it’s okay if it’s, let’s say it’s 43 yards.
01:30:22:08 –> 01:31:21:02
Okay. Are you using your 40 yard pen? Yes. Is it gapped one third of the way between your 40 and your 50? Yes. Okay. Those are huge steps. Yeah. Huge steps. And lastly, I tell myself patience. Patience. Because what happens for me, and I’m imagining it probably happens for most people is you get a 200 inch buck in front of you and there is some sort of anxiety deep within your psyche that wants you to shoot because you’ve waited your whole life for this moment and that buck’s gonna run away. You just know he is gonna run away. It, something’s gonna happen in the next three seconds if you don’t get that arrow off. So they yank the trigger. So it’s, it, it’s, it’s, it’s those steps plus patience, patience, patience, squeeze that trigger patience, follow through and, and you’re done. Very good. But you know, those, it sounds very simple, but it’s not those when, when your brain’s on fire.
01:31:21:05 –> 01:31:37:22
Yeah. When you’re sitting here in, in December, they’re good to talk through and then you get do it because in August when he is staring at you Yeah. And he is about ready to swirl, you’re right. You have to follow him still because your, your body takes over from your brain a lot of times.
01:31:37:29 –> 01:31:59:20
Well, and I’ve found that well let’s you spend, you spend three months scouting and, and hunting and and whatnot. That, and it all leads up to one moment. You know, it’s very important that you’ve got those steps down, like what you’re saying. Just that’s, I mean, you’ve got months and a lot of gas money and tag money and anything else that goes into the hunt hinging on on
01:32:00:06 –> 01:32:01:17
Execution. Execution.
01:32:02:09 –> 01:32:58:24
Well, exactly. And, and you know, you asked me what’s important and, and one thing I didn’t mention or I, I mentioned just briefly is patients. One of the, and this is gonna sound really silly, but one of the things that, that I do, and I think one of the things that’s helped me a great deal is when I’m hunting, I actually have this little saying that I use over and over and over again that, you know, I tell myself and, and it’s silly, but it’s patient seldom goes unrewarded. And you know, with mule deer especially, not so much with without, but with mule deer especially, I can look back at, geez, almost every big buck I’ve ever killed and think how patience has, has allowed me to kill that buck. And then I can look at all the ones that got away and I can see how a lack of patience cost you that cost me to screw that up.
01:32:59:15 –> 01:33:28:17
So, you know, just, you know what, you do not have to kill that buck right now. You do not have to kill that buck in the next hour. You don’t even have to kill it today. You don’t even have to kill it tomorrow. Yeah. But something inside of me just screams that I gotta get this thing done. You gotta get it done. He’s right there. Good grief. He’s huge. He’s been what you’ve been waiting for for the last five years. Yeah. I want him now. And you just have to make yourself be patient. Don’t do anything stupid.
01:33:30:01 –> 01:34:04:06
How have you found Randy, some of your bow hunting styles or methods, how do they change from the different states you, you’re hunting from the strip to Nevada? Maybe they’re somewhat similar in those states, but from there to say Colorado high country, I mean, you know, it’s easy to say kill ’em where you find ’em, you know, all those types of things. But there is quite a few differences. And how do you, how does your patients change? Or does it depending on, you know, the terrain and where you’re at and all that?
01:34:04:29 –> 01:34:46:14
Well, we’ll take, we’ll take, well let’s just take Nevada and, and Colorado. Okay. In Nevada, what typically happens is your buck, you’re finding your buck early in the morning. You know, you’re hunting in the, in the summer it’s hot there. And those bucks might be out for five minutes after it gets light. They may be out for two hours after it’s light. But one thing, and you’re oftentimes finding them a mile or two away. So, you know, I’m talking about patients now in Nevada, in those situations, you find one of those bucks out in the burn, you know, and he’s, he’s a hundred yards out into the burn and you know, he is gonna go back into the thick junipers and that’s it for the end of the day until the end of the day. Well, patience goes out the window right there. Yeah. You’re run into the tree line.
01:34:46:14 –> 01:35:28:28
I’m running, running, I’m literally running as fast as I can Yeah. To get in position. And then, and then once I get in position, you know, in the edge of the trees and then all of a sudden you click from, you click from, you know, a hundred miles an hour to a crawl and then, and then all of a sudden patience comes into effect. You know, you kinda have to know when to run and, and and, and when to crawl. And, and that’s hard because once you, what’s really hard for me psychologically anyway mentally is, is okay, I’ve ran all the way down here. Let’s say it’s a mile and a half, I’ve got down here. Dad got me, he’s still out there. He’s still out there. Yeah. And then just to go boom to like, okay, I gotta move like the hands of a clock right now.
01:35:29:05 –> 01:36:09:26
’cause I’m actually where he can, might see me through these trees. It’s really hard to make that transition. Then you talk about Colorado. Now Colorado, a lot of times where I’m hunting the deer might just go into a little cos of trees or they might go up into some rock or occasionally they’ll be right out in the open. And so now it’s a different game. You’ve got, you know, you’ve got all day to kind of, to get over there, get in position. And you know, one thing that a lot of people don’t realize, and you guys know of course, but a lot of people don’t realize, you know, they get up in the morning and they go out and hunt in the morning. ’cause that’s when the deer are active of course. And then they get up and well, they go home and take a nap.
01:36:09:26 –> 01:36:53:19
They don’t do anything at noon. And, and then they go out again in the evening and, and hunt in the evening. Well, I don’t know if it’s because hunter’s only hunt in the morning or the evening, but you know, if you spend a whole lot of time with older age class deer, you know, you hunt say one deer and you’re watching him all day, or at least you’re watching the country he’s in all day. It is remarkable how much time these older age class bucks spent in the middle of the day up and feeding. Feeding. Yeah. Nobody’s out there. They do. They’re shocked. Nobody’s out there. And the deer standing right out in the middle of the open. And you didn’t even see him that morning. ’cause he wasn’t in the open. And it’s like, seriously, why didn’t I know this 30 years ago? No, it’s true.
01:36:53:19 –> 01:37:37:12
It’s for the last 30 years I’ve been, I’ve been, you know, I’ve been sleeping in the shade when these big bucks are out feeding. So anyway, my point is, when I’m in Colorado, I’ll wait. I’d say half the, I’d say a good half the deer, or more than half the deer I’ve killed in Colorado I’ve killed in the middle of the day. Yeah. I just get on them, sit there. I don’t get on ’em, on ’em, but I get within striking distance, the winds are so variable up there. I don’t ever get to where, it depends on how long it’s been since I’ve showered. Like I’ve been backpacked up in there for four to five days and, and I, I smell like an old pair of gym socks. I, I, I won’t get within 500 yards of them. But, but you know, if, if, if that’s my first day out and I’ve showered that morning, I, I’ll get within 300 yards of them.
01:37:38:24 –> 01:38:18:22
But then I’ll, I’ll be close enough to striking when they get up, hell get up, you know, usually not before 10, but 11, 12, 1, somewhere in there, they’re gonna get up and they’ll feed for a good half an hour at least. And boy, they’re so vulnerable because they, they’re so relaxed, you know, they, they’ve, they’re, they’re in some craggy place. They’ve been able to look at all the country for the last six hours. They’ve been beded down and, and they are just so relaxed and they stand up, they start eating and, and they don’t even look around there as much as they do in the, in the morning. You know, they just, they just kind of, that’s, yeah. There’s nothing here. I’m just gonna eat. And there’s no hunters out Yeah. At that time.
01:38:19:01 –> 01:38:34:24
Yeah. Yeah. And they’re vulnerable. Just like you said. I think what you’re saying is a hundred percent true. A hundred percent absolutely. Seeing it. Yeah. That’s crazy. And so what do you think you’re, I mean, a 30 your bucks you kill in midday, half your bucks
01:38:35:18 –> 01:38:41:13
In Colorado. I’d say a good half of ’em are, are from 10 o’clock to say three o’clock in the afternoon.
01:38:41:26 –> 01:38:42:19
Let’s say you don’t,
01:38:42:21 –> 01:39:07:23
And, and a lot, and you know that, that may not just be because they’re up and feeding at that time. Half of it is in Colorado. It takes you so dad gun long, get over there to get to where they’re Yeah. You spot ’em. And, you know, it could be a, it could be a four hour hike to get over to where they are. Yeah. You know what I’m saying? Yeah. And so you just happen to get over there and that’s, you know, you, you, you’re finally over there and, and that’s when you kill ’em.
01:39:08:07 –> 01:39:19:00
Yeah. That’s crazy. You got any crazy, crazy fun stories for us, whether it be hunting bears with Tommy Hoffman, or, or dirt. Or
01:39:19:00 –> 01:39:24:23
Dirt. You know, Tom is a known liar. I hope you realize that. Oh, we know. Okay. I I, well,
01:39:24:23 –> 01:39:26:25
We just want to give you the opportunity to set it straight.
01:39:26:25 –> 01:39:30:18
You know, I, Tom, the only one you talked to, because I’ve got a lot more stories than that. Or Dirk,
01:39:30:26 –> 01:39:31:28
I, I don’t know what got him. I’m,
01:39:32:11 –> 01:40:31:01
This is Tom. Okay. Tom Hoffman. For those of you that don’t know Tom Hoffman, he’s like my bow hunting hero. He’s, I think he’s killed every sheep in the whole world with his bow. Just a really good guy. Anyway. Yeah. So he is Dirk Dy invite Tom Hoffman and I up to Alaska. He goes up to Prince Weld Island to hunt black beer. I had never hunted black bears. I thought, you know, something I’ll do when I’m old, I’ll, I’ll sit and tree stand and hunt black bears, but, and I’m this hot shot target archer. Right? Yeah. And anyway, so I go up there with Dirk and Tom. We have all sorts of fun. I mean, we’re catching, oh my gosh, you’re eating crab legs every night. ’cause you’re, you know, you set out crab pots in the morning and, and we’re eating hali, but we’re catching hali. But we’re we, Jack Frost, Tom and I hiked out into this, like, you gotta hike out this place where they used to have an oyster bed and we’re plucking these oysters that are, oh, they’re 12 inches long. And, and you know, we’re frying ’em up in butter and Well, it’s, that, that’s not part of the story, but it’s a very cool experience. But anyway, sure. Where you’re going with this story.
01:40:31:15 –> 01:40:34:04
Well, no, you’re talking not us. We we’re not talking anymore.
01:40:34:04 –> 01:41:07:17
So Tom and I, Tom says, Hey, can I bid? Let’s go up this. I said, yeah, yeah, yeah, no problem. So we climb up in this, this tree stand, you know, we motorboat out there, you know, in the ocean. And then we climb up in this tree stand. And, and Dirk had been up there, you know, for several weeks and he had been baiting. And so we’re sitting, and this tree stands, sits 10 yards from this bait. And, and first of all, first of all, it was very cold. It was very cold. And this giant, he’s
01:41:07:17 –> 01:41:09:21
Already setting up the story already. The excuse
01:41:11:22 –> 01:41:12:03
We’ve
01:41:12:03 –> 01:41:15:08
Heard a couple of versions reminds George, they were very close to each other. So
01:41:16:02 –> 01:41:20:12
Kind of reminds me of George on Seinfeld. It was very cold. Do they know about shrinkage?
01:41:21:05 –> 01:41:21:14
Yeah.
01:41:22:25 –> 01:42:15:16
No, that’s not where I’m going with this. But it was very cold. Okay. And so, anyway, I’m sitting in this tree stand. Tom is in tree stand directly above me. I mean, his feet are kind of, you know, at my head. And, and this big bear starts coming in. We can see him coming in for line and he’s a big bear. Yeah. And he’s basically eye level with this. And then he has to kind of come down this little hill to come to the bait. And I’m just like, oh God, this is a big bear. He’s a right bear. You talk about buck fever. Yeah. But I, I did mention it was really cold. Yeah. Yeah. So I, I started shaking, and I’m sure it had nothing to do with how big this bear was, but I am like shaking, visibly shaking. And this bear comes in and, and he’s 10 yards away. He is positioned perfectly. His head’s in, you know, head looking straight away from us. I draw back, it’s 10 yards away. I thought, you know what, it’s kind of getting dark. I’m gonna shoot this bear right in the heart. So, you know, he’ll die with sight.
01:42:17:19 –> 01:42:44:04
So anyway, that was the plan on this. So I can’t lie about it now because it’s documented. But, so anyway, I shoot and I, man, I nailed him and he runs over the hill. Tom goes, I think you missed, I said, oh, no, I, are you serious miss? No. Anyway, we, we get down there and my Earl’s Yeah,
01:42:44:17 –> 01:42:44:26
Yeah.
01:42:45:07 –> 01:43:12:04
And well, and what no one told me, and I should have realized, and I did, I got another story for you. Like this one, I, I didn’t realize, and this is my excuse, and I’m, this is my story and I’m sticking to it, but I didn’t realize they had like six inches of hair hanging down Yeah. Down in the spring. And I aimed like six inches above his, what I thought was his belly lining shot right through the there. Anyway, my shaking had nothing to do with it.
01:43:12:20 –> 01:43:22:25
And I know we know Tommy and, and Dirk and Oh geez, no one knows two. I don’t know how long that’s been since that happened, but I’ll bet that comes up often when you guys are
01:43:22:27 –> 01:43:23:20
Are, it might be daily.
01:43:24:09 –> 01:43:27:22
It might be. I had, I had brown hair back then. That’s
01:43:27:22 –> 01:43:27:25
How
01:43:27:25 –> 01:43:28:10
Long ago
01:43:28:10 –> 01:43:32:02
It was. Say those guys are characters and they are not gonna let you forgive that.
01:43:32:09 –> 01:43:37:26
That was before angle compensating range finders. Oh yes, exactly. There’s a hundred excuses we could
01:43:37:26 –> 01:43:44:02
Come up and help you with. I did not, I did not have a rangefinder with me. So there you go. I thought it was 10 yards. It could have been 12,
01:43:45:05 –> 01:43:46:29
14. So there you
01:43:46:29 –> 01:43:47:23
Go. 12 or
01:43:47:28 –> 01:43:50:17
13. Once again, you’ve got to always use the rangefinder.
01:43:50:22 –> 01:43:52:02
Always. Always.
01:43:54:08 –> 01:44:00:14
Anything else? Anything else? Those are good ones. You know, we got tipped off on that one a little bit. Oh, I didn’t know if Randy Omr ever
01:44:00:14 –> 01:44:02:20
Missed. We do not have time enough to talk about all my misses.
01:44:03:13 –> 01:44:04:14
Yeah. Speaking of which does,
01:44:04:17 –> 01:44:06:06
You don’t have that kind of time in your podcast?
01:44:06:11 –> 01:44:07:19
Does Randy Omer miss,
01:44:09:02 –> 01:44:46:28
You know, yes. The, the interesting thing is, is, well, I’ll tell you another story. The very first time I went elk hunting with a bow and arrow, I had a six point bull coming up the ridge walking right at me. I stepped behind a just a four foot pond rolls pine in this elk. You know, I come to full draw on this elk walks out, stops at 22 yards. I, I stepped it off afterwards and we’re right on top of this kind of knife edge ridge. And I shoot and I saw my arrow go four feet over this elk’s back. And I could just still remember to this day that arrow just sailing through the blue Jesus.
01:44:48:15 –> 01:45:40:09
And I thought, what in the world just happened? Yeah. And I know what happened now. I just lost it. But, but yes. If I miss Yes. Yeah. And the, you know, I told you my brother and I had six arrows. Six, I think I told you six a piece when we first, when we first Yeah. We had 2219 arrows. We had six arrows each. And the first day we ever went out hunting this before this, the year before I shot at that bull. But I shot at, well I shot at more than six cows, but I shot six at six different cows, my six zeros. And they, they were all within 30 yards. Oh. And I missed every one of ’em. I mean, good thing is I missed them clean. Yeah. And it was so bad that I actually went back and found two of my arrows and, and went hunting and shopping. But you could,
01:45:40:11 –> 01:45:43:23
You could legitimately blame it on the gear back then. I was gonna
01:45:43:23 –> 01:45:46:17
Gonna say finger tap, Ben arrows a finger glove.
01:45:46:19 –> 01:45:48:09
Might not even had a glove. Might’ve been bare
01:45:48:09 –> 01:45:49:23
Fingers. Bare fingers. I don’t know. Who
01:45:49:23 –> 01:45:54:27
Knows what, you know. Yeah. And I think the sun was in my eyes and the wind was blowing.
01:45:56:08 –> 01:45:59:12
Yeah. You’re hungry, you’re thinking about And you’re all, all,
01:45:59:27 –> 01:46:09:21
And I think I had the beginning of, of Parkinson’s or something. I don’t know. Just shame. Yeah. It was not, it was not pretty. Well you so, yeah. Ran Randy’s missed a lot.
01:46:10:26 –> 01:46:15:11
You guys have done about everything. Tell me, didn’t you develop a broadhead there years back or?
01:46:16:14 –> 01:47:04:18
Well, yeah. My, my, my brother and I, you know, we’ve always been accuracy fanatics and we, we kinda independently had came up with some ideas for different broadheads. ’cause we wanted a broadhead that would really shoot straight. Yeah. And, and so many of these broadheads, they just have way too much structure. So anyway, we came up with some, some pretty darn good ideas. And my brother took, took one idea, which is mostly his idea. And, and, and he, he refined it and refined it and refined it. And we were kind of talking about maybe doing it together. But I, I told him, you know, I’ve always avoided being like, in the archery industry. Yeah. Because I’ve seen so many of my friends that have, you know, you, you, you, you get in the archery industry and all of a sudden your, your your, your hobby becomes work.
01:47:04:18 –> 01:47:46:04
Yeah. So anyway, rusty took it and developed it. And still to this day, I think it’s the best broadhead ever built. I still, I still use it. And he, he, you know, Rusty’s a retired dentist. He did not want to, he did not wanna be involved in the manufacturing process. Yeah. So he, he let Dan Evans take it and, and, and work with it. And, you know, Dan of course sold his company and there was a lot of other things that kind of went on. So it went outta production. But the good news is, I can’t tell you exactly when. And, and, and, but very soon you’ll see the head out again. Really? Yeah. Oh
01:47:46:04 –> 01:47:47:18
Yeah. That’s awesome. Yeah. Is
01:47:47:18 –> 01:47:50:13
This still gonna be called Ulmer Edge or is that not known
01:47:50:14 –> 01:47:59:11
Yet? You know, I doubt it. I doubt it. Okay. Because it’s, it’s, it, it’s going to be manufactured by another company and, and, but it, it will be, it will be the Ulmer Edge,
01:47:59:20 –> 01:48:00:22
The same product.
01:48:01:07 –> 01:48:04:18
I actually killed my two deer this year with the prototypes.
01:48:05:13 –> 01:48:06:16
Wow. That’s great. Yeah.
01:48:06:25 –> 01:48:07:07
Yeah. Yeah.
01:48:07:11 –> 01:48:07:19
Good
01:48:07:19 –> 01:48:09:16
Deal. So, so it, it’s really good.
01:48:09:21 –> 01:48:10:26
Stay tuned, I guess. Yeah.
01:48:11:02 –> 01:48:24:06
Now, now I just have to, you know, I, we don’t have to do this on the podcast, but Adam, you, you, you kind of pissed me off again in September, or no, I guess it was August when you shot that deer. Golly. Oh dunno. That deer was like a
01:48:24:23 –> 01:48:33:22
Hog. I don’t know how shooting one deer can make. What’s that? You, I don’t know how shooting one deer can piss you off because Oh, that like a dream deer. That’s your two or three.
01:48:34:04 –> 01:48:34:20
I, you know,
01:48:34:23 –> 01:48:42:07
If people were to get pissed off, wouldn’t we hate Elmer by now? Oh yeah. I mean, oh, by the way, I purchased both my bucks. Okay. And there’s not, with shooting
01:48:42:18 –> 01:48:44:08
60 inch steer with the prototype, with
01:48:44:08 –> 01:48:47:12
The prototypes, I had to test them out. So I tested ’em out on 200 inches bucks,
01:48:47:12 –> 01:48:47:23
Two 20.
01:48:48:14 –> 01:48:56:06
And by the way, I’m pissed at you because you killed, you killed one of my bucks and I coulda had three. I mean, this is unbelievable. Randy.
01:48:56:26 –> 01:49:04:29
What? No, what what was the mainframe on that buck? I, that’s the question I really had for you. I, ’cause I looked at the mainframe on that bucket and it looks like it’s 210 inches.
01:49:05:09 –> 01:49:14:22
Not quite. He’s, he’s low two hundreds. He’s 2 21. The total gross. But doesn’t have big eye guard. Yeah. His eye guards are very short. You know, you
01:49:14:22 –> 01:49:18:25
Know, I didn’t even pay guards because he’s got all that stuff hanging off the sides. Yeah.
01:49:18:28 –> 01:49:20:05
You know, and so I’d
01:49:20:05 –> 01:49:23:01
Rather take the I guards and hang them up off the G twos. Yeah.
01:49:23:01 –> 01:49:24:04
You personal G
01:49:24:04 –> 01:49:25:26
Threes. I’ve got an igar fetish.
01:49:25:26 –> 01:49:27:16
Yeah. So anyway. Really?
01:49:27:16 –> 01:49:27:23
Yeah.
01:49:27:23 –> 01:49:28:19
Oh yeah. I like big
01:49:28:19 –> 01:49:39:29
Guards too. You know’s an interesting thing. All the big bucks I killed, I don’t think before I killed them I could tell you how long their I guards were. Yeah. I could tell you every point they had every sticker they had though. Yeah.
01:49:39:29 –> 01:49:48:14
Yeah. So, no, it was, it was a fun trip. No, that was a, of course, Jason and Chris and everybody was there to to, to film it. Be there. Part of it. It was
01:49:48:23 –> 01:49:50:05
Oh, you got it on film? Oh
01:49:50:05 –> 01:50:02:02
Yeah. Yeah. It was, it was good. The hilarious part. Well, I don’t know how much I want to tell about Adam’s story. The funniest thing about it. He’s like, he comes up and you, you guys can have this archery deer, honey.
01:50:03:05 –> 01:50:05:22
Oh, we’re talking about, this is the after he
01:50:05:22 –> 01:50:06:05
Shot the deer.
01:50:06:13 –> 01:50:10:07
No, the deer’s dead. The deer’s dead. The deer’s dead. And I’m, I walked up to it and,
01:50:10:08 –> 01:50:14:04
And, and I’m just, I’m trying to get my jaw up off the ground. It was one of those so awesome
01:50:14:17 –> 01:50:29:02
Freaking, it was one of those days. The first day, it was one of those days you described it wasn’t Right. I got about 70 yards of, of the deer. Yeah. And he fed into those jungle aspens you’re talking about. And there’s no nothing you’re gonna do that. Was it
01:50:29:07 –> 01:50:29:19
Backed
01:50:29:19 –> 01:50:34:24
Out. Done backed out, and went back in the, in the general zip code that night to
01:50:34:28 –> 01:50:36:26
Did you have any competition? No,
01:50:37:10 –> 01:50:37:17
No.
01:50:37:17 –> 01:50:38:06
There was just
01:50:38:06 –> 01:50:38:23
People around
01:50:39:05 –> 01:50:41:11
Activity. Because there, people driving
01:50:41:11 –> 01:50:41:20
Around
01:50:41:24 –> 01:50:48:19
Henry’s, I mean, you just have people scouting for buffalo, scouting for muzzles, scouting for rifle. You just have activity. And
01:50:48:19 –> 01:50:55:26
Pretty soon they realize, oh, there’s the, there’s Jason, Adam, the epic guys, what are they hanging around here every day for? And so there’s that. But
01:50:56:16 –> 01:51:01:02
Its like, if guys were to see you Yeah. And in Colorado you’d probably be like, there’s probably a good one here.
01:51:02:09 –> 01:51:02:22
That’s
01:51:02:22 –> 01:51:05:24
Right. You know, at some point we gotta do a podcast on that.
01:51:06:01 –> 01:51:08:02
Yeah. Like how GoTo
01:51:08:02 –> 01:51:28:02
Mean. I listened to a podcast you guys did. Excuse me for interrupting you, but I gotta get this in. And you know, Robbie Denning, I don’t know if you remember the podcast, but I you were interviewing me. He just wrote that that good by the way. That’s a very good book he wrote. Yeah. And he was talking about, he was talking about it, it this recurrent dream that he had or nightmare. Oh yeah.
01:51:28:19 –> 01:51:29:16
He’s just giving me grief.
01:51:29:22 –> 01:51:33:18
Giant buck come up. There’s, see you sitting there on in the truck. Here comes
01:51:33:24 –> 01:51:34:08
Jason’s
01:51:34:08 –> 01:51:34:11
Giving
01:51:34:14 –> 01:51:37:02
Pulls up Jason’s Carter, the trailhead. He’s just
01:51:37:02 –> 01:51:37:23
Giving me grief.
01:51:38:20 –> 01:51:40:16
No. Yeah. We’ve all had that dream.
01:51:41:09 –> 01:52:00:23
Well, well yeah, but you know, you think about it and, and you think about, you know, especially you ’cause you’re involved in all the different aspects of the sport. And when they see one of you guys’ face out in the mountain, it’s like, oh really? There’s two, there’s, they have a, they have a negative thoughts because they think, oh God, he’s gonna shoot the biggest deer in there. And then they have positive thoughts.
01:52:00:26 –> 01:52:01:12
No, they don’t.
01:52:01:16 –> 01:52:05:13
Oh, he’s in here for a reason. He’s in here because there’s a really big deer here.
01:52:06:14 –> 01:52:06:20
So
01:52:06:26 –> 01:52:10:17
What I do is I park my truck in a different spot and then I borrow a But
01:52:11:08 –> 01:52:13:01
Do you? Yeah.
01:52:13:10 –> 01:52:33:11
Oh, we, yes, we’ve left trucks and spots overnight to smokescreen. There’s, there’s no, it’s all, it’s all above board. And I’m not ashamed of it either. You, we’ve smoke screened it when you had to, whether we’re guiding a client or hunting something ourselves. Get dropped off at the trail head. You hike in and have someone just go park your truck over there. Where you think every once a be,
01:52:33:17 –> 01:52:37:18
You know, that would be a good podcast for you guys to do, is just how to be stealthy.
01:52:38:01 –> 01:52:39:16
Well, we’ll have you back on. We we gonna,
01:52:40:05 –> 01:52:42:23
We’re gonna do it with you. ’cause we know you’ve
01:52:42:23 –> 01:52:43:01
Gotta have some
01:52:43:08 –> 01:53:00:05
Tactics. You’ve gotta have some tactics. I’ve often wondered what the penalty is for putting another state license plate on your own vehicle. Because you know how they view non-residents like Wyoming hate Utah guys, Colorado does not like Utah. Guys. I don’t wanna have a Utah plate. I don’t
01:53:01:20 –> 01:53:01:26
Do
01:53:01:26 –> 01:53:05:16
You, do you know what everyone in in Colorado calls guys mu
01:53:06:24 –> 01:53:07:05
Tards.
01:53:07:28 –> 01:53:08:13
Tards. Yeah,
01:53:08:23 –> 01:53:10:20
I know we’ve heard it. I know Joe heard it.
01:53:10:22 –> 01:53:11:22
I’m, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
01:53:11:22 –> 01:53:17:24
That’s not, I call Adam back. Adam calls me that. Yeah. So we, alright, so yeah. So Adam, we’re walking up to this giant buck.
01:53:18:09 –> 01:53:30:24
Oh. So we gotta tell a little bit more because of, you can’t just say I’m sick of hunting big deer because that sounds very spoiled. But it had been one of those days that at the second day at daylight boom, it was
01:53:31:00 –> 01:53:31:08
A long
01:53:31:08 –> 01:53:47:11
Day. Boom. Barely. I could see the deer before you could barely even see. And so it was one of those game on from daylight and it was, you know, one of those all day long. You’re you’re close enough. Very stiff, strong south wind. So so you got close. I was in position and then, I mean,
01:53:47:11 –> 01:53:48:20
You’re not, you’re tight with him.
01:53:48:21 –> 01:54:14:17
Yeah. I’m mean within 80 yards for 10 hours. The stiff wind probably closer than you want. I know. All right. He moves the right way. He’s dead and wind could swirl. Starts coming, coming down, rain and hell a few times. Fast forwarding you just all that anxiety throughout all the day finally comes, he stands up and he feeds right to me. And it’s one of those times you didn’t have to, I didn’t have to range him. He was 20 yards. You should
01:54:14:17 –> 01:54:15:04
Always range him.
01:54:15:12 –> 01:54:21:00
I know, but you know, I knew it was, I knew it was top pin low. How’s that Jason? Yeah. Top pin
01:54:21:00 –> 01:54:21:05
Low.
01:54:21:05 –> 01:54:22:20
Okay. All right. Okay. So,
01:54:22:26 –> 01:54:27:16
You know, you know, I, I just want to know, Adam, you must be really close to the Lord.
01:54:28:11 –> 01:54:28:23
He is.
01:54:29:13 –> 01:54:37:26
The reason I say that is ’cause you walk out and there is 15 minutes. You see, you know how many you shoot now, John Elk. And
01:54:38:15 –> 01:54:39:11
This was Adam here.
01:54:39:13 –> 01:54:46:25
You go up there and you have a, you have a, a giant deer walk to you. You know how many times I’ve had a giant deer get up and feed towards me in my life? Never.
01:54:46:25 –> 01:55:00:10
I’ve never, never in my life either. It’s one of those times he fed away all day long and tore. He got in thick trees and he’s out of sight from me. All the spotters, everybody. And I just had nothing but do just to sit where I was. And
01:55:00:16 –> 01:55:04:02
I, I had it happen to me once. Randy, if you hunt long enough, it’ll happen to you. Yeah.
01:55:04:02 –> 01:55:05:16
Once all, all
01:55:06:27 –> 01:55:10:18
Adam and I both had it happen. Keep hunting there. Keep hunting, Randy. It’ll happen.
01:55:11:15 –> 01:56:03:14
So fast forward I shot and the deer blows out of there. You know, we see blood going everywhere, but it’s getting dark. And I could tell it was a little bit, maybe like you described one of your deer a bit ago. I need to get another arrow on that deer because I didn’t wanna leave him overnight. Even if he’s dead right, there is that rain, it’s velvet, coyotes are gonna destroy the velt. You know, I’m just thinking, oh, I’m like, I gotta, it’s one of those, you just made a judgment call to press a little bit. You didn’t have an hour and a half to wait or hour or whatever. And so after 30 minutes, I, and there was a lot of blood. Anyway, I came up to him and he was, he was alive. Put another arrow in him. But just the whole emotion of all that, after tracking him and you’re trying to beat daylight, you kill him, you sit down and I know you’ve been there, you just wanna sit down there and just throw your hands up like
01:56:03:29 –> 01:56:04:10
Never
01:56:04:10 –> 01:56:13:08
Again. Just the elation. And it’s, and I just almost was like, yeah, if somebody would’ve offered to pack my bow off the mountain that night, he’d give it to him. I almost would’ve said, it’s yours. No
01:56:13:09 –> 01:56:23:28
Five bucks would’ve bought that bow. He’s like, dude, this archery, I don’t know how you’d do it, Carter, I’m done. It’s, I am done. And then an hour later he’s like, you know, I’ve been thinking I’m, I’m, there’s a couple of archery tags.
01:56:24:01 –> 01:56:41:14
Oh yeah. It was just, it was a moment. It was the anxiety. It’s my, I don’t manage my anxiety that the target panic, the whole closeness, you know, hearing your own heart literally beating outta your chest. And that’s probably what drives us to do what we like to do so much. But that, that just overcame
01:56:41:14 –> 01:56:50:04
Me. Well, and Adam’s killed 200 inch steer, but, but one like this, having a 220 inch steer walk up to 20 yards. It does something to a guy. And,
01:56:50:28 –> 01:57:05:05
And, and in slow motion over, you know, 20, 30 minutes. He’s feeding my way in thick, thick oak brush. And so there’s, I can’t shoot him. It’s anticipation. I can’t shoot him at 40 or 50. I’m only gonna shoot him at 18 or whatever he pokes out at. So it was just one of those moments.
01:57:05:13 –> 01:58:11:15
But you know what, Adam, I I, I’m just to, to go back the in, I’m gonna get, I’m gonna wax a little philosophical here, but one of the things that drives us to do what we do, I believe, is that we don’t have a lot of true, strong emotions in our life anymore. You know, before, you know, thousands of years ago, we had fear, we had anger, we had all sorts of things. Warfare in our modern, comfy existence. We don’t have that. Those emotions that you experience right there are overwhelming. Yeah. They’re, and and for people that haven’t done, you don’t get it with a rifle. You don’t, I mean you might, but it’s not the same. No. Because you would’ve shot that deer soon as you saw it. Yep. Those emotions that you experience. I mean, and, and you know, Carter will, will, will, will, will testify to this. Yeah. Once you’ve experienced that and, and when you’re in the moment, it is almost overwhelming. You just want it over with. You said, no more of this. I can’t stand it.
01:58:11:20 –> 01:58:13:05
My heart can’t handle it. Yeah. That’s what you
01:58:13:05 –> 01:58:31:20
Feel. But you know what, next year you’re gonna be going back ’cause you know what, it is a rush and you’re gonna want it again. It’s an emotionally you will not experience, you know, unless at the birth of your child or the death of your father or whatever it is, you will not have those kind of emotions hardly ever in your life.
01:58:31:28 –> 01:58:58:16
You know. And like, like Jason said, an hour later we were talking about what archery deer tags we’re gonna draw next year. It was, it was just the, you know, that whole flood of right there, it finally happened when you were, you were out too. Were watched the deer were out for 2, 3, 4 weeks day, like tell dark, you know, just the, the whole investment that was into that and that specific deer. I had no other deer I wanted to hunt. If I had to go to a plan B, there was not a plan B that I really wanted.
01:58:58:16 –> 01:59:01:20
And there was other 200 inch unit. Yes. It’s a good unit. Not don’t, but,
01:59:01:25 –> 01:59:04:28
But yes. But not a deer that line so much. You had your heart set.
01:59:05:08 –> 01:59:21:14
Yes. Yeah. When do you have that much on the line? That much time invested or a moment? In a moment you can either blow it or you can have success or you can blow it. Yep. That’s right. You know, other than, you know, making the winning basket and on your high school basketball team for the state championships, you know, when do you ever have that much? I
01:59:21:14 –> 01:59:26:01
Dunno why only one five second period don’t, yeah, there’s, they, they pass. They can pass you by pretty fast.
01:59:26:15 –> 01:59:54:08
One thing I wanted to ask Randy couple, it’s kind of a two or three part question. A, do you ever kill enough giant bulls? Enough giant bucks? And what is left on your lift list that you haven’t accomplished that you want to, you know, obviously you’ll take a two, another 240 inch deer. I mean, and I get that. So is there something you really wanna accomplish that you haven’t or you just want to kill more giant bucks and bulls?
01:59:54:15 –> 02:00:19:08
You know, when you ask if you’ve got another, if you’ve got an if, if you get tired of shooting big deer or you, you’re gonna quit shooting big deer, you know, we’ll go back to the sue analogy. Ask my wife if, if she, you know, she’s got 40 pairs of shoes, ask her if she’s never gonna buy another pair of shoes. Yeah. And if she buys a pair of shoes, haven’t really did, don’t ask her why she bought another pair of shoes or she’s gonna look at your collection of meal there. Yes,
02:00:19:28 –> 02:00:20:05
Yes.
02:00:20:11 –> 02:01:13:07
No, no. You know, it’s God, it’s just, I, you guys understand it and most of your listeners understand it. It is in your blood. It’s, you know, it’s what I, it’s what I really look forward to and, and the one thing that I’m looking that I want to accomplish is I took Zach, I, you know, Zach’s dad wasn’t into hunting and he’s, Zach is my sister’s son, he’s my nephew. For those of you that don’t know. And, and I’ve been hunting taking Zach Hunt since he was seven or eight years old. And, and he has just turned into a phenomenal hunter. And, and his hasn’t been able to hunt mulder with me. My, my son’s, well Jake, my son’s a rifle hunter. He’s really never got into hunting with Bo Bow, but Levi, my youngest son is, is, you know, real sees elk hunter and, and you know, elk hunting here, you know, has been not easy.
02:01:13:08 –> 02:01:54:06
It’s been relatively easy and we can usually get it done fairly quickly. Although the last couple he shot on the last day, my goal is to take, and, and Levi has never been able to go out of state with me. And there are very few tags in Arizona where you can go shoot a really big buck that and, and plus scenery like you can get in Colorado. My goal is to teach Levi and Jake if he wants to, but I don’t know if he has a desire to have Levi go with me when he’s outta college and be able to go on these late August, early September high country mule deer hunts. He goes scouting with me every year. Yeah. And so we really into looking at him and, and this year, oh I got a real cool video where he is stocking up on these big bucks, you know, before, you know, in August.
02:01:54:08 –> 02:02:37:16
Yeah. He just, just stocking up with no bow and he gets really close to these deer and, and he was so excited and I was so excited. So my goal is to get him a really big buck with his bow. And he’s phenomenally sneaky. He’s a phenomenal shoddy shot, competitive archery for a while. And, and, but really just to have him up there with Zach and I doing it together with us. ’cause really I need, what I really am trying to do is, you know, as I get older, I’m not gonna be able to get up there in those mountains. There’s gonna, you know, you hate, you hate to think that it’ll ever happen, but there’s gonna come a point where I’m not gonna be able to do it anymore and Zach’s gonna need a new partner. So what I really like is, I’d like for them to partner up and continue slaying big mule deer. Yeah.
02:02:37:29 –> 02:03:10:15
So does that mean, so you’ve deer and elk for you is fine for the time, but, but there’s nothing else, you know, whether it be the sheep or, you know, you’re, I mean you’re obviously very focused and, and we know that, and that’s what I think almost everybody associates you with is giant bulls and mule deer, which not a lot of people that do both of those either that, that’s a lot. I’m not trying, one of them is more than, more than most people can handle. But you know, you’ve, you, you, I’m sure you’ve hunted sheep and then different things like, and a bunch of other animals. But, but you’re not, nothing you want to go redo and still go oyster.
02:03:10:21 –> 02:03:30:12
No, I’ve, like, I’ve killed, well I’ve killed one in three quarter slams sheep slams with my bow. Well actually I’m, you know, one of those one, the first doll sheep I killed was with a rifle years and years ago. But, so I really don’t have a design. And if I draw, what I really want, if you guys can help me out, is a Montana sheep tank. Okay.
02:03:30:20 –> 02:03:31:16
Yeah. So there’s a,
02:03:32:02 –> 02:04:03:15
That’s probably not gonna happen. But no, really, I was, before my kids got old enough that they started hunting. ’cause man, when they started hunting, I kind of timed everything perfectly for my kids. And back then you could actually apply your kid for a bonus point, even though they weren’t legal to hunt. Oh, I did it. And so by the time I wasted those years, my kids were 10 years old, they had 10 bonus points. Points they keep Yeah. Plus grandma and grandpa mom. Yeah. Both grandmas, both grandpas had
02:04:04:26 –> 02:04:06:04
Points to men, to them
02:04:06:09 –> 02:05:04:11
Points. And so those kids, I mean, when they started hunting, I mean they had bison tags, which is impossible to get there. Arizona sheep tags in there and all, they had elk tags every year. Yeah. And so my hunting went from, from purely a selfish endeavor to like, are you serious? I gotta pack out another freaking elk for you guys. Now they’re in, in, in college. So, but my point was before they started hunting, I had, you know, almost completed my super slam with my bow. And, and really what I’ve been doing the last few weeks is kind of looking at the few animals I need left and figuring out which sun I was gonna take on each of these hunts. If they wanna go, I assume they will of the remaining hunts I, I need to do. So, you know, they’re kind of obscure things there. Like, I need to shoot a, well I need to shoot three caribou and I need to shoot a, a Roosevelt elk. So, you know, things that, that aren’t that difficult, you know, relatively
02:05:04:13 –> 02:05:07:17
Just gotta make time and, and put a, not hunt a mule there.
02:05:07:19 –> 02:05:10:14
Yeah. It costs you a million. No, no, no. Find that out.
02:05:10:28 –> 02:05:29:10
I am not. That’s one thing I will not forego. You know, people ask me, well geez, why haven’t you ever been to Africa? And I’m like, I, I really, I I you you gave me an African safari or, or or, and said you can’t hunt Colorado high country this year. I’d say you could take your Africa safari and stick it. Well,
02:05:29:10 –> 02:05:36:00
Besides that, there’s not enough prototypes of that omer edge to, to go to Africa. You’d have kill, you’d have to have 4,200
02:05:36:03 –> 02:05:36:16
Brahas.
02:05:36:16 –> 02:05:36:22
Yeah.
02:05:36:24 –> 02:05:45:06
Well, I personally don’t have the space in my house for Yeah. For any animals. And, and, and where am I gonna put an elephant or a giraffe? I’m not sure.
02:05:45:17 –> 02:05:54:20
Yeah, yeah. No, we get it. Well, good. Well, is there anything else, Randy? I mean, we’ve taken up two plus hours of your time.
02:05:54:20 –> 02:06:12:25
Well, no, the only thing I wanna say to you guys is, man, congratulations. You, you, you guys, you know, for those of you that just listened to these podcasts and, and I wasn’t put up to this, you guys have got a, you know, Jason’s been helping me with, with stuff for, geez, 20 years, Jason. Yeah. When did you guys start? A little over 20 years ago.
02:06:12:26 –> 02:06:21:10
Yeah. We were even dad working on dad. Those book cliff tags that we were talking about, you and I dealt with Oh yeah. Clear back when he, I think you built my dad a bow.
02:06:22:07 –> 02:06:39:23
I built your dad. Well your dad wanted to get a little more serious about archery and he, he, he said, build me a bow that I can’t break. I said, okay. So I built him up a bow with a site real close to the riser and a arrow rest that he couldn’t bend with a rock. And, and you know, and I, I think he did well with it.
02:06:40:05 –> 02:06:41:26
Yeah. I think he did a, I think he did.
02:06:41:28 –> 02:06:51:10
These guy’s been doing a phenomenal job and, and God, you really need to look at their stuff. The magazine and congratulations, your magazine’s been out for what, a year now? A little longer than you year.
02:06:51:10 –> 02:06:53:04
Yeah, just, well we did, we started last.
02:06:53:04 –> 02:06:54:14
Your podcast has been almost that long. December.
02:06:54:18 –> 02:07:15:00
Yeah. Yeah. We started the magazine December-ish and then we, we listened to podcasts starting probably in January, a month later. And then we decided we had to do a podcast just because there was guys like you that we needed to learn from and, and that the world could, could glean some valuable information from that. You can’t really put in a story format, you know, and so we,
02:07:15:07 –> 02:07:25:03
No, podcasts are great. ’cause you know, I listen to ’em when I’m doing, when I’m running or, or yeah. Or, or riding my bike or, or driving. It’s, it’s great. Yeah.
02:07:25:18 –> 02:07:25:27
Yeah.
02:07:26:03 –> 02:07:29:03
But no, you guys are doing a phenomenal job with the magazine. It’s looking really good.
02:07:29:16 –> 02:07:44:12
Thank you. Well, we appreciate that. We sure appreciate it. And, and, and of course it’s always nice to see. I’m glad you’re on Instagram now. We can see what you’re killing on a regular basis without searching you out and quizzing you, you know, we get to stalk you Instagram, insta stock.
02:07:45:09 –> 02:07:46:13
That’s it. That’s
02:07:46:13 –> 02:08:09:26
It. So, but you know, I’ve been, we’ve been following you Andy, for a long, long time and, and you’re just a killer and there’s so much that, that the hunting world can learn from you. We’ll, we want to have you on again, but we just wanna tell you how much we appreciate you taking time outta your schedule and, you know, for a guy like you to, to be willing to entertain our listeners with us here for a couple hours, just kind of special for us. So thanks
02:08:09:28 –> 02:08:11:16
A lot Matt. We really do appreciate it.
02:08:12:03 –> 02:08:28:13
Yeah, thanks and congratulations on all your successes this year. You know, I, I’ve seen more of Adam’s than I have for you, Jason. Oh, it’s a terrible be ho I’m picking on you by not, not blowing you your horn, but you know, Adam’s been a, you know, he’s kind of ec cliffed a little bit this year. Hey,
02:08:29:07 –> 02:08:55:13
One outta 20 years is not I, well that’s, that’s about what the ratio is here because it was finally year where everything lined up for us. We had a great year, took 12 sheep hunters and just took some great rams and, and it was also a year, I, you know, with Epic making up, I I actually guided less variety. I took plenty of sheet punters but wasn’t spread out as much all over the place and had some more time and had these tags that I could dedicate some time
02:08:55:13 –> 02:08:57:08
To, had some points built up. Like Arizona. Arizona
02:08:57:14 –> 02:09:09:05
Business coming Arizona. This is a year. I knew I was gonna go this year. The archery dates were gonna kick late. I had it picked three, four years ago and just some things like that. Yeah. You don’t get, you know, that was 4, 12, 14 years in the making. So pretty
02:09:09:05 –> 02:09:18:16
Funny. Adam comes in the office. The o Yeah. Adam comes in the office the other day and he’s like, guys, I’ve got a problem. We’re like, what do you mean? He goes, I got four deer at the butcher shop.
02:09:21:01 –> 02:09:24:05
Well, and there’s already been about four put in there and two elk. I don’t,
02:09:24:08 –> 02:09:44:20
You know, I, I think I have to call, I have to call this unfair because you know, guys like Jason and I, you know, we’re kinda a, we’re uneducated hacks and you know, a guy that has a, a degree or actually two degrees, don’t, you have like two degrees. Oh, he’s in, in wildlife management.
02:09:45:02 –> 02:09:48:25
Probably a master’s in 14 different degrees. You know, or 14 different subject
02:09:48:25 –> 02:09:57:00
Matter. That’s, is it right that a guy that’s that well educated, they shouldn’t, they shouldn’t ban them from hunting. Yeah. You know, ’cause they just know too much about wildlife.
02:09:57:11 –> 02:09:57:18
It,
02:09:57:20 –> 02:09:58:13
It’s just not Right.
02:09:58:26 –> 02:10:06:07
I needed to do that to learn something. I wasn’t just gonna be picked up on my own. I had to go to six years of school to figure something out, I guess.
02:10:07:11 –> 02:10:08:07
Anyway. Oh
02:10:08:17 –> 02:10:09:11
Geez. No, we,
02:10:09:14 –> 02:10:10:18
Well guys, I really appreciate
02:10:10:18 –> 02:10:18:16
That on thank it’s been great Randy. Thanks a lot. We’ll do it again for sure. We’ll think of some new topics, but that incognito stealth mode is gonna be one of ’em next time.
02:10:18:21 –> 02:10:19:25
Sounds good. All
02:10:19:25 –> 02:11:18:02
Right, Randy. Thanks. We appreciate you. We just wanna let everybody know we’ve got a lot of listeners out there that aren’t a member of our service. We, we produce nine magazines a year. It’s monthly December through June. Talk about all the western states, drawing on skill percentages, best units and, and break it down for applying across the west. We’re also available to visit. We, we help guys develop short-term, midterm, long-term hunt strategies, application strategies, as well as helping you buy landowner tags, hunts, and all kinds of different things that deal with Western big game hunting. So anyway, lot of podcast information out there. Of course that’s free and fun to listen to while you’re traveling. But if you want the detailed information, join Epic Outdoors on epic outdoors.com. It’s a hundred dollars a year and we get to visit about hunting. This is the time of year when we’re not actually out in the field much. We are in the office 24 7 it feels like, and just cranking it out with different magazine and visiting with guys over the phone and, and talking, hunting and getting prepared for the fall.
02:11:19:08 –> 02:12:05:29
If you need another reason to join right now through the end of February, if you join, we’re giving away your choice. A, a doll sheep hunt to be entered into the, to win a doll sheet punt or a mule deer hunt with us, the epic crew or an elk hunt here in Utah with the Epic crew. For anybody that joins up until, until February 28th, you’re entered in that. Or if you refer somebody, if you’re already a member and you refer somebody that joins, make sure that you, you let ’em know to tell ’em that you join them. You’ll have another name in the hat for that. There’s no limit to the amount of times you can be entered or the manner, or guys you can refer. But there are no way to buy tickets for this. So join in a membership or referring somebody that does the only way to get in. So epic outdoors.com. You can join online or give us a call at (435) 263-0777.
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