In this episode of the Epic Outdoors Podcast our hosts, Jason Carter, and, Adam Bronson, talk with Dave and Jeff Harrow about The hunt expo, shed tours, and optics. Our joint booth with have one of the top Mule Deer shed collections in the world. Come out and enjoy the weekend with us. Feb 8-11 at the Salt Palace Convention Center in Salt Lake
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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So we’ll have three different sets of sheds there that have growth scores over 300.
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It’s gonna blow your mind. There’s nothing like it.
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It’s not just something you go do for a quick weekend hunt.
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So it just became a passion of mine.
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Anything to do with Western Big Games.
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Welcome
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To the Epic Outdoors Podcast, powered by Under Armour.
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Hey everybody. Jason Carter and Adam Bronson here at the Epic Outdoors Podcast. Just cranking along. It’s January 31st. It’s Wyoming’s Elk application deadline today, midnight. Anyway, we’ve been visiting with a lot of our hunters. It’s that time of year where everybody’s been applying. Speaking of applying, there’s a couple of different things you can apply for in regards to winning some hunts. In addition to the state draws, we’ve got the Wyoming Super tags. Guys can apply for those. They’re $10 a piece, or you can go for the trifecta for 30 bucks a piece, it’s 10 different species, 11 chances to win. You gotta apply by July 2nd, 2018. You can apply online at wgf.w.gov/epic outdoors. So anyway, pretty easy to remember. Wgf d.w.gov/epic outdoors. Go on there and buy your chances to win. You can do it by July 2nd. So pretty awesome opportunity. And then we’re also gonna be hitting the expo, the Hunt Expo. Yep,
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February 8th through the 11th. Coming right up here. Salt Lake City, salt Palace Convention Center. We’re gonna have a booth there. Number 2, 8 4, 5. It’s a great show. I believe this is in what, Jason? About the 10th year, something
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Like that? Yeah, long time.
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We’ve been there pretty much every year. A great broad variety of Western North America hunting opportunities there. Among other things, there’s a bunch of hunts to apply for 200 different hunts to apply for Utah Convention permits, every big game species, deer, elk, antelope, moose, sheep, goat, bison.
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These are $5, $5 a piece to apply for. And then you gotta validate ’em in person, which kind of, you know, encourages people to show up and enjoy the hunt expo and kind of cruises some of the different booths. And so anyway, it’s in addition to the regular Utah draw, but they’re the same kind of tags. They’re basically, you know, you apply for a unit particular season if you get drawn, it’s just like you drew in the regular draw.
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That’s right. Also, coming up at the Western Hunting Conservation Expo on Saturday, February 10th. In conjunction with that is the Full Curl Society Social. Just a awesome gathering there of sheep enthusiasts. They’ll be giving away 10 sheep hunts, three stone sheep hunts, five doll sheep hunts, a desert sheep hunt, and a Rocky Mountain Bighorn. All fully paid for. There are a few contingencies upon them, some of them you can’t have ever taken a sheep. Some, some of you can’t have ever killed a stone sheep or a doll sheep just to kind of affect the odds. Kind of give something for everybody. You know, if you’ve already had killed all four of your North, north American sheep, you still got hunts, you can win there. It’s a great, great chance. You can go [email protected] and purchase your 50 or $75 basic membership there. You can buy additional tickets online there, or they will have a booth at the Western Hunting Conservation Expo. You can buy your tickets there, put ’em in the bin. Then on Saturday, February 10th, we’ll be a sponsor of that event. Epic Outdoors will be, and just an awesome event. They meet together two, three hours and draw all those on on Saturday early afternoon. So it’s
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Great op, great opportunity where guys can win those. They’re given up for, you know, for each charge, basically you’ve got a hunt paid for. Probably have to pay a little airline fees here and there. But anyway, overall, they’re basically free hunts. So if that’s not enough, you can come by our booth. We’re gonna be taking memberships for Epic Outdoors and for new members and people that sign up their buddies, we are giving you a name in the hat to win a hunt here at Epic Outdoors that we’re gonna be giving away the first part of March. So anyway, love to see all you guys. We do have some show specials going on, so come by booth number 2 8 4 5. Love to visit with. You can have world class shed collections by our buddies, the harrows, as well as they’re selling optics. And then of course we’ve got Epic Outdoors where we do license, application service, as well as memberships to our MA magazine research publication and selling hunts.
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So we’ll have the whole Epic outdoors crew come on by. And let’s talk some hunting. In this last magazine we did, some of you may have noticed, most of you, most likely a new advertiser. For us, it’s Kent’s Optics. We’ve dealt with these guys for years and years. So on page 11 is their, is their advertisement there? They deal in Vortex, night Force, Schwake, zes, all the big names. And these guys are awesome. They’ve actually been selling optics for years, years and years and, and sell a lot of them. And yes, at great prices, some
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Of the best prices in Utah, they’re doing high vol volumes. That way they can, you know, pass that savings on to, onto you guys. So give him a call.
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So, yeah, so with that, that, that is owned by David and Jeff Harrell. We’re gonna get David on the line and see what he has to say for the next 45 minutes.
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Hello?
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Hey, you there?
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Yes, I am.
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Well, well cool. So we’ve got David and Jeff Har on the line with us, and we just wanted to kind of visit with them. We’re gonna be sharing a booth with them there at the expo. These guys are awesome guys. We’ve known ’em for years and years. They’re hardcore hunters in the January issue as Kent’s optics. And they were in my soapbox, I kind of did a little intro there and got ’em on the line with this. They’re hardcore hunters, they’ve hunted many different western states, dealt in optics for many, many years, and just thought it’d be good if we got ’em on the line and visited with them a little bit. And so anyway, how you guys doing?
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We’re doing really good. How about you guys today?
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We’re doing good. We’re doing good. It is the Wyoming deadline to apply for, for elk if you’re just, you know, applying for an actual unit or hunting. So, you know, we’ve been jammed a little bit. But anyway, it’s, it’s been a good day. Well,
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We’re having a bunch of Cedar City weather up here. We’ve been, we’ve been hitting 50 degrees up here. This, I think it’s the nicest winter we’ve ever seen in, in Tremont. So we’ve been enjoying it. It’s
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Like 65 degrees down here today. In
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Cedar. Yeah, in January. I mean, after the winter we had last year for the deer to be able to have this. What a bonus. Yeah,
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Yeah. You guys look at it as a bonus. I’m looking at the desert saying there’s nothing there. I am not hunting the desert. Yeah, we
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Got running, we got running water year round up here, so we don’t, we don’t see what you guys, we don’t have that problem.
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No, you guys don’t. Well, well, as we get started here, I just kind of want you, you to introduce maybe David, you, you know, introduce you and your brother, kind of where you’ve been, you know, where you’re, where you’re going, what your plan is, maybe a little bit of your history as far as your hunting and, and background like that so people can kind of get to know you a little bit.
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Well, you know about, we’ve been in the grocery business our whole life. Our dad and our business partner started a grocery store here in Tremont, Utah about 35, 40 years ago. And so me and my brother grew up in the grocery business. Well, that got boring to us. We both went to college, got degrees and came back and didn’t, didn’t go into our, our fields of choices and decided to stay in the grocery business. Well, one thing led to another and I decided, you know, it’d be fun to sell sporting goods for the store. So I started selling Leopold and Burrus and Redfield at the time. This was back when the Redfield illuminator was a real popular scope. And so we started selling those type of items. And then when the, when the hunting market started demanding European optics, we went, we, Swarovski was our favorite.
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So we went after Swarovski and, and picked up a full line of Swarovski and became a Swarovski dealer. And boy, it kind of took off from there. We started selling a lot of Swarovski and we became real good friends with our rep, Paul Kendall. And then he switched over to Vortex Optics. And so we became the first dealer that he signed up here in the state of Utah. And, and it’s kind of ran from there, picked up, you know, four or five other optic lines. And, and then it’s kind of grown into small, I mean, we don’t have a large sporting good shop, not like what most people are accustomed to, but we, we do a lot of online, not online selling, but phone call selling, outstate, selling a lot of real serious hunters. We try to help ’em with their gun setups, you know, they’re all their optic needs and it’s just grown into a, a fun, fun and exciting business. Well,
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What I really, what I really like is your business model. Basically you’re taking the wives that grocery shop and you know, they’re gonna wanna buy their husband optics and spend a bunch of money on hunting. So I think it’s such a natural that you did that well
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And you, you can’t beat that. You know, here you got a Thanksgiving week and this grocery store is just a rocking. Yes. And you put out, you put out binoculars and, and spotting scopes for the wives for Christmas
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Presents, rain
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Finders, everything.
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Bam. There you go. There you go.
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You get all those cells you otherwise would never even think you could get. So yeah, it’s been really beneficial being, you know, it’s odd people, people, we get that probably more than any one thing people say. You really, you’re in a grocery store.
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Yeah, yeah. You buy bread and range finder.
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But it has worked out good for us. We’ve been here a lot. We’ve been, I was, I’ve been here since I was 13. My brother’s been here since he was 10. So yeah, it’s, we’ve been in this, well,
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Not not to in
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This place a long
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Time. Not to date you, but how many years roughly you’ve been doing it?
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Oh, 25, at least in, in the optic end. Oh
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Wow. That,
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Yeah, 25 years. That does date you guys.
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Yeah, it dates as well.
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So you’ve been doing things change
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A lot when you’ve
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Been doing, you’ve been doing optics, what, 20 years or 15 years of that, or the full-time?
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Yeah, out full-time optics, probably about 15 out of the, out of the 25. The first 10 was just kind of for funsies here and there. When people come in call, it was funny when we first started, you know, rifle scopes, I could count on one hand how many rifle scopes we would sell a year. You literally couldn’t sell a riflescope. People bought one rifle, one scope, that was it. They were done for life. And now rifle scopes were the king of the optic market. You know, you just, you, there’s so many different options. People are building multiple guns. They’ve got a gun to go hunt, pronghorn with, and a, a gun to hunt elk with. They got long range setups, short setups. It’s just, it’s really changed the optic market.
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Oh, yeah. Well, and you guys, seems like we live down here, so we know of you, and we’ve known you for a lot of years as, as hunters and whatnot, and we’ll get to that maybe in a minute. But for a lot of utahns, especially up north, you guys kind of have the reputation of, I mean, you guys do a big volume. I know we’ve talked to Paul over the years about some of the volumes you guys deal with and, and some of the deals you guys are known to be super competitive on your pricing and whatnot. And so tell us just a little bit about Yeah, why you’re maybe a little bit different than just your normal box store, you know, place to go buy optics, and maybe that’ll lead into a little bit about us having you there at the expo with us and what you maybe have there.
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Well, one, we really focus on inventory. You know, being in, being not just in the optic business allows us to have other revenue sources. So it allows us to have, keep large, large quantities of product on hand. And so, and so we buy it in bulk. We get a better price rate when we buy it in bulk. We try to turn that into our, turn it over into our customers. So one, we try to have it when they, when they need it. When a customer’s trying to set a rifle up or they need that particular pair of binoculars or a spotting scope or tripod or whatever their needs, we try to have it, that’s uno number one in our importance levels. Try to have what they want when they need it, get it to ’em, get to ’em quick, whatever.
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And I, and I can attest to that. I’ve been out in the field many times and, you know, you’ve gotten a phone call from me and you’ve
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Dropped Yeah. Remember we had to ship some across the country once you were on the other side of the country and we had to ship a pair of yells or something else.
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Yeah. And it was like next day air. And of course my credit must have been all right ’cause you guys just did it. And so anyway, we just, I can attest to that. You guys, you guys, you guys are amazing. Well, that’s I
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Us to have in stock what people want so they don’t have to wait and wonder. There’s nothing worse than somebody’s waiting for, you know, going on a hunt that they’ve really looked forward to burn 17 years of bonus points or, or, or whatever. One got real lucky and they’re here, they’re waiting for something and then they, and they may not get it. That, that we try to, you know, get rid of that worry. And then, like I say, we try to buy in as large as quantities as possible from ’em. We try to, we sit down with all of our, our brands at the beginning of each year, try to say, what can we buy that you can give a spec special pricing on? Or you might be able to help us on if we do, if we buy a certain number. And then we always, we always turn that over to the customer. We don’t, we, that’s something that’s important to us is to try to give our customers, we’re hunters, their hunters. We try to give ’em the absolute best deal that we can give them and still survive.
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One thing I, I want to, you know, I guess going back a little bit as you were talking about that you had this modest little, you know, sporting goods side, and I just wanna, I’ve seen what you call modest and yeah. What, what the customer sees is modest, but the back room is loaded, you know, with, with crazy amounts of optics and inventory. And so, you know, I just kind of want to interject that is, is I’ve seen the inventory, I I know what you guys are packing in that store and it’s not just all pickles and jam, you know what I mean? So, sure, yeah. Anyway, it’s, it’s pretty, pretty impressive. And so, and I can attest to that. So, you
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Know, and that helps with keeping our costs down. You know, we don’t spend a lot out there. We try to keep it all in, in back in, you know, purely what the customer’s after. So yeah, I think it’s helped us. We’ve, like I said, we’ve done it enough years. We really try to get feedback from our customers. We listen to what our customers tell us they want, and we listen to what our, what our vendors and our, our, our brands are saying, Hey, this is what, this is what you guys are successful at. Keep keep doing it. Let’s keep doing it. And they, they work really well with us. They, if it wasn’t for them, we wouldn’t be able to, to do the things, turn around and, and be as beneficial to our CU customers as we are.
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So we let’s, we wanna transition a little bit and, and we do want to hear, you guys have killed some amazing animals. You picked up some amazing sheds yourselves. But we do want to, I guess, I guess it just feels like the time to kind of jump into what you’ve got going for the expo, some of the different inventory that you’re gonna be bringing as well as the shed tours. So I just kind wanna jump into that. Okay. And then, and then as you talk about that, maybe we can dive into what created the shed sheds
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For that. Yeah. Where this all, why you like deer sheds, I mean, kinda
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Why do you like killing 200 inch bucks, you know?
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Well, let’s jump in, let’s jump into the expo first. The expo, me and me and Jason have actually talked about it for a couple years actually. You know, Jason would stop by and look at antlers and, and we talk about doing, doing some things and we’ve, we’ve done very little advertising, very little pushing and doing things as far as optics are concerned. So this was kinda one of the, it’s getting a very competitive market with online sales. Everybody’s competitive on prices. So it’s just one of those things we thought, you know what, let’s try something new. This. So this year we just committed to doing some new things. The expo was a perfect fit with you guys. We’ve known you guys for years. We’ve done business with you guys for years. We’ve killed some giant mule deer because the landowner tags we purchased through you guys.
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Oh,
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You had, so it’s just kind of one of those things
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You had to you
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That was, I think Adam’s personal to
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Bring that deer up. You had to bring that deer up. But it,
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Well, I didn’t send, I could have sent him a picture he could have been looking at during this and I didn’t, so I kept put
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To, no, we’ll get to that in a bit’s somewhat low key. Okay. All right. But still hurts a little bit.
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Well, yeah, yeah, exactly. But, but going
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Into the expo, we’ve, we’ve worked hard at, you know, there again, we’ve, we’ve worked hard at having some products that I think people have had a hard time getting a hold of. We will have the, the new B T X I piece available at the expo. We’ll have some killer deals on all of our optics. We’ll, we’ll give as good as prices as we can give, but we’ll have some fantastic prices for families. If families wanna show up and, and dads and moms wanna buy a pair of binos for their their kids. We’re gonna have some un unbeatable prices there. We’re gonna have a, I don’t think there’ll be anything that was introduced last year that we won’t have available there this year for at least to see or to purchase. We, we pretty well have all the product that I think people are gonna be looking for.
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We’re gonna get rid of some, some discontinued items, vortex and some other companies are coming out with new spotting scopes. We’ve held onto some of their older models to be able to blow some out down there. So some people can get some really good prices. So that’s pretty awesome. They can stop by and get the best of the best, see the best of the best if they’re not sure they’re what they’re after. They’ll get to look from Night Force, Swarovski Zes, vortex, all their different rifle scopes, binoculars and spotters. There’s new range finders are coming out, they’re gonna be fantastic, you know, so
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I just want all be there, just, I just want to let people know. So we’re sharing a booth with you. It’s 20 by 50, but we just don’t wanna be the little guy in the booth, you know what I mean? Like, you’re gonna, you’re gonna come in there, blow things out, people are gonna come visit you and Adam and I are gonna be over there in the corner trying out these BT x’s. Yeah,
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Well, yeah. And I want to, yeah, I want to emphasize that you kinda rolled through that because anybody, Jason and I have had ours since last summer. But anybody that has tried to get your hands on one of those, they’re not easy to get. And you’ve, you rolled through that fast, but say it again, you’re gonna have some btx.
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We will have B T X I pieces at the expo. We will have, we’re gonna have as many as we possibly can. I’m not gonna throw out a number but number.
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Yeah, you might sell some, you might
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Sell some, it might be double digit of some sort. Never know.
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Depends, depends on what sells between now and then. Yeah, that’s right.
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It’ll be double digits. We’ll have objectives there. You won’t have to worry about getting an objective. If you need the magnifier, we’ll have the magnifiers there. If you, you know, we’ll have it all. We’ll have the, you know, we’ll have different tripods. We’ll have Swarovski tripods, man, Frodos pro GTS from Vortexes. We’ll have multiple tripod options. And so there you go.
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You guys take, you guys take cash, personal check. I mean, how, how are we gonna do this? We’re
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Gonna, we’re not gonna do check. We’re gonna do cash and then we’ll have Bill take credit cards. We’ll be set up good to do with credit card. Any, any type of transaction. I’ll ship it to you. I don’t care pretty much where you live in the United States. We’ll get it to you. No problem. Well,
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I want to get to, I want to get to the part I’m most excited about as you kind of blew through. I’ve, I’ve been to your place and your, your house and, and, and where you’ve stored some of these sheds. There’s gonna be a major amount of giant sheds there. And, and what I want to, I, it’s hard for me to explain to people. I, I’ve talked to maybe just a couple of my close friends, even even Adam and some of the guys here in the office. I mean, it’s unbelievable. I’ve never been in, in one room that had more big sheds and bone in it than than yours ever in my entire life. And I, and I don’t know, you would know. It seems like it’s number, you got the number one shed collection in the world. I, I don’t know how it could be beat. I don’t know how many, but sheds, sets of sheds over 300 inches. You have how many sets of sheds? Over two 50. But it’s a lot. And that’s gonna be at the booth,
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Right? Yeah. That’s, you know, that’s been a passion of mine since I, I started collecting sheds when I was about 14, 15 years old. I had a book, I was down hunting the book list back when it was just a general tag. And I found a grumble of sheds. And so it just became a passion of mine. Then I went to school in St. George, was able to hit the strip and all of southern Utah back in the, in the middle and late eighties when it just, nobody was shed hunting. And then, and then me and my brother had the good fortune. All of southern Idaho, basically from Boise over to Wyoming. Nobody was really shed hunting. So we just had it to ourselves through the eighties and nineties and, and just had a blast. We found some giant sheds, but just learned to just have a huge appreciation and love for big meal there, just hands down.
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We just, you know, found out that there, it was mule deer. I, there was very little big elk at the time, so we didn’t really get into Big Elk, but big mule deer just became a passion of ours. And then we started kind of going to Jackson Hole to the antler cell and kind of seeing, okay, there’s bigger, there’s bigger out there than what we’ve been able to find. And, and started getting, getting into the collecting end of it. And we’ve been collecting big antlers for probably 30, 30 or so years too. Maybe even longer. 30, 35 years. We, we were, have been collecting some of the biggest and the best. And not just, there’s always seems like there’s a bigger antler out there, but we’ve tried to acquire some of the, the prettiest best shape, dark brown from, from the providence of Saskatchewan all the way down through New Mexico.
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I mean, wherever they were, wherever big milder sheds existed. And if we could acquire ’em, we’ve acquired ’em, we’ve put the collection together. It’s been a lot of work. We’re exceptionally proud of it. And that’s, this’ll be the first time that probably, you know, that anybody’s ever seen it. And we’re hoping people enjoy it. We kind of want it to be entertainment. We, you know, we’re gonna, hopefully people, people come with their families and they’re gonna be able to see something otherwise they’ve never seen, not only just see it. The one thing I I told Jason that I thought was important when we talked about doing the expo together was that if a dad brought his dad or mom brought their, their son or their daughter in there, that we, they could have the opportunity to not only look at us, say 140 inch single, but maybe even get a chance to hold that 140 inch single and get to hold what a, you know, three to four pound shed with 20 plus points on it would, would feel like, and get their picture taken with it and get to see multiple 300 inch sets of sheds.
00:21:16:20 –> 00:21:40:17
We’ll have three different sets of sheds there that have growth scores over 300. Another one that’s pushing the door of 300. We’ll have a half a dozen or more, 2 60, 70 class sets of sheds. And most of those are all brown, solid, brown cherry, brown color, hard white things like that. And they’re gonna be able to see ’em up close and, you know, see what 210 inch typicals, see what 215 inch typicals look like. Well
00:21:40:17 –> 00:21:44:11
Everybody I know say they saw one, but when you put it in your hands, it’s something else,
00:21:45:06 –> 00:21:45:20
You know? Yeah,
00:21:45:20 –> 00:22:28:21
Exactly. And I think too, one thing I wanted to mention, you know, before I forget ’cause I forget a lot of stuff. But anyway, basically you’ve got named bucks. Like there’s bucks of our generation that Adam and I have watched Governor tags kill, or this guy kill, or that guy kill. And you’re like, you’ll, you’ll pull something outta the pie and be like, well this is so-and-so’s buck and this is so-and-so’s buck. And by the way, here’s the second year, year and a third year. And, and just stuff that my jaw just hits the ground. Like these are bucks we know about, these are bucks we’ve read stories about. We’ve seen them on the, on Monster Muley or any other form that’s out there, bow side or whatever and, and stuff that we, you know, dream about. And then, and then we go up to your house and you pull Yeah. The actual sheds out. And I’m just like, yeah. And we, how does this happen? And
00:22:28:21 –> 00:22:54:15
We’ve worked hard at not only acquiring the sheds, but we’ve worked hard at acquiring the literature or the magazine or the, some photos of these particular bucks. We’ll have that at the expo. So they’ll get to so that, so in case they’re, they’re looking at it and they think, oh, that kinda looks familiar. Well, boom, there’ll be a picture picture of the buck and go, oh yeah, I know which buck that is. And they’ll, they’ll get to see the sheds and see what the buck, and, and a lot of times the sheds were actually bigger than what the buck was when it was killed. They killed it a year after and he’d gone downhill a little bit. And that’s, and things like that.
00:22:54:28 –> 00:22:58:10
That’s what I say all about all my buck is that they were probably bigger
00:22:58:14 –> 00:23:01:10
Than you before. Well, you kill ’em on the downhill. I’ve killed all mine on the downhill.
00:23:01:10 –> 00:23:05:04
That’s no, that’s what I say. You know, but hopefully nobody steps forward with sheds of my, but
00:23:05:06 –> 00:23:06:22
David and Jeff will be able to show you
00:23:06:22 –> 00:23:09:01
Sheds. I’m kind of scared of the bucks you’ve killed. Yeah, they might have some,
00:23:09:02 –> 00:23:28:17
Well they might not even have ’em at the booth. Like our, our bucks aren’t big enough for these guys. That’s right. When you walk, when I’m, when you walk into our booth, which your booth, my, our booth, whatever, it’s gonna blow your mind. There’s nothing like it. You just tell me David and, and Jeff, you just tell me somebody that’s got more big sheds than what you’ve got. I, I’d like to see it. Well,
00:23:28:17 –> 00:24:31:14
I haven’t seen it, I haven’t seen ’em personally. You know, there’s a couple guys I know that have some tremendous shed collections. I haven’t actually seen them. I’ve had people, so a lot of it’s rumor here saying things like that. But hands down we’ve worked hard at, at, at, at acquiring antlers that we have. I know individuals that have one or two that, that, you know, that I’d love to, to have someday. But as far as somebody being able to come and see what they’re gonna see, I’m looking forward to seeing them together. ’cause I, I haven’t been able to see ’em put up together like that. And, and I’ve, I’ve got different, I’ve got a, I’ve got one little trilogy. It’s, there was a, a 237 deer that was officially scored and killed in Saskatchewan. And then in, that was in 2003. In 2001, his sheds were found and they scored 3 0 1. In 2002, his sheds were found and they scored 272. And then in 2003 he was killed. And he net scores 237. So we’ll have all three of those on one pedestal there with the story in the Big Buck magazine, that Canadian Big Buck Magazine with different pictures, something like that. Those are, that’s just something I have pretty unique.
00:24:31:27 –> 00:24:32:13
Yeah, that’s unique.
00:24:32:13 –> 00:25:11:11
Pretty unique. And I haven’t even been able to put it together yet at my house. So it’ll be interesting. I, I’m looking forward to seeing it put together at the expo and people are gonna be able to come in and see that, see if I, I mean he’s got 22 points on the one side that on the one year, and they’re cherry, brown, Canadian, brown, they have that chocolate color to ’em. Lots of two 20 bucks, two 30 bucks we’ve got, and we’ve got, you know, those are really hard sets of sheds to come by. But what are really hard to come by is 210 inch typicals. That’s, I think, one of the hardest, hardest set of sheds to Wow. To find, to, to stumble across to see some in somebody’s collection is a, is a legit 210 typical set of net typicals. We’ll have multiple sets of them there.
00:25:12:05 –> 00:25:42:07
Doc Meyer killed a buck on the gon that that we, we have his sheds, we have a lot of different pictures of him. We’ll have his sheds there. There was a governor’s tag this year that we have his sheds to that is a high 200 gross, mid 200 net typical. We’ll have his sheds there, brown and, and a couple others that are outta Wyoming that have those 210, 208 type net frames. They’re all just golden color and beautiful wide bucks. You know, some of ’em are 35 inch typicals and things like that. So just a real unique, unique,
00:25:42:08 –> 00:25:48:26
Basically, basically if you’re a trophy hunter or you like big animals, you’ll love this booth. If you’re not a trophy hunter, you shouldn’t even walk by.
00:25:50:01 –> 00:26:26:08
Well, and that too. Yeah. And coming and just in, you know, and enjoy it. Appreciate it for what it is. I’m hoping people, you know, we’re not, we’re not bringing it there to, to kind of, you know, throw a lot of stuff. I probably won’t even have scores on it as much. Just I want people to enjoy it, relax, have a good time, spend some time talk, talk about antlers, and just really appreciate what giant meal are. They’re rare, they’re hard to come by, they’re hard to find, they’re hard to kill. Finding a huge set of sheds anymore is, it’s so competitive and so hard. So I hope people can come and, and just enjoy theirself while they’re there and get to, to get to see what otherwise I think’s pretty tough to come by.
00:26:26:20 –> 00:27:29:19
Well, there’s no doubt about that. And it’s, it’s gonna be awesome. I’m looking forward to it myself. Just, just, you know, maybe before the expo opens so I can fondle and drill a little bit in private, you know, at some of those sheds and, and enjoy ’em. So looking forward and appreciate you guys wanting to team up and make an awesome booth and encourage everybody to come and see us. But you also, I mean, there’s no question that collection for you and Jeff has amassed a and and taken a lot of time, effort, you know, money, all the gas, all that type of stuff. But you guys are also hunters yourselves. And that’s, you know, that’s probably how Jason and I first got to know you back, you know, in the day when we were, you know, selling landowner tags or talking hunting and whatnot. So tell us a little bit about what really you guys, I mean you love big muled deer shed, so it’s a given. It’s not like you’re not gonna wanna hunt them too. But I’ve heard you love to hunt antelope as well. But tell us what you guys, what do you like to do as far as personal hunts the most? And, and let’s maybe dive into a couple of those hunts.
00:27:30:09 –> 00:28:15:00
Well, it’s, it there again. Yeah. It started with chasing big mule deer back in the, in the eighties. Southern Idaho was phenomenal general season tags that ran into November, November 10th, November 13th. So I had the good fortune of killing some really big deer when I was young and, and was, it was hunting and chasing mul deer when tags weren’t bonus points and tags were a lot easier to come by. So I grew up just total happiness, chasing and hunting big mul deer. And same with my brother. And then as we started kind of mule deer started getting tougher and tougher after the 91 92 winter mule deer got really tough, A lot of tags in, in, in places got cut back, getting a good tag, got really hard. So me and my brother got really involved in chasing brunet and hunting bo and Cro Antelope and went crazy at it.
00:28:15:01 –> 00:29:06:19
I mean, we, we, we chased him everywhere. Some years, three or four tags a piece from New Mexico, Colorado, Idaho. We didn’t care if we could acquire an antelope tag. We chased antelope and we were very successful at harvesting a lot of Boone Crockett antelope love hunting brockett antelope. We’ve, our boys are, we got young boys now. Most of ’em have been successful in killings, antelope and killing some big antelope. My brother’s boy killed 84 net pronghorn here a couple years ago, and it’s probably one of the biggest that, that somebody under the age of fifteens harvested. So we just, we really enjoy hunting, record book antelope, big Elk. We’ve, we’ve killed some big elk. Our dad’s been fortunate enough to draw some tags and some great units and we’ve had the opportunity to hunt and kill some bo and cro elk with, with our dad. I killed a bo and Cro Bullock this, this past hunting season in Idaho. Just had him officially scored. So just, just love hunting, love the
00:29:06:27 –> 00:29:07:15
Wait, what do you
00:29:08:16 –> 00:29:10:14
Don’t just spring that on us, like it just,
00:29:10:26 –> 00:29:13:26
I did see the after I did see the picture of that, but I didn’t know it netted
00:29:14:23 –> 00:29:38:08
It, it grossed 399 and five eights. The, the, the, the official measure could not come up with a couple eights to get me over the 400 mark, but he ended up netting right at 368 inches. Well 360 7 and six eights is what I think his official net was. He had a lot of frame deductions, he had like 16 inches in frame deductions and he has a nine inch cheater on him. But just an absolute gorgeous bull I killed here in southern Idaho this
00:29:38:08 –> 00:29:40:21
Past You’re working on a, I know you’re working on a story for us, right?
00:29:41:07 –> 00:29:43:14
Oh yeah, I’ve been writing it since last fall.
00:29:44:26 –> 00:29:53:08
It’s an unbelievable bull. This, I don’t know what, what’s the fifth on that far? On the, on his right side going, I mean it’s 20 something. Yeah, it’s 25.
00:29:53:18 –> 00:29:54:28
Yeah, he’s got a crazy,
00:29:55:03 –> 00:29:58:11
It’s longer than a sword. It looks as longer. It’s a crazy backend.
00:29:58:21 –> 00:30:07:25
So there’s lots of questions that we’re gonna have to talk to you about after this podcast is over regarding this bull the tag, you know, the whole situation there that Adam and I didn’t wanna know.
00:30:10:09 –> 00:30:40:07
And then I, I’ll we’ll, we’ll bring it up. Let’s bring it up. I’m back in probably about 2000 and I don’t know if it was eight or nine, I acquired a deer tag through Adam and went over to Colorado and had a blast. It was a four season hunt. Had to work pretty hard to, didn’t have a lot of weather, had to work around private property. But Adam had given me some grade info on the unit and it worked out. And I killed a buck That gross scored 218 inches with a 202 frame.
00:30:40:23 –> 00:31:47:04
Yeah, I remember it. I’d been to that unit probably, I dunno, three or four years prior. And that was my first trip there and got lucky and killed a 200 inch or kind of, you know, 2004 five when Colorado was really ripe. You know, the tag allocation system changed in like 99, 98 or nine, I forget now, to a draw unit by unit and things just blossomed, you know, as harvest was reduced. And this was a leftover tag unit at the time I was hunting third season. And anyway, I remember that tag and I joked about it earlier in the podcast. It still stings a little bit when I see at the buck. Not that I’d have found that deer, but it’s like I end up buying the tag for myself. And that was back when you can buy a tag and resell it and whatnot. And I ended up just had, had a sheep hunt that just kept lingering on and on. And it was one of those, the writing was on the wall. I’ve, I’ve gotta go back into the escali desert with this guy and that’s not just something you go do for a quick weekend hunt. And so I remember, you know, unloading it to you, you took it off my hands and so I get had to go take care of that. And then you killed an awesome, awesome buck inline fire. One of your
00:31:47:05 –> 00:31:48:17
Five of your best, wasn’t it? One of your best bucks?
00:31:50:02 –> 00:32:16:04
Yeah, I’ve killed some wider deer, but as far as just absolute stud, stud buck palmated, it just a beautiful buck. It was a fun hunt. My me and my brother were able to go over, you know, three or four days early and then scout it hard and learn new country and had just a great hunt. It’s just, you know, I’ve hunted Colorado for 20 years basically. And it was just one of those hunts that everything fell together. Yep. Just the way it should, not, not only did we kill a giant buck, we just had a great time, had a great experience. Well,
00:32:16:04 –> 00:32:35:22
And Adam and I have teased ever since about this hunter that he had to take and that whole, I don’t know if you’ve ever been out in the Eslan desert when it feels like it’s negative 40, you know, those deserts can get really cold in that sandstone and he’s away at ice trying to get water. I mean, it kicked his butt from the time you killed that buck all the way through basically to Christmas. Yeah,
00:32:35:28 –> 00:32:40:07
We killed the round like December 17th. I mean, it was just one of those hunts that
00:32:40:10 –> 00:32:41:00
It was a grind.
00:32:41:13 –> 00:32:56:00
Yeah. The hunter would end up, he missed rams every time and just kind of ended up going that way. And the riding was on the wall after every trip in there. I’m gonna have to come back and I’m not gonna be able to call to Colorado, David, take this tag, it’s yours and do good things with it. And he did
00:32:56:07 –> 00:32:57:08
And he did well and he did.
00:32:57:13 –> 00:33:33:07
You know, I think to me personally, yeah, some of my, some of my most memorable hunts have kind of ended up that way. Oh yeah. Just short, kind of short notice. Didn’t have, you know, it seems like some of the times when I’ve had all, I killed a really big record book Antelope in Wyoming one year, and I, it, it took me 17 days of scouting before I finally found him. Wow. And it literally, the night I, I, I actually threw up the night before the hunt. I couldn’t sleep weeks before the hunt. I look back at it and think, wow, how tough. And, you know, I mean, yeah, do I do I I love the, I I mean it’s one of my favorite bucks, but it was tough on me. And now I look back at some of these ones that things just kind of seem to fall together.
00:33:33:17 –> 00:34:22:10
This elk tag I had this year kind of fell into my lap short notice and I was able to go and have a great elk hunt there again. I was, the morning I found the big bull. My son, my 13 year old son was with me and my brother was able to come out with me that night and, and kill it with me that night. And we were take, we were able to take our boys out the next day and we had to backpack him out. So it was some of those things just kind of, I look at things with a lot different perspective than I used to. And so it’s, it’s, it’s funny how we get a little older, how we think about things and we evolve, but it’s all getting out there and en enjoying it with friends, family. And that’s what we’re hoping shed tours and what we’re able to do with you guys down at the expo. Just everybody have a good time and come and see something. And kinda like getting to go to Colorado and, and seeing a giant buck come to the expo and you’re gonna see, you know, a 306 inch set of beautiful milder sheds, you know, so yeah, that can be pretty, we’re important to.
00:34:22:25 –> 00:34:59:07
Well we just, we kinda wanted to get you on the line. I know you’ve gotta go. We just kinda wanted to introduce you guys, basically let the world know what’s, what’s gonna be in our booth, both you guys and us as well. And then anyway, just talk about a few things. Just let people kind of get to know you a little bit. Know that you guys are hardcore hunters, you’re out there doing it. There’s a lot more than just selling optics. We can come talk about hunting and, and all kinds of great stuff. And so we’re really looking forward to, I know everybody I’ve talked to, there’s a lot of serious hardcore hunters, but, you know, milder hunters especially that are way looking forward to coming and wasting a lot of time at your booth. So.
00:34:59:11 –> 00:35:31:08
Well, and that’s what we’re hoping if you’re, if you’re a, if you’re a milder enthusiast and you love mule deer sheds and you love really big milder sheds, hey, just come have a good time. Ask us, ask us questions about ’em. We’ll have quite a few, some really big singles like the Lopez, but Kyle Lopez killed that giant non-typical and we’ll, we’ve got the single off of him from the year before scores 145 inches. Geez. Just a absolutely gorgeous shed. So, you know, come ask us to look at a couple of those if you, if you’ve got questions about ’em, feel free to ask and, and, and we deal
00:35:31:08 –> 00:35:31:24
With, if it works
00:35:31:24 –> 00:35:33:26
Out we’ll grab ’em and they can even hold ’em and look at ’em.
00:35:33:26 –> 00:35:41:05
Yeah. And we deal with Kyle A. Little bit over there guiding hunters and stuff, so he’ll probably be over there fondling that deer shed too. Yeah,
00:35:41:05 –> 00:35:47:07
I’m not even sure he’s actually seen the shed, to be honest. I don’t know for sure that he’s actually ever seen the, the shed antler off of it, so.
00:35:47:08 –> 00:35:48:01
Wow. That’s crazy.
00:35:48:02 –> 00:35:53:00
That’ll be, that’ll be interesting if he’s, if he makes it here and he can, he can look at it. So yeah. Wow.
00:35:53:00 –> 00:36:11:16
Well tell, you know, I know Jeff’s there in the room, of course we are having a little complications with the audio up there. Wanted to, wanted to introduce him as well, but we didn’t get to, we’ll have plenty of time. We’ll do more podcasts with you guys as we continue our relationship with you. I just wanted a little shout out to Jeff. I know he is right there and let everybody know. Yeah,
00:36:11:16 –> 00:36:13:12
He’s sitting right here by me smiling the whole time. Both,
00:36:14:15 –> 00:36:18:22
Both you and Jeff will be at there, at the expo and, and have a lot contribute. Yeah,
00:36:18:22 –> 00:36:42:04
We’ll be there the whole time. Hey, we want to thank you guys too for inviting us. We couldn’t ask to, to be with a better group of guys. We’re looking forward to it. We’re a little nervous about it, just that’s our first time. But I think we’re prepared. I don’t think we’re gonna come down unprepared, but we wanna thank you guys. We epic outdoors. You, we’ve been, we’ve been doing business with you guys and knowing you guys for years and we look, we look forward to being down there next week with you guys.
00:36:42:19 –> 00:37:06:04
Yeah, that sounds great. So yeah, we appreciate you guys doing that and, and appreciate you spending some time with us today. I think it’ll cut to the chase, get people more excited to come see what you got. That’s kind of what this was, maybe a teaser. You guys have huge wealth of information when it comes to, you know, optics, what’s best for people, their set up and all that. So invite everybody to come to the expo and talk with Jeff and David and their crew and yeah,
00:37:06:04 –> 00:37:24:02
We’ll, we’ll have some, we’ll have some other guys there with us that know as much about long range shooting, long range shining, doing it ethically, doing it smart. We at at least how to set your rifle up. You know, it’s up to a customer to decide what they’re, what, what, what they’re setting the gun up for. But we’ll, we’ll do our very, very best to help ’em set it up correctly. So, yeah. Okay. Right
00:37:24:02 –> 00:37:29:29
On. Well we sure appreciate you guys. We’ll okay, we’re packing the trailer as as we speak. So that’s
00:37:29:29 –> 00:37:32:22
What we’re heading to do this afternoon. Get the trailer and get it packing.
00:37:32:25 –> 00:37:33:18
Okay, sounds good. Sounds
00:37:33:18 –> 00:37:34:19
Good guys. We’ll see you. See
00:37:34:19 –> 00:37:35:12
You next week. Alright,
00:37:35:12 –> 00:37:36:18
Thank you guys. You bet.
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