EP 67: Question and Answer with Jason Carter and Adam Bronson. In this episode of the Epic Outdoors Podcast. Jason and Adam take questions from listeners and answer them. The questions range in topic but are answered from the points of view of our hosts. This is a very informative episode that may answer questions that you personally have had. We will continue offering question answer podcasts so if you have a question feel free to DM us on Instagram or Facebook and we will try to work your question in.
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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There’s only one way to get to your current frame of mind and that’s to go through experience stuff.
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Us as non-residents didn’t draw a single hybrid tag for Elk Deer last
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Year. We’re gonna have to take the down years with the good years.
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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 from the Epic Outdoors Podcast, doing a little bit different podcast today we’ll be doing a little bit of a series of a question and answer podcast. So anyway, this’ll be the first of a few maybe. So anyway, we cut the questions down. We just got a, something we felt like was manageable for today’s podcast. But anyway, before we get started, we wanna thank Under Armour for sponsoring this podcast. We’ve been wearing the Under Armour gear for years and appreciate them and their support of what we got going. We really, really like their baron pattern. It’s specifically designed for hunting the west and it’s been awesome. So especially in some of this desert and arid environments, you can see some, a video of some of the new lineup on the Epic Outdoors YouTube channel in a video we released recently showcasing the new 2018 product lines. So anyway, again, we appreciate them and their support for what we’ve been doing here at Epic Outdoors. And so anyway, Bronson, you wanna start us off on maybe a few of these questions We’ve invited people on our social media to, to ask a few questions of just different things they might wanna hear us talk about here on the podcast.
00:01:34:01 –> 00:02:27:07
Yeah, we appreciate everybody sending ideas to us. This is, might be fun. Who knows? First off, from Dave being an eastern white till hunter. I have the Mully bug, I got it a few years back in Wyoming. I’ve been back every year since I decided this year I’d give Colorado a try. I’ve applied for a preference point only this year’s plans of hunting in Colorado in three to five years. Would you guys have any unit recommendations and or advice for a few Eastern guys looking at a do it yourself Colorado hunt? Yeah, we’ve talked about Colorado before on this podcast, but obviously years change things and we probably get more questions regarding Colorado deer than maybe any other question we get for the year because there are so many options. First thing, I guess you’d probably start off by identifying the weapon you want to hunt with.
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Colorado has, you know, archery muzzle loader and two to sometimes three rifle hunts, sometimes four if you’ve got an early season rifle hunt. So you have, you know, from the end of August through mid-November, you’ve gotta identify that. One thing that some of you eastern guys have to contend with that we know we hear from you guys is you guys like to hunt your white tails that first two weeks in November in a lot of states. So you have to decide, it’s frankly why Jason and I have not gotten into the big white tails in Iowa and some of these other states with a bow in the rut is we’ve not been willing to put aside our mule deer hunting then to go hunt whitetails. And conversely, you guys have to decide whether you can do that. Give up your whitetail hunting then to come hunt mules with a rifle.
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But so first off, you gotta decide the weapon that you want and then you know, it sounds like you’ve got some mule hunting under your belt in Wyoming and whatnot. I don’t know how well you’ve been doing, if you’ve been killing one 60 or 70 or 80 type deer then I would say keep doing that. Colorado’s got those kind of deers, got great genetics, but you gotta kind of set a, a benchmark or size of deer and that would probably govern our unit selection process for you. If you say, Hey I only want 180 plus or I don’t wanna make the trip to Colorado, you’re probably gonna stretch it honestly to a little bit more on the five to maybe a few more years than that end of thing if you really want to increase your odds of killing 180. But we definitely are advocates of hunting Colorado on a shorter cycle.
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Three to five we think is a good number that you’ve suggested, but you’re gonna have to take the down years with the good years if you do that, you’re gonna go there, experience tough weather, you’re gonna have years like the last couple that you’ve not had the weather lineup great for a migration outta the high country or rud initiation or things like that. And you’re gonna say, geez, that I’ve heard about a lot about Colorado. And you know, that was, that was a rough year. And then you could go the very next year on the similar to same season dates and it’s crushed, it’s phenomenal. You have deer all down low, they’re starting to rutt and you can say, how come I’ve been waiting this long to hunt Colorado? It could go either way. You have to be prepared to go to Colorado, Colorado consistently and hunt, you know, every time you can. Now frankly, we have it as part of our rotation and you know, we, we go there and eat tags some year.
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Yeah, I think that, I think you’re exactly right. I think there’s a lot of different, the nice thing about Colorado is there’s tons of different season options. Like you’ve got second thirds, fourth, even some of the fourths like Adam, you’ve hunted a fourth, you know, and, and easy to draw units stuff that takes five points or less depending on the year. And, and I’ve done the same. And so it’s just a matter of the season dates. The nice thing we like about the second and third rifles is, you know, you’ve got a longer season date, you’ve got nine days to hunt versus your fourth being a five day season. And so you have a little more chance of having weather or whatever. And like last year I was on a fourth and you end up feeling like you’re hunting the seconds of what’s left over on the second and third.
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And so there’s, it’s always just one of those things you, you, you know, you can turn your tag back if you do it 30 days prior and get your points back, but you don’t know what the weather’s gonna be 30 days in advance. And so it is dependent on the weather. If you get weather on the second, you’re gonna have a great hunt. If you get weather on the third, you’re gonna have a great hunt. And so like you said, hunt more often than waiting because you know the chances of having good weather, good hunting conditions is better if you’re hunting three or four times in 20 years versus one time in 20 years. And so it seems like when you get the weather you have, you kill big bucks in almost every unit. If you don’t get the weather, it’s tough even in the best units. So
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That’s what I would say. So Dave, when it comes down to a specific unit, feel free to give us a call when you’re looking to maybe cash in your points, there’ll be something based on that year, the season date for that year, second season, third season or archer muzzle or nail down the weapon. You wanna hunt the season timeframe you wanna come out and then give us a call for a specific unit. ’cause it’ll, it may vary two to three years from now or four when you’re looking to do it. We could be recommending a unit right now we’re not, or vice versa. A unit that’s hot and doing well right now could taper off, get over hunted slightly or have a winter kill issue or something like that. So call us in the year you want to come. Yeah.
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The other thing too we look at a little bit is being able to draw maybe a second choice unit, still gain your points and if you do, you know, apply for something that you can draw on your second and and you do that then, then you get to hunt every year. And so there’s nothing wrong with that. Some of these second choice units will produce big bucks as well. So consider that, like Adam said, we publish it in the magazine. We also consult with guys every day on where and when to apply and and whatnot. So
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Speaking of Colorado, we spend a lot of time talking about that and, and we get a lot of calls on it like we’ve mentioned. We get questions asked of people saying, Hey, what about this hybrid draw? I know that it’s a preference point state for deer and elk, but I’m gonna go for the hybrid draw because at least there’s a chance. Jason, how would you either foster that mindset or crush his hopes and dreams?
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Well it is something you actually, we don’t even think about the hybrid and there’s several reasons why. The main reason us is non-residents didn’t draw a single hybrid tag for elk and deer last year. Adam and I went through it, of course we get a little tangent at three in the morning and we went through every hunt code that’s available in the hybrid. And those are listed I believe on page eight in the regulations. And you can read about it on page eight. You’ll also see where it says non-resident quotas apply on these.
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Yes, most of these units we are set with a 20%, not the 35 because they are high demand units for residents and non-residents. That’s right. Which kicks us down to only being allowed up to 20%. What you’ll notice as well is because that percentage is so small that non-residents have the most points in these units. We’re talking about like, let’s take, you know, 2 10, 2 0 1. These top, top northwest corner units. You’re only talking about removing one to five non-residents a year off the top versus 10 to 25 residents. And so they whittle that down. And so when they do the preference point, draw the regular
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Draw, the
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First five tags are gonna go to non-residents with 24, 5, 6, whatever. Because they have the most, yeah,
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They’re allocated to the people at the most points until we reach our quota,
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Boom, four tags are issued, non-resident quota was met. Right. Then there’s therefore every remaining tag in the preference draw. Sometimes it skips two to three point levels before the residents start drawing. That’s right. Maximum point tag. That’s right. Preference point tags and then comes in the hybrid draw. Well if the non-res quota was met, clear up here because they out, you know, out compete at the residents,
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Which we do 99% of the time. Yep.
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Then there’s nothing left for the, the hybrid draw. We did see some resident kids youth draw hybrid tags. That’s
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Right. Six points I think, if I remember right, five
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Or six points, a youth drew an incredible elk tag. All right. Yes.
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Resident,
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Resident youth but did not find one instance. So repeatedly it’ll squash your hopes and dreams. I know, but you’re not gonna draw that 2 0 1 as a non-resident in the hybrid draw or, or any of those that are listed because of the fact that the non-resident quota is being met in the preference point portion of that draw and there’s no, no 20% is maxed out and there’s no remaining tag for the random hybrid draw. And
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What’s hilarious when we looked at it is like for mul there, for example, we looked at the hunt codes available. There’s like, I don’t, I’m just going from memory so I don’t have in front of me. I wish I did two or three that are the regular hunt coats. Everything else was ranching for wildlife, which is available to residents only. That’s right. Regardless. And so, yeah, I mean, what are you giving us? Thanks, we appreciate it Colorado. Thank you. But it’s, but we just wanna reiterate not one non-resident drew
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Deer now
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Last year,
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Just ignore it, just pretend it didn’t exist. You know, we’re, we’re doing this kind of from an informational standpoint. We hear it from people they call us with other philosophies. They’ve either heard somewhere else or come up with by reading through the regulations. And initially when you read it you think, oh that gives me a chance. If I have at least five points or more I can be in the hybrid drawing these units. No, in reality you can’t. And they clearly say non-resident quotas, quotas apply. Apply and, and it’ll squash out because non-residents in those units have the most points of anybody there and they’re gonna meet their 20% quota.
00:11:00:08 –> 00:11:08:12
That’s right. And preference point there. The one instance, we’ve talked about this ’cause we have a really good friend of ours that drew in the hybrid in the antelope. The antelope do not have resident non-resident quotas.
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We’re all in the that together. There’s no 35 or 25, 20% limit to non non-residents. That’s
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Right. So have at it. Yes, that does apply.
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Hybrid draw does work. We’ve, we’ve drawn people with five to seven points for unit three or other units. That’s right for antelope. So antelope, it doesn’t apply Dream, dream big on that, but deer, elk just pretend it didn’t even exist. Yeah. For
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Another reason. I felt like people were kind of hanging their hats on that. And of course it’s fun to talk about and all exciting and whatnot, but when in reality you know, it, it actually forced people to put that one of those choices in as their first choice when maybe they would’ve chose a different hunk code. You know what I’m saying? Maybe, maybe they would’ve chosen
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Something that’s something they legitimately had a chance, chance to get. Yeah. I’m thinking, oh, I’ve got a random chance to draw a 2 0 1 tag. No you didn’t. Yeah. So just, just by way of education a little bit, it is confusing, it’s not spelled out clearly. We went through and looked at the odds specifically and saw every hybrid person that drew and they were all residents. So residents of Colorado, we’re not talking to you. We realize there are, there are random chances for you to draw some of these deer tags and the ranching for wildlife and the few units that actually are non ranching for wildlife that are in the hyper draw as well as the best elk tags in the state residents. Totally different story apply. You might get lucky. So
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Anyway, little tangent. Yep. Next question. Can you provide the expected dates for the 20 20 20 through 2024 Colorado season dates? Interested to know how the third, third season dates play out during these years. Thanks Bert.
00:12:39:08 –> 00:13:48:07
Yeah, well that’s, everybody’s questions usually do revolve around Colorado and season dates. It’s one of the few states you can hunt, hunt during the rutt in November. They do set their season dates in five year chunks. And bird, as you probably know, they’re, they’re online now for 2015 through 2019. And during 2019 sometime they’ll go through a public comment period and input process and develop those for 2020 to 2024. But to give you some ideas of, I guess what the framework that they’ve been working under, at least these last two cycles I believe, which is maybe 10 years now, is the archery season and muzzle loader seasons are, are independent of the rifles in that the archery season starts the last Saturday in August. That’s how it’s been going. And the muzz loader season have started the second Saturday in September when it comes to the rifle seasons, the first season in Colorado for first combined, we’re not talking about early high country rifle, but the first combined season or, or first rifle season I guess is elk only.
00:13:48:10 –> 00:15:22:10
And it starts the first Saturday after October 9th. So the earliest that that ever gets is the 10th of October and then the second season and the third season, you know, follow those accordingly. You get a five day hunt. And so then that second Saturday after October 9th will be the opener of the second season and you know, the next Saturday after that will be the, I guess the second weekend of the second and then you’d have a five day break. But, but in essence the driver is that first rifle season opening the first Saturday after October 9th, looking ahead I guess to 2020 that was on the 10th wasn’t not right Jason. That’s right. It sets to start on the 10th if you’re want wanting to know when the dates are gonna kick late in Colorado, if that’s really what your question is. If they maintain the status quo with this, this season setting procedure in 2021, the third season in Colorado would open November 6th if that’s really what you’re getting down to now. I would just put all kinds of caution behind that that they could, in this next five year season setting process, they could switch it all up and say, hey, we wanna set, set opening dates on exact seasons that don’t fluctuate year to year. I mean that would be pretty radical change. They haven’t done that but they could. So, but if everything stays status quo, that’s the best we could do to give you an insight of when those dates might be the latest they would get.
00:15:22:10 –> 00:15:38:18
Yeah, it’s one thing to line ’em out for five years. The big important thing is when they ratchet late, which gives you better weather, better chance for weather and better chance for a good rutt. So anyway, 2021 would be the year that everybody’s really interested in. So. Alright, next question
00:15:39:04 –> 00:15:46:11
From Patrick. What is the best strategy for early season high country mule deer hunting in Colorado? How about it? Carter?
00:15:47:13 –> 00:16:35:10
So early season, high country hunting, definitely pre-season scouting if you can, you know, if you can’t pre-season scout in the summer, you should be doing those later seasons in any state. And that’s what, you know, personally, we pre-season scout stuff that’s close, close to home for us. And knowing that we can spend a lot of time throughout the summer and we, we’ve always tried to find a one 90 to 200 inch plus deer, you know, early season and use that as our, as our kind of our, our hunt that we scout a lot for. And then for example, we go to Colorado or, or any other, you know, place that’s got late season dates like you did in Wyoming this last year. But anyway that you don’t preseason scout and, and you can’t scout the rutt, you can’t scout migration per se. Some of those late hunts in Nevada, you can’t scout those ones.
00:16:35:10 –> 00:17:32:29
You do, you might go learn the roads, you might go learn some country, but you’re not gonna keep a track track of a migrating deer. And so the important thing on high country stuff, in my opinion would be spending a lot of time, you know, if you’ve got a work schedule that allows it or, or it’s not 12 hour drive each way, spend a lot of time, you know, hiking in glass and a big glass and that high country stuff is a lot of you guys know, you know, generally has a lot of water. It’s not like you’re in a trail camera water holes or, or whatnot. And then there’s some baiting restrictions and salt restrictions into different states. Not here in Utah but other states. There is. And so, you know, you’re not gonna be, you know, salting bucks and putting trail cameras out and whatnot. You’re gonna be glassing, you’re gonna be glassing a lot of those open basins and high ridge lines and whatnot. And then obviously they’re gonna go bed and, and different, you know, stands of trees be a little bit tougher. And so anyway, preseason scout, I think’s the name of the game and heavy glass and long distance glassing. Yep.
00:17:33:19 –> 00:18:02:07
And if you can’t do that, you’re gonna have to just go there and hope to get lucky. Or you might consider enlisting the service of an outfitter because it’s really, that’s what it comes down to. I agree totally. If you don’t have time to put into it, scout, find those deer in their patterns, that’s when they’re vulnerable, they’re in velvet, that’s when they’re, you know, feeding and bedding and that’s all they’re in a routine to do and they’re in the open. If you can’t spend the time to do that or pay someone else that can, it might not be in your best interest to burn a bunch of points doing that unless you’re just hoping to go get lucky.
00:18:02:11 –> 00:18:27:26
The one thing I guess to be a little bit concerned about on some of that early stuff, depending on the state, you’re gonna have archery hunters, muzzle or hunters. A lot of those, you know, as well as some early rifle hunts and stuff just depends on the state. So you might be dealing with different pressures and whatnot, but a lot of big bucks have been killed in the high country and there’s a lot of guys that just live, live for hunting the high country. And so everybody kind of has their own little, you know, forte of what they like. Well,
00:18:27:26 –> 00:19:12:25
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00:19:13:05 –> 00:19:43:26
Okay, here we go. Next question from Tim. Quick question for your podcast. If I buy a landowner tag, I’m sure each state is different, so maybe an answer for a few different states that sell them, but I am unsuccessful on my hunt. Can that tag be transferred to someone else to fill if I can no longer hunt or once a tag is bought from a landowner, it can only be used by the original person who purchased it. So the quick and short answer
00:19:44:14 –> 00:20:33:00
Yeah. In, in all states, when you redeem a landowner tag in your name, you, you are committed. When you redeem the voucher to the state, you get the permit. Even if you’re successful and I don’t have time to come back, you can’t go now, redeem that to somebody else and get half price money out of it. Once you commit it to your name, you’re, you’re committed that that’s gone. Now there are a few exceptions, Jason, maybe you can run through a few of them. I guess we’re mainly talking about Nevada, Utah, New Mexico and Colorado. For the most part, those estate we’re talking about, they do have provisions once you purchase one from a landowner, if you’re unable to go on the hunt itself and you haven’t redeemed the voucher, there are some provisions for reselling or getting rid of that tag. You wanna run through those real quick? Yeah, real
00:20:33:00 –> 00:20:52:01
Quick there in Colorado it does say in the rules, a landowner voucher may be only transferred one time. The landowner may transfer the voucher to any hunter who is legally eligible to hold the license. So you just must, must only be able to transfer at one time. There is no reselling, reselling, reselling nothing in
00:20:52:11 –> 00:21:07:16
Colorado like that. Colorado, yep. When you commit, you’re committed. When you send ’em a check and and they transfer it, send you the voucher. If you can’t go, you’re, you’re out. You can’t get your money back from the landowner. Tell ’em to resell it. You’re committed so different in a couple of these other states
00:21:07:16 –> 00:21:45:22
Though. Yeah, and that’s kind of I guess a recent change. I wanna say, you know, recent meaning last decade. But anyway, no, no transferring of that we, I mean guys used to be able to just have a stack of a hundred of ’em and send ’em out and sell ’em and then they could send ’em out and sell ’em to their buddies or whatever you wanted to do. You did mention Adam in Nevada and New Mexico real quick. Utah obviously, but you can resell those, you can have a stack of tags in your hand and sell ’em to your buddies or whatever you wanna do with it. Your buddy can’t go, he can sell ’em as long as he hasn’t put it in his name. Once you put it in your name, it’s in your name. That’s the end of it. Yeah. No matter what state we’re talking about.
00:21:45:25 –> 00:22:29:28
That’s right. So they are a good option if you want to have something early in the year, you know, December, January, February, get buy a landowner tag for deer, elk in one of the, those three states, Utah, Nevada, New Mexico. So you’re guaranteed to go on something. They are a good way to do that, to make sure you have something. Then if you do draw a tag that maybe takes precedent or whatever, you can flip that, get rid of it to a buddy or you know, we can, we oftentimes help people get rid of those. The biggest the biggest thing to remember is once you mail it into the state, buy the permit, put it in your name in all states you’re committed. Unless maybe there’s some provisions of death and of immediate family or yeah, severe medical emergencies, but we’re not talking about those really.
00:22:30:07 –> 00:23:02:25
So, and one thing before we leave this subject, a kind of a little cool fact, a little fun fact in Nevada you can have multiple tags. So if you wanted to buy two or three landowner tags, have at it, put ’em in your name, kill three deer, kill three elk, whatever you’d like, and, and you can draw a tag as well. So there’s no, there’s no issues with that. You, you can’t do that in the other states. And so, you know, that’s just one of those kinda little, little fun facts. They don’t, you wanna buy tags, you can buy tags. Kind of the only state that that’s offered in anything else you can think of?
00:23:02:29 –> 00:23:04:06
No, I that covered that.
00:23:04:08 –> 00:23:13:00
Maybe, maybe a little bit on the Colorado tags just as far as how hard they are to come by and we don’t, you know, hear about as many of those as we get a lot of questions about that.
00:23:13:13 –> 00:24:05:12
Yeah, we do. And it, it used to be something that we were heavily involved with, you know, eight, 10 years ago when, when they didn’t have the restrictions of having to buy directly from the landowner and transfer them one time and one time only. They’ve tightened a lot of that up just to, I guess Colorado’s way of making sure to whatever extent the landowner and hunter in direct communication, they’ve also made it, made it tightened up the, the law that landowners have to allow access to the property that they buy that they’re selling the tag for. And so, and then they also changed some percentage of the permits. It used to be that 15% of the tags in Colorado for deer and elk and antelope went to landowners and they were all unit wide. They increased that to 20% but of that 20% half go to private land only the other half are unit wide.
00:24:05:15 –> 00:24:47:28
So really you took a cut from 15% unit wide to now only 10% unit wide. They got cut by a third. And you know, the fact that just as more and more time goes on and landowners are nervous of, hey how do I get rid of these? And they, they’ve been dealing with either outfitters or repeat buyers more and more as they’ve had more and more years to be able to buy and sell those when they find a good groove, people that are treating them well, buying them, not causing problems, a lot of repeats, buying those not as many tags on the open market, you cut a third of ’em out and then increase the amount of time that they’ve been doing that. There’s, there’s a lot of people that have their foot in the door on those and it’s hard getting harder and harder to get your hands on ’em.
00:24:47:29 –> 00:25:14:28
Yeah, that’s exactly right. Alright, well next question. What’s up guys? My name is Jeremy. I wanna say thanks for the fat tire boots. I won on one of the podcast giveaways that maybe we should maybe give something away a little bit later on. So my question is, this is only my second year putting in for out-of-state hunts and I wasn’t raised around the out-of-state hunting. We’ve always done well here in California. He didn’t say California call me for but, but California, he
00:25:14:28 –> 00:25:15:23
Wrote that. He wrote, not wrote
00:25:15:23 –> 00:25:56:17
That. That’s a direct translation. So I don’t get a lot of time off. Me and my wife and son wanna experience other states. What are the main states I should focus on being, I can’t scout a whole lot Als I would like to go on one of, out-of-state hunt a year. What should be my long-term goal for outta state being that I’m late to the game, I’m 33. I know it’s gonna be real hard to draw those great tags. So just good hunts are okay with us. If my, if my question is picked, I’d like to have give a shout out to Jimmy Devon. He’s the one that pushed me to start doing other things. Thanks for the other podcast magazine to help out a lot also. Have a wonderful day. All right Bronson, I don’t know which part you wanna start with. So
00:25:56:28 –> 00:26:51:29
I guess my and I do, when people call in and consult us, I where they live does maybe a guy from Texas I, I’ll always start bringing up Colorado and New Mexico because they’re closer to them if they’re just starting New Mexico doesn’t have a point system, things like that. In this case Jeremy, you’ve been from California. I, I’d look at Nevada, no question. Not that it’s a state that you can plan and go regularly, but that it’s close. There’s no waiting period on deer. If you’re not after the best of the best you can put in for average deer tags and get them, you know, I’ll just say maybe every five years. I mean that’s pretty regular, you know, pretty regular. Especially if you mix up weapon types. If you’re gonna do Nevada, make sure if you bite off that $155 license fee, make sure you do multiple species, maybe do the deer, elk, cantaloupe, desert sheep, just so you get more bang for the buck. Probably look at Utah because it is also somewhat close to you.
00:26:54:01 –> 00:27:44:12
Utah’s odds are tough. But one thing that I would make sure it’s probably the, the quickest way to go on a hunt every two to three years is the Utah general season. Deer, you, you brought up the fact that you just want decent hunts. You don’t need the hard to draw great tags. A Utah general should be something that you plan your hunting schedule around every one to three years. You can come to Utah on a general season deer and it’s not that far away. You know, the elk, the, the limit entry, deer sheet, moose, goat, all of those are gonna be very tough to get. Definitely gonna play the game. You’re gonna buy the hunting license for 65 bucks. Do the general year general deer make that part of your rotation every year. Two, three and play the other games for that stuff. When it comes to, you know, the, the other states, you know Idaho’s one you might consider deer and elk no point system.
00:27:45:17 –> 00:28:58:00
You can go after some general season tags as a backup there. That could be your backup plan, your closest state with backup general season deer and elk would be Idaho closest, you know, tag I guess to California that I would make my time to do. I know there’s options in Oregon and other places, but I would, I would put Idaho as your closest state that I would look at from general season deer now perspective and then, then it probably gets to your personal interests. If you’re more of a deer guy then definitely I look at Colorado building points there for sure. If you are more of an elk guy, I’d, I’d recommend, you know, probably Wyoming. You can get general season out every couple of years and do hard to draw elk tags in the years. You don’t want a general season tag. Play the general deer draw game in Wyoming as well for opportunity. You can go every three to five years on good general season. Deer tags in Wyoming too Arizona, I don’t know, I’ll let you maybe talk about that Jason, but it’s a little bit like Nevada un, although you don’t have that easy to draw deer options in in Arizona, you’re gonna probably, Arizona’s gonna be a long, long-term goal on the sheep, deer and deer and elk unless you do over the counter or something.
00:28:58:03 –> 00:29:42:04
Yeah, exactly. And so some of our, you know, they did kind of change it to where half of our non-resident tags can go on the random drawings. So we do tell guys, yeah, go ahead apply for Arizona, deer, sheep, elk and different things. We’ve, Adam, you’ve even drawn stuff that’s on random draw quote random draw. You didn’t force it with your points. And so although we force stuff with our points as well, both of us have. But anyway, you, there are some easier to draw early season kibab early season stuff that’s, you know, not premium tags but does give you an opportunity to kill something good. And so we again, by the time we get done with this, we’re gonna have this guy applying covered every absolutely everything. I, no question you should be doing Colorado. And you know, same thing with Wyoming and different things that we’ve talked about.
00:29:42:04 –> 00:30:50:24
Of course you brought up that. So there’s things you can do. Like Adam said, you’ve got the Utah General Deer, you’ve got Wyoming General Elk, you’ve got some general deer options in Idaho that are over the counter. You’ve got over the counter in Arizona if you need. And so there’s plenty of things you can do once a year. I think that long-term goal, you’ve got what should be my long-term goal. It’s like Adam said, you’re, you gotta figure out what’s important to you and if you ever want to hunt a sheep in your life, you should apply for ’em. But maybe you do it blindly so to speak. Like you don’t think about it. We don’t think about a lot of these that we’re doing ’cause we don’t expect to draw ’em and you just kind of do ’em out habit to make good use of the non-refundable license where that pertains or whatever to be able to gain points for those. And so you just kind of do that and we, we help guys here in the office develop short-term long-term goals all the time. It’s gonna be very specific and tailored to you. And so there’s a lot more we would need to know on about you and what your preferences are and getting your wife started getting your kids or whatever, whatever that the case may be. And so 33 is still young, you’ve got plenty of time. No, I’d definitely be applying and not be scared even though you feel like you’re late to the game.
00:30:51:00 –> 00:31:20:06
Well, and one thing to say, we’ve been there, I mean Jason and I have lived through the, you know, brand newly married, broke is broke and we realize to some extent this comes down to budget and that changes throughout your twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, hopefully as you start, you know, getting into a career and job and have a little bit more disposable income. It doesn’t mean as much to you to give up 150 or 200 bucks in a state, but when you’re 21 or something, it’s deal mean. We were a big deal broke, we were robbing Peter and Pam Paul still
00:31:20:06 –> 00:31:21:07
Sometimes Rob Peter
00:31:21:07 –> 00:31:55:01
Credit card checks anyway. And I mean it was anything possible to stay in the game and now got a lot of points. And so you have to do it within your means. If there’s, if there’s states, if you set a, a budget of how much can I commit to a application plan set each year and it’s 500 bucks or a thousand bucks, whatever, well then you’re just gonna have to cut some of the states that are maybe like the Nevada’s or the Arizona’s, what’s gonna be 200 a pop. Unless you say, hey, that one’s one I’m gonna stick to and go to the ones that are a little bit cheaper like Utah or building deer points in Colorado or deer, elk points in Wyoming. Something like that. So
00:31:55:07 –> 00:32:37:23
I think part of this too is, you know, you can do these and we’ve done ’em at ’em where you, you pick these maybe a little bit easier to draw and the more work, let’s say you pick something that’s a little easier, you end up drawing a Nevada tech for example. Maybe it’s oh five one for deer, whatever, whatever the case may be, you can make that into a trophy tag. There is a big deer there, there’s probably a big deer in every single unit. And, and if you have a little more time that particular year, you, you use it, you know, quote family time for the wife and kid and you go out there and run trail cameras or whatever and, and you can spend some time, then you can make those into good tags. And so even though they’re a little easier to draw, you could still pull something great off. So That’s right. Anything else in there we missed Bronson?
00:32:38:14 –> 00:32:51:13
I don’t think so. Yeah, the biggest thing, you’re, you’re young, you’re not too late to the game. You’ve got a lot of years ahead of you. And so get that plan nailed down, stick with it and start building points in the places and and species that matter to you.
00:32:52:00 –> 00:34:02:25
Okay. In previous podcasts, I’ve heard you guys talk about doing an over the counter hunt to show people how you did it. It’d be awesome if you guys can talk about what you look for when finding a new unit to hunt and what factors led in your final decision to select in the unit. Then once you’ve selected your unit, what do you do and things you look at maps to determine on where you’re going within the unit to hunt. Thanks. Excited to listen to the podcast, Eric. So I don’t know, is that, I guess it’s kind of one of those, we’ve talked about doing a podcast we have quite a bit as far as what we look for and when we’re looking to go to a new unit and different things. And I know back when we were really young we didn’t think a lot about feed and we didn’t think a lot about burns and we didn’t think about a lot of different factors that make to what, what creates big deer, what creates big bulls. We’ve talked a lot about Rams, Adam, when they’re born, the years they’re born and moisture con on a lot of different things that might go into, you know, let’s try this unit, Boone and Crockett looking up Boone and Crockett records and, and figuring out where the genetics are, which we’re kind of, I don’t know, that’s even a little bit archaic in the fact that we, with the social media age, we’re kind of keeping track of some of that stuff even if they don’t make the book.
00:34:02:29 –> 00:34:52:13
That’s right. You know, it’s, and it’s something that’s, that I’ve changed. I, I went through, you know, you go through your twenties and whatnot and you’re, you know, you just need an extra tag or two. And as the older I’ve gotten and now as, as I’ve gotten a bunch of points in a lot of states and my kids are starting to hunt, I’m getting a lot of those easier, fun, you know, exploratory. If we can call my, that hunt’s done with my kids where I’m, I’m a lot more restrictive with me and my own applications than I used to be when I was just like, hey, just throwing stuff out and whatever I got, I’d go figure out. Now I’m a little more calculated on what I personally want to go do because my time as we all get older, your time gets more valuable to you than, than maybe it is in your twenties when you’re just running, you’re running freight to state like a chicken with your head cut off and hey, let me kill something.
00:34:52:15 –> 00:35:34:07
So I guess for me now, and we have talked about Idaho General, you know, for the most part I don’t, I don’t wanna be in a unit that’s got incredible for me personally, and I’ll just talk about me versus when I’m looking at something for my kids or whatnot. Because when you’re with your kids, I want easy access. I wanna see good numbers, I don’t need big stuff. Yeah, I, I just, they just wanna see animals. But when I go, for me, I wanna know at least, you know, if I’m looking at a burning my points in Colorado or, or I’m looking to go hunt general in Idaho, you wanna know that some, some big animals of coming off that unit if it’s not and never has. I’m not interested in going there. I I just personally not, and I don’t wanna seem conceited or whatnot, but again, it goes back to my time.
00:35:35:16 –> 00:36:23:16
I can stay in Utah and commit that time to a general seasoned deer and and I’ll hunt, I’ll, I’ll hunt 180 or 90 inch inch deer every year in Utah if I make the time. And that’s the, that’s the biggest thing. I’ve not even been made making the time in my own state some years because I get too busy with other tags I’ve drawn or maybe I’m guiding clients here or whether it be sheep or deer. And so really I i, I don’t want to give up something like a Utah general if it’s, and, and, and cut into that and go to Idaho just to say I’m going outta state to Idaho. There is the whole, it, it is nice to learn and hunt new country and it broadens our knowledge and we’ve done that a lot around the west and that’s what’s made us, you know, have the ability to talk about a lot of different places is we go with stuff and sometimes we’re never going back.
00:36:23:16 –> 00:37:24:25
But I can tell somebody I wouldn’t go there because here’s why. It’s, it’s like hunting the moonscape. I thought I was onto something, it’s rough, but overall I wanna go somewhere. I know I’m here chatter through game and fish biologist or the network of hunters or outfitters we talk to. I want, I want a little bit, I don’t, I’m, I don’t mind hiking. I’m a big glasser. I tend to, when I hunt deer especially, I wanna be able to glass. I’m not a sitter, I’m not a, not whether it be bow hunting and whatnot, I’m not, I don’t sit, I don’t sit in tree stands. I haven’t hunt, hunted tree stands in 20 something years for deer. I, I don’t, or blinds. I, I just, that’s not me. I, i I don’t do it that way. So I wanna be able to glass Idaho’s got a lot of country like that. Steep, deep glassful, things like that. As long as I know there’s big deer being killed there, the trend’s good or improving, I figured, well I’ll go down swinging and trying to find one, but if I don’t think there’s one to begin with, it’s not worth my time going there. So I don’t know what your thoughts on that.
00:37:24:29 –> 00:37:43:07
Yeah, no, I agree a hundred percent. I think you’ve, I think you nailed it in a lot of aspects. I think one thing about it is I think you need to kind of stick to what you know and stick to what you like. So let, let’s say for example, there’s giant bucks being killed in the Frank Church and, and you don’t like backpacking, you don’t like horseback, you don’t like remote
00:37:43:07 –> 00:37:43:23
Air sweaters,
00:37:44:00 –> 00:38:25:29
Whatever. Yeah, right. You don’t like that. Well, don’t do it. Don’t do it. Go find somewhere you’d like. So you know, if it, you know, you might do it, but we have friends that go in there. It doesn’t necessarily make me wanna do it. Sometimes I like the desert. I might be out in the arco desert out in lava, you know, where there’s very limited water, limited deer and when there’s limited deer, people get discouraged, they, they kill the first buck they see and maybe you got dear dying of old age. I mean there’s little things that I like that our friends Adam, good friends of ours that wouldn’t like and they do well up there. I we do well out in the desert or or whatever the case is. And I think too, part of it is units change all the time and we’ve talked about it.
00:38:26:00 –> 00:39:35:02
They, they change with habitat burns, management practices, things change, seasons change dates change. All of a sudden, man, when that season, you know, when that unit used to suck, now it’s added three days. Like if for example, a unit 2 31 in Nevada, those last three days are freaking awesome. If you can hold out to the last three, which most guys can’t afraid they’re gonna go home without one, it’s awesome for those last guys that hold out. And so that change alone makes it to where might be considered might be something you consider. And so I think that we can stay on top of that with the magazine and with personal strategy and personal application strategy when we help guys is these are some of the things that are going on, these are some of the changes we’re seeing and and why you might consider this, there’s always kind of the standard answer. Arizona strips the best in Arizona. Yeah, it’s always gonna be that way. But I project that for the next 20 years. Yeah, those may not change as much as, as what we’re seeing, you know, that’s year to year drought changing, but, but those may not change as much as what we’ve seen in, in Nevada, even Utah. We’ve seen general yeah. Oak Creek’s coming on, for example in Utah, all of a sudden it’s like what we used to not even consider is what we’re totally doing now.
00:39:35:05 –> 00:40:23:01
Yeah, it does, it, it does change. And, and over 10, five to 10 to 15 years units that you forgot about can come back on and, and things like that. And I, that’s one more to, to maybe answer the last part of your question is once you’ve selected a unit, what do you do? It it generally for me to get real interested in the unit, I generally know something about, or I’ve talked to enough people, they’ve killed something there and it’s peaking my interest to begin with. So if I get a tag, I might go back to some of them or an outfitter or a, some of that I know that’s, that’s from that part of a particular state and just try to break it down for me. I like to not see people, even though there’s parts of a unit that might have the bulk of the deer and the most, most deer, as long as it’s not, I mean I don’t want to go hunt the north 40 if it’s got one deer per, you know, square 10 miles.
00:40:23:06 –> 00:41:03:23
I, I mean I’m not talking that and to be alone, just to have that experience. I still want to have a chance at a big deer. But for me, I, I’ll ask a few questions to the game and fish biologist or the hunters that have been there before or outfitters just try to get a feel of, alright, where are most of the people gonna be? I wanna know where, when opening day comes or what or whenever the hunt is, where’s the bulk of the people going? ’cause that just lets me get a mental game plan and then, all right, I’m gonna hunt fringes, I’m gonna go, you know, hunt areas that look good to me. I use Google Earth plenty. Like Jason, we we, we try to, you know, if you haven’t been there on the ground, that’s the best thing you can do. And then it, we usually try to get there at least once in the year.
00:41:03:23 –> 00:41:46:29
And I know maybe that’s a little bit spoiled for us, but living in the middle of the west where all these states surround us in a day’s drive, we can get there and maybe even if it’s for a two or three day weekend, go see what it’s about and see what it’s like. And that’s usually led to greater success than just showing up blind. But we’ve gone, I’m showed up blind too, like, like we talked about earlier with Colorado Hunt in November, you can, it is more forgiving to show up blind to a unit in Colorado in November. If with the weather weather comes it’ll make an a, a non scouting ill prepared person. You can have an awesome hunt. And I’m nothing against them. I’ve been in that same case. I’ve showed up two, three days into a hunt and had phenomenal hunts after it was already been going for two, three days in Colorado. So yeah,
00:41:46:29 –> 00:42:27:29
It makes crappy units, great units, yeah, weather. So I think another thing is you brought up a pressure and I like that, I think Colorado’s a prime example. They have general elk tags in a large portion of the state and there’s some units that do have limited elk tags on a limited draw. So you’re not just having, you’re not just being inundated with over the counter elk guys during the second, third rifle season. And so anyway, it just kind of, you know, made me think of that once you brought that up. Yep. So totally agree. A lot of times just tag overall tag numbers, we just kind of half hold our breath. I guess we’re going back to Colorado for a minute, but we do half hold our breath on some of this stuff. Worried about how many hundreds you’re gonna see Idaho over the counter, you’re gonna see some people.
00:42:28:06 –> 00:43:03:00
Yeah, it’s, it’s over the counter. You’re gonna see people. So anyway, but there are some good bucks coming out of over the counter units there as well as in a lot of over the counter areas. You know, there’s, there’s good bucks down in Arizona and we, we know guys that are killing ’em. One thing I think you did bring up, Adam was talking to people in the past and we do have that membership database absolutely loaded thousands of entries of guys that are, that have had prior experience that are willing to help the members of Epic outdoors. And and if you draw a tag and you take, you participate in that, your, your name will go into that database as well and, and help the next guy.
00:43:03:09 –> 00:43:50:23
Yeah, and, and you know, there’s obviously a lot of people say, well what are people gonna tell you were the best honey holes and things like that. Well sometimes these guys are never gonna get the tag again. You gotta realize that. And sometimes if they are, you know, questions that they can ask you about where did you camp? Where’s, where do use the nearest gash in groceries? I mean questions like that, there’s nothing secret about that. You’ll just learn something about the logistics of, of hunting your unit from people on that list by being a member of Epic Outdoors that will benefit your hunt somehow. So that’s a big factor. You know, Jason and I, you know, being in the business, we get to talk to a lot of people. We, we know friends, we know outfitters or people that have been there and so we naturally will call some of those people and some of those are obviously your people that are access to you, that are member, member experience in database members as well.
00:43:50:23 –> 00:44:17:11
Awesome. Anyway, kind of fun. Of course you can tell we get pretty excited about this kind of stuff, but there’s a lot that goes into determining something like an over the counter hunt where we’re gonna start and, and so a lot of it is just time. We like to hunt places you can hunt multiple years. So the first year we’re gonna call it a bust. You just gotta know in your mind it’s gonna suck. I’m not gonna, I’m either gonna get lucky, I’m gonna eat my tag and we just figured we’re gonna eat our tag. Yeah.
00:44:17:13 –> 00:45:00:04
You, we learn as much on let’s just pick a, a general tag, whether it be Utah, whether it be Wyoming, whether it be Idaho. You’re learning as much stuff as hey I do not want to go there again. That’s learning something. Yeah, you weeded that out. Yeah. You weeded parts of a unit out of, hey that is crazy over there with the amount of people that show up. I thought it was gonna be good. No. So you hone it over a couple of years of hunting some of these units over and over and that can be said for even units that you hunt on, draw tags with points every three to five years you, you’ll do something better hunting, familiar country, even if you, you know, if you like the unit and the style of it by, by going and learning stuff that you don’t want to do or don’t wanna experience again, just as much as Well I found a honey ho and I killed a big buck there. I want to go right back there.
00:45:00:11 –> 00:45:16:10
Yeah, well it’s like I drew an obscure deer unit in New Mexico thinking I might really do something and I will never go back. I don’t even want to hear the word nine, I don’t even want to hear it. And so anyway, went in there, didn’t even have to hunt it to know I didn’t wanna be there. He,
00:45:16:15 –> 00:45:24:17
He has so much an aversion for it that the, the units 19 29, 39 and 49, anything nine are all never gonna be looked at again.
00:45:24:29 –> 00:46:39:29
So anyway, I there yeah, was there a big deer killed? Yes. It requires so much insider knowledge that it is something that absolutely I will never be successful there. So anyway, a waste of a year and there you have it. So of course we only have so many years to waste. I guess that’s why we’re talking about all this stuff. So let’s see, let’s talk about outdoor edge knives. We’ve partnered with Outdoor Edge, they’ve got some incredible knives coming out. We’ve all, we all like the razor knives, so the outdoor edge, they do have the long, fairly stiff blade along with kind of a half blade that goes with it that you attach it to. And so it makes it really sturdy. You don’t have to worry about breaking your blades, razors, whatever you wanna call ’em near as often and, and jabbing one into, into your leg or something like that. Have a little more control on some of that and the, the easy to change in and out just been awesome. They’re a great partner of ours, we really appreciate ’em and what a great product. And so anyway, you can check out the different knives they [email protected] or ask an outdoor edge dealer at your local sporting in store. So anyway, you can go check ’em out. Super good guys at Outdoor Edge. And anyway, I got a little more coming out with a little Epic Outdoors special version of one. Yeah. So
00:46:40:06 –> 00:46:44:08
Stay tuned for that. We’ll announce that the full board later this year. Alright.
00:46:44:17 –> 00:46:44:24
All
00:46:44:24 –> 00:46:56:06
Right. Next question. Have either of you guys ever hunted Wyoming Mule Deer and what was your experience? This was submitted by Brothers in the Wild TV show, so yeah, we have Jason. Yes, we have,
00:46:57:29 –> 00:47:11:10
That’s, those guys are Instagram handle, we’ll throw a little shout out to ’em at B I t W 3 0 7 on Instagram. So anyway. Yep, we have, in fact Adam has the most recent experience. 2017 Kick it off.
00:47:11:18 –> 00:47:59:07
Yeah, I hunted K and H and G I’ve hunted all those in in the past and couple of them back when you could, even while I was building points since they started the point system. I’d done region h a couple times as a second choice while you could still do that. Had fun, killed some bucks, learned some country. Same thing with Region K, but last year picked a unit 1 28 strictly because of season timing. You know, we get a lot of questions on Wyoming deer too. Not as many as Colorado, but Wyoming’s a great place to hunt. Mule deer got great genetics as a state in general, they don’t manage limited entry units for true trophy hunts. They, they manage most of their limited entry units are, have to be limited entry because when they’re general, they get crushed and they, you know, gotta limit the number of hunters on ’em.
00:47:59:07 –> 00:48:42:20
So they make ’em a draw. But I, I picked that unit strictly because of scheduling. I, I didn’t see anything on the horizon that I thought, Hey, I’m, I, I’ve got max points for a reason and that’s it. And I didn’t see it really projected to change in the next handful of years. Frankly, I should have probably been there two or three times back to region G in those 12 years. I’ll, I’ll honestly admit that, but my schedule in September usually is very busy and so I just haven’t been able to, or made the time in September to go hunt that those open September 15th with the rifle, September 1st to the 14th with a bow in G N H. And I haven’t made the time to do it, so I, I was left with max points and I didn’t really want ’em anymore. I, I threw that in as a choice because it goes to November 20th.
00:48:43:02 –> 00:49:23:13
I’d be done hunting or guiding my sheep and whatnot. And so I drew it still was about 10% draw. I drew it that late hunt around Du Bois knowing that it was gonna be one of those, I didn’t have to put time into the ruts, gonna take care of it, the snow was gonna take care of it. But knowing I probably wasn’t gonna hunt I 1 90, 200 inch deer either. I, I knew that it was just the facts. And so pulled the tag went up there, Jeff, John here from the office, and then a buddy of mine, the guy’s from Wayne Brown, he went up there with us and just stayed in Du Bois. I don’t know how many hundreds of bucks we saw. Hundreds, hundreds and hundreds. Elk, sheep, antelope, moose, wolves. I mean, what
00:49:23:13 –> 00:49:25:06
Did you call it? Something kind of jungle. It
00:49:25:06 –> 00:50:11:26
Was like the wild kingdom. That’s it. The wild kingdom, you know, wild. You know, those old Mutual of Omaha show back when we were kids, a wild kingdom on, I dunno if it was p b s or whatever it was, it would come on, it was just, there was animals everywhere and bucks everywhere. Ended up finally killing a deer the second to last day. Saw a lot of one 60 to 1 75 type bucks, which is exactly what I planned on, but ended up killing a 30 inch five by four. Really nice, cool buck, mid one eighties type buck, second to last day. That’s my most recent experience. I fully intend now to hunt generals as often as I can work ’em under my schedule. I have no plans to build a bunch of points after a limited quota unit anymore. I’ll hunt, I’ll hunt region, general region stuff. So
00:50:12:01 –> 00:51:01:12
Yeah, I think you’re exactly right. Like you said, there’s been, you’ve been up there a lot, spent a lot of time in some of that high country, of course, you know, getting ’em second choice, that’s, that’s an awesome way to steal a tag. But anyway, I’ve, I’ve spent a lot of time in, or you know, back in the day in region K did hunt region w pretty aggressively a year. Saw lots of deer. It was pretty shocking out in these lake open sage. Yeah, just like all these clay, this clay country and a lot of really cool country. Just, just not great genetics. Spent some time in region G with a good buddy of mine back then, and just surprising how many, how much orange you do see up there. And I think a lot of it, you know, guys, even overnight all of a sudden you wake up and there’s orange and horses and wall tents and stuff everywhere because it is over the counter for residents.
00:51:01:12 –> 00:51:52:23
It’s unlimited. They, they limit the residents or the non-residents, excuse me, they limit the non-residents. And so anyway, that’s their, that’s I guess their idea of, of a limited tag numbers is limiting the non-resident. But anyway, if they ever did limit it, truly limit it. Like, you know, like we don’t ever foresee, a lot of the residents do like opportunities. If they ever did, it’d be unbelievable up there. So just like you say, 1 0 2 used to be one of the awesome units. Still probably could find there’s a glimmer of hope there from what I’m hearing. But man, it’s far, far cry from what it once was and, and 1 0 1 and and 87 and 89 and you know, all these different units. And so like Adam said, definitely not producing as good a deer as they could. It’s just not managed for it. And I’m not sure we’re seeing a lot of, you know, great change on the horizon with that.
00:51:52:25 –> 00:52:34:25
But nevertheless, it is a good opportunity state for guys that want to get out and, and hunt deer and maybe, you know, just not hunt absolute monster bucks. Although they’re, every year there’s so many tags in the field up there in G N H and they got incredible genetics. There is always several amazing deer to come from Wyoming. All right, so here we go. Maybe the next question, as a non-resident, I’m currently sitting on three points for Wyoming mul deer and hope to draw region h tag this fall. Would you consider an outfitter to get more access into the wilderness, wilderness area or do you think there’s plenty of opportunity for respectable buck on B L M and other public lands that non-residents have access to? Kobe. All right, Bronson, you’ve been there. What do you think? I,
00:52:34:25 –> 00:52:56:04
I’ve hunted h so I I I do know I did, I handled the wilderness and the non wilderness portions for a short time. My brother did live in Wyoming and was able to get that resident accomp permit. They call it like a resident guide permit. He wasn’t a licensed guide, but you can pick up till I think two people with you, just
00:52:56:04 –> 00:53:00:13
To clarify so people don’t get all excited. That’s right. Show up here at the office with a search warrant. That’s
00:53:00:13 –> 00:53:43:02
Right. He was a resident there and got that so we could go hunt that. And we did that in that northern, that gravatt wilderness, the northern part of, of h And if you’re gonna hunt there, yeah, you, you’re gonna be limited. You, you can hunt the very fringes of that if you don’t do it with a, with a guide. And there’s some great ones and they know it well. They hunt it every year. Have, you know, camps and basins that they’ll, that they’ll hunt you with and do a great job. The southern part of region H down along the G border, the G divide, it is literally just a divide. One side is H and other side’s, g it’s, there’s, there’s plenty of public land to do it on your own if you wanna do it that way. I can’t really tell you that one part of H is better than another.
00:53:43:02 –> 00:54:26:20
Just like you can’t say there’s only one part of G that produces the big bucks and the other parts you need to forget about. It’s not that way. It’s all pretty much, I want to generally classify it as you know, generally the same big mountain ranges and you know, it’s not like it’s, you know, dry air in one part of it. We’re all talking about mountainous country and deer throughout, sprinkled throughout areas with trail heads and closer to trails and all that are gonna get a lot of the activity. Having said that, I know guys that have shot deer within, you know, a quarter of a mile. Some of those places that are big deer, they’ve just, you know, it’s a numbers game. They grow big deer, they let you hunt ’em fairly liberally. All the residents gonna hunt those tags over the counter. They’re limited us non-residents to it.
00:54:27:10 –> 00:55:11:01
But I guess just to answer that simply depends on your situation. If you have nothing else going in your, in your year, you’ve got some extra funds to commit to an outfitted hunt and all that, you are gonna be able to probably hunt the northern part of that unit and you know where you’re without all the do it yourself people there. Having said that, you’re not gonna be all by yourself. It’s still a lot of tags and you got residents going in that country on horses and outfitters with people on horses really probably comes down to your time. If you got time, go sink it into the public land non wilderness stuff, go have a good time realizing you’re not burning a ton of points. That’d probably be my recommendation. But having said that, you got plenty of outfitters that we know that do well in the northern part as well. Great.
00:55:11:08 –> 00:55:55:19
Yeah, as you look at the map, there is a lot of non wilderness country in there and so like you said, there’s definitely options for everybody that wants to do it. So, all right. Let’s see. Moving right along. We appreciate that question by the way, Colby, but moving right along here. Do you think the long wait on draw tags, some tags taking 20 plus years to draw is hurting hunting in any way? Some people, depending on when they started to apply for a tag, may never have the opportunity to go on that hunt. Smartest thing I ever did was to start applying my sons for tags when they were 10 years old if the state allowed Jimmy. So there’s, this is, this is quite an in-depth, could be a very in-depth, aggressive conversation. I don’t know, what do you think? Is it hunting? Is it hurting hunting?
00:55:56:10 –> 00:56:42:02
I guess you could construe that maybe it’s limiting recruitment in some ways. Some people don’t even wanna start certain states. I mean we hear it, we hear it in places like Arizona. But that change, that draw change down there a couple years, it gives you a glimmer of hope. So I guess there’s no absolutes. The, you know, there’s a lot of states now that are 20 plus point point years into a point system and if they don’t ever change it, yeah, it looks kind of bleak. You could, you could paint that picture, but a lot of the questions we’ve had in this podcast up to now, as we’ve talked about are a lot more of like opportunity general making something outta, I mean there’s still plenty to do in these states if you are willing to take it. If you have a elite trophy, only the best mentality everywhere, it’s a pretty bleak picture.
00:56:42:09 –> 00:57:24:08
Yeah, I think you’re a hundred percent right. It is. It is bleak and, and some tags do take 20 plus years at times. Having said that, we’re getting good and I think the states are getting good at creative seasons and whatnot and we’re getting better at making something out of nothing, so to speak. And we’re also seeing like, like we’ve talked about general, general Utah, you know, we’ve, we’re seeing great bucks come off off the general units and the tougher it is to draw in other places, the more we’re willing to spend more time in some of these easier to draw units. And so is it hurting hunting in any way? That was the question mark. Of course it is. It would be awesome to draw the Arizona strip every year. Those were tags that were over the counter one day, you know, back in the day.
00:57:24:23 –> 00:58:06:00
And so yeah, I mean it’s no fun. We wanna hunt the best of the best all the time, but that’s just not the way it’s gonna be. I think too, like with Colorado changing to where now they’re a cheap application fee for example, you’re not having to front the fees. I mean that that hurt hunting that’s hurting us. Like it it, you know guys that don’t value it as much or maybe, you know, I, again, I don’t wanna price everybody out and I’m not, we’re not in indicating that. But like you said Adam, we were broke a broke way back in the day using credit card checks to apply for Arizona when they started the point system for Deere for example. And you know, ’cause they took a personal check. So you take those little checks you get in the mail from the credit card and we put, that’s the way we put ’em on a credit card back when they didn’t accept credit cards per se.
00:58:06:02 –> 00:58:55:04
So there was a lot of things that we do. ’cause it’s important to us. If sheep and goat and moose were really important to you last year, you applied for ’em. If they were too expensive for you, you didn’t apply for ’em, now you’ve got a lot of guys jumping into that pool and is that gonna hurt the odds? Absolutely it is. We’ve talked about Nevada offering five choices. It would be nice if they went down to one or two choices and that would help your odds incredibly. And so I think there’s a lot of things that we’re seeing. Yeah, our drawing logs getting worse everywhere. They’re getting worse. They’re absolutely getting worse. But we’re also getting better at, and I don’t know if it’s the information age, I don’t know if maybe we value a tag more. Back in the day we would just, we’d have these general tags, we wouldn’t even use ’em, we wouldn’t even think about ’em. Now we’re thinking about ’em and allocating time to ’em. Yes.
00:58:56:02 –> 00:59:44:18
I, and I think to build on just exactly what you said it, it, you have to have a different set of glasses looking at the draw and application and hunting process. Now if, if you’re strictly getting into the game to wanna hunt the biggest and the best in every state, you have a big long road ahead of you. You have to look at it multifaceted. Some states you’re in it for the long haul. If you get lucky, great, you’re like a Utah, but maybe you’re hunting the general every two to three years. You gotta have that as part of a plan. Or Utah will never, you’ll never hunt Utah. Similarly in, in Wyoming maybe for, for general deer or, or easier to draw elk units and things like that. Maybe even when it comes to Arizona Elk, we all want to hunt early rifle hunts with an elk.
00:59:44:24 –> 01:00:24:24
I mean Jason and I generally would pick archery because we can go sooner. But even then, now both you and I are back in the building phase of our points and we’re probably more aptt to take a gamble on something weird. Weird. Yeah. Or a season that maybe or a unit that’s like, well they don’t kill many three 70 bulls there, but I hear of one or two occasionally and I I’m gonna go for it. You know what I mean? Yeah. Versus hoard our points for another 15 years and get another tag so that, you know, especially once you burn points somewhere, you really have to have a hit the reset button and look at it a different way. There’s states like Nevada, you wanna draw an elk tag there, there’s not a lot you can do. Good
01:00:24:24 –> 01:00:25:06
Luck, good luck.
01:00:25:06 –> 01:00:49:29
Very tough. You can’t force it very much. I mean there’s, you know, you look at the odds, they’re terrible. You wanna draw a desert sheep tag, they do issue more tags than everybody else, but you’re just doesn’t mean the odds are astronom they’re, they’re terrible. So yeah. But having said that, you know, Jason and I both have young kids, all of our kids are just hitting hunting age, you know, from the youngest to the oldest. Now they’re all in that, that gap year gap
01:00:50:05 –> 01:00:51:08
10 to 18. Yep.
01:00:52:02 –> 01:01:42:19
And so we, we, we go through it, we’re making the calls ourselves and realizing, hey, what was 200 bucks now is a thousand bucks to a play for a state like Arizona, you know what I mean? For roughly 200 a pop. So it’s, there’s big decisions and, and, and you realize that, you know, they may have to take early season deer tags or late season elk tags or things like that to get something out of it to ever hunt that state. And so back when you were all maybe starting on some of the ground floors of these point systems, you could have a different mentality than now, but you could have a realistic approach. And for some people that, that maybe they, they like, they, they have either have the means or they make the means to book hunts and go on some of the best hunts they want and they’re only interested in the best. Maybe the draws don’t make sense to them because it’s money you maybe never get anything out of if you’re only after the very, very best.
01:01:42:27 –> 01:02:09:10
Well, and I think to add on to that just a little bit and don’t want to take too much time I guess, but we do advocate applying in a many different western states. There’s a few we don’t, but many different states. And that’s to add on to Yeah, it does take 20 years maybe in one or two states. And we have guys, Adam, we even have guys in our license app service. They’re worried about drawing too many tags and they’re very, very limited. Only one applying in these three states for the best mealer tag points
01:02:09:11 –> 01:02:10:10
Only everywhere else or
01:02:10:16 –> 01:02:48:29
Whatever. Yeah. And you’re like, what do you, what do you, let me try to convince you? And, and we work with them and over time they start to see that there is no stress. We are not gonna draw four tags in one year, especially going for the best. And so I think that’s part of like what we do with states that are non-point states like Idaho and New Mexico for example. Prime opportunities go up hunt every year the, for the price of the tag, you’re not hurting your future by, you know, burning points. ’cause there is no points to burn, there are no points to burn I should say. And so, you know, why not? Why not go on odd, odd things And we’ve, we’ve done that in some of these states. I mean, you know, like you and Idaho with a muzzle or deer and some of these, oh
01:02:49:02 –> 01:02:59:13
I had to go buy ’em. You gotta buy a weird muzzle that’s only, I know legal in Idaho, Oregon and Washington that has an exposed, I mean exposed percussion cap number 11 loose powder solve that.
01:02:59:14 –> 01:03:01:11
And it was a tough year. You happened to dry,
01:03:01:12 –> 01:03:01:20
I mean yeah,
01:03:01:22 –> 01:03:03:18
But, but you could have killed an absolute monster.
01:03:03:20 –> 01:03:31:01
Yeah, and I’d go there again just for the chance. But it’s, those are the weird things you can do in the two states. Like you mentioned it, Idaho and New Mexico every year is a new year in those states. Some years I’m only for the best other years I’m like, just let me try something weird. And once in a while they hit, Jason happened for you on some of your elk units down there and you killed some giants, you know, on weird, weird units and stuff and, and gamble and gambled and, and you know, in 10 years you drown a couple of ’em twice. So
01:03:31:17 –> 01:03:44:24
Yeah. And we’re, you know, we’re even seeing that with some of these over the counter elk here in Utah or something for our kids. There’s just things you can do and things we do that maybe we, you know, used to not have to do. But now we’re definitely considering it. So
01:03:45:09 –> 01:04:01:24
Exactly. Maybe one more quick shout out to one of our sponsors, Hillberg the tent maker. They’ve been making great tents for a lot of years. We’ve been introduced to them, I don’t know, probably, probably 15 years ago, Jason, a long time, something like that. Since we got affiliated with them when
01:04:01:24 –> 01:04:03:29
The first, back when they started first making tents. Yeah.
01:04:04:19 –> 01:04:15:10
For kind of, they were always kind of mountaineering, you know Yeah. Based in Europe at the time. But when they really started making the push come to Northwestern North America, that’s kind of when we got
01:04:15:18 –> 01:04:18:29
Involved with that. And that’s what I mean by making tents is for, you know, really targeting hunters.
01:04:19:02 –> 01:05:08:14
Yes, exactly. So one of the first tents we had, Jason and I, we still have ’em, is that one man Acto tent. Solid walled, you know, you don’t have to share a tent with somebody pretty roomy for a run man tent. And they make all styles of tents. We, we’ve had a podcast, if you’re interested in some more of the specifics about the tents that Hillberg offers, you can, you can go back in the podcast archives, listen to that with Petra. But also you can visit their website at hillberg h i l l e b e r g.com. Look at more of their tents, large selection, one man, two man, you know, family, you know, you know big, big, those mountaineering people that go together and have like 6, 8, 10 people and they’re like pods and all going on, I dunno what you call ’em picture, they make
01:05:08:14 –> 01:05:11:07
A little, little model for everybody. That’s right. And for every occasion
01:05:11:12 –> 01:05:20:25
A city, a mini city on the mountain, if you want that, you’ve got ’em. I’ve seen pictures that’s, I don’t know, that’s, I, I’ll probably never have something like that, but for whatever your reason, the, they’ve got a tent for it, so
01:05:20:26 –> 01:05:40:13
That’s right. And so yeah, we did have the single Atco, the single man Atco and I did stuff, two people in there, me and Jana, my wife. So anyway, out there in the Escalante desert. So good times. All right. So let’s see. Moving right along. I guess this would be an interesting one. I don’t know.
01:05:40:20 –> 01:05:42:13
Might not be able to limit to one
01:05:42:25 –> 01:06:06:13
I know. But let’s see. If you could pick one piece of hunting gear slash knowledge from the today and take it to the past, what would it be and why that Thanks guys and I love your podcast from Matt and Jed Lee at Utah Sportsman on Instagram. That’s their handle at Utah Sportsman. So anyway, appreciate the question there. Bronson, you got any ideas on your favorite? Well,
01:06:06:13 –> 01:07:00:25
This is something we once in a while we’ll get off rambling around the office on, on a topic like this. Like I wish I would’ve. And I have a couple of those. One the, probably the biggest one for me, and I was at a period of my life is going to, you know, finishing my bachelor’s degree and going to grad school when Wyoming was starting their point system for sheep. I didn’t, I wish I would’ve got in on the ground floor. And, and the reason for that is you, you would’ve been guaranteed a sheep tag by now in the units that I would’ve applied for. That’s the one thing I wish I could hit rewind was my Wyoming sheep on the ground floor knowing that hey, you start now, they’re gonna be given 75% of the tags to people at the most points. And because of the, that weeding out those guys have gone hunting that be a guaranteed rocky, I missed out on that opportunity just from a timing standpoint of where I was in life or not maybe quite paying attention enough or for seeing how big a deal that could have been.
01:07:00:25 –> 01:07:07:25
That’s one of those things when it comes to gear or knowledge, I mean, I’d have to say the guns, we have
01:07:08:16 –> 01:07:09:08
Scopes. They’re pretty nice.
01:07:10:07 –> 01:07:15:13
If I had have had those in, in some of the earlier years, the holdover years, we’ll just call ’em holdover.
01:07:15:13 –> 01:07:17:00
They’re not a big shiz dad.
01:07:18:13 –> 01:07:52:26
You know, that’s probably it. And I would, I would dovetail that into the optics. It wasn’t that we didn’t have Swarovski when we were young kids. It’s just that you can’t afford, you know, in high school we, you know, dad’s not buying y swarovski’s in the, you know, mid eighties. You know, just we, you know, we don’t do it with our own kids. Like, you kind of don’t wanna just strap $2,000 to their neck and say, Hey, bring that back when you’re done. You know? Yes. Our kid kids are hard on stuff. So the optics and the rifle setups that we have now and the bows, they’re, they’re phenomenal. I mean, you, the brass
01:07:52:26 –> 01:07:53:20
Pins, they kill stuff.
01:07:53:25 –> 01:08:02:16
The brass pins on our bows back in the day, remember just the gold pins out there that looking through your peep and if it got even dusk, they, you couldn’t see ’em Well and we thought
01:08:02:21 –> 01:08:03:02
No fiber
01:08:03:02 –> 01:08:03:13
Optics,
01:08:03:14 –> 01:08:10:00
We thought we were doing something by painting ’em with fingernail polish and now we have glow in the dark. Yes. Fiber, whatever. Fiber, the ops not glow in the dark, but
01:08:10:00 –> 01:08:11:02
You know, they do practically
01:08:11:02 –> 01:08:11:22
Well, tridium.
01:08:12:08 –> 01:08:53:17
So you’ve got, those are some pieces of gear that the, the, the archery, the rifle. And I guess from the knowledge standpoint, and then I’ll let you go off Jason, but for me, if I knew, we’ve talked about mule deer being good in Utah again, right now in general, but if I knew in the eighties that what I was experiencing was be, would go away for 10 to 20 years. Yeah. And I would’ve hunted a lot harder, made a priority, I would’ve hunted probably Colorado sooner. The things that you don’t know what you had until they’re gone. That, that mule deer thing in Utah for, for 10 to 15 years. I wish I would’ve made more when we were, we were little though we were kids, but we thought we were getting
01:08:53:26 –> 01:08:55:12
Some muzzle order in the rutt. Yeah.
01:08:55:12 –> 01:09:16:19
And we thought, yeah, you could hunt, you could kill, you could kill up until I think the year before I started, you could kill a deer with a bow and then you could, then you could hunt with a rifle or a muzzle loader, you know, with all three. You had the dedicated hunter program without having to do the dedicated hunter program. There you go. And you could hunt in November the first week into November with a muzzle loader. Yeah. Hit rewind on that. And let
01:09:16:19 –> 01:09:17:02
Me go back
01:09:18:04 –> 01:09:28:02
And gimme a muzzle loader. They can shoot, they could shoot, but instead of a, you know, a hawking round, multiple ball multiple with, Hey, did I put two patches on that ball or one piece of cloth patch? I don’t know, maybe see, I don’t know, direction and
01:09:28:02 –> 01:09:32:17
Directional patches and all this that we thought we were really getting detail oriented. So
01:09:32:17 –> 01:09:33:23
That’s some of my thoughts. Oh,
01:09:33:25 –> 01:10:22:19
I agree a hundred percent. So like I, there’s a lot of things I I wish I could, I mean, and, and maybe this is varying a little bit from knowledge, but I wish I could take tags. I wish I could go back, like you’re saying, I had Opinion Canyon Colorado tag unit 1 42 late. I freaking ate the tag. I had it in 1996. If I had any, any anything to do over, it’d be that one. I also killed a dink buck on the muzzle order ponson back when it was late and just wasn’t sure how big he was and took the chance. And, and I should have made sure, and I should have really made good on that tag, but I was too young to know better. The two forties in Nevada used to go to like mid-November and that was one of those that you just, you know, you if had, if you knew that was gonna go away, you’d have worked dang hard at it.
01:10:22:23 –> 01:11:18:07
And so anyway, there was a, there was one day we had a 2 41 landowner tag come through back when nobody knew anything about 2 41 in and of itself for, and it went, was going for $2,500. And we were like, that’s retarded. That tag, that tag’s now going for 2020 $3,000. And so anyway, and we always thought 2 42 was the best and you hunted the migration on the Utah border and no way 2 41 would have any big bucks at all. And now it’s, well some years it’s better than 2 42. And so just disgusted at the lack of knowledge, having great tags and not making good on ’em. And I think everybody kind of has that as far as gear binos for sure. You’ve touched on the rifle and bow. Yes. Gimme those rifles bows, but good. But the binos, the, the, the, the high def binos that we’ve got, whether it be Vortex Xi Roski, whatever you like to use, they are a hundred times better than what we used to have.
01:11:18:12 –> 01:11:50:18
I had the Redfield 10 by 50 thought I was really doing something and you couldn’t pry ’em outta my cold dead hands. But you know, those days are long gone. I I drag ’em behind my truck, you know, so anyway, just one of those things that there’s things, and I think part of that is knowledge, having the gear, but then knowing how to use it and, and learning and, and the, the distance we’ve come, whether it be range finders, whether it be turrets, whether it be whatever it is, the distance we’ve come and then also the knowledge to make good on those tags. And some of that Adam just comes with being old. We’re just old. Yeah.
01:11:50:26 –> 01:12:24:24
So you’re gonna have the experiences we just talked about that you wish you could do over. I have a few of those hunts that wish we could do over, but there’s only one way to get to your current frame of mind that you have right now. And that’s to go through experience stuff. Yeah. Whether it be awesome hunts or whether it be crappy hunts and that or stuff you didn’t put enough time into to make the most of or whatever. There’s only one way to get to your current mindset of how you view my hunting plans and my time every year. And that’s to go through what everything you’ve gone good and bad in the past. So chalk it up to experience. But those are a few things that I wish yeah. Could do over. Well
01:12:24:24 –> 01:12:27:02
Let’s kick it off. What, you got a question right there?
01:12:27:17 –> 01:13:20:02
You bet. Question from Cody. I recently found a sheath off of a young ram e either either of you stumble onto a sheath and also do you know if it’s very common for them to, shed figured I’d ask the experts before going to anyone else. Thanks. The quickest answer is if that thing is shed, he’s either dead and that’s been drug off and you found a shed and his skull is somewhere else. Or if it, if it looks normal, like it sloughed off that that ram’s, he’s dead. If it looks like it’s been busted off, which I did find a partial horn this year on a desert sheep punt in, in Utah that had clearly broken off like through combat and headbutting. You know, you look in some states it’s not as common in Utah, but in Arizona and Nevada, these sheep, they get sinusitis and things and they’ll bang their head on them rocks. We’ve seen it Jason in some of these rams, they got big dish concave sport parts out of the top to their horns
01:13:20:02 –> 01:13:25:01
Are like, yeah, we’ve seen ’em change in eight months. We’ve seen a ram big, the big long ramp. Yes. Jeff Jones, he
01:13:25:01 –> 01:13:27:14
Almost fell off. It had almost was from
01:13:27:14 –> 01:13:31:06
Fall off from the time we prec scouted him to the time we killed him. So big old black hole in
01:13:31:06 –> 01:13:53:08
There kind of, it was crazy banging on it. It was rotten. So they can rotten and partially fall off like that. It’s, you know, it is live, you know, underneath their bone and blood and all that. It’s part of their cooling mechanism that that sheep have to have that blood go up there and out of their body and come back in. It’s just kind of physiologically kind of interesting. But if you find a whole sheet that came off right at the right at the skin,
01:13:53:23 –> 01:13:54:26
They don’t shut up. They’re,
01:13:54:26 –> 01:15:04:00
They’re dead. He’s dead somewhere. And that sheath that you found has been packed off by usually an animal. ’cause they stink for a while and probably got packed off, things like that. It’s not, you don’t come across them. I, you know, I found, you know, I guess three deadhead sheep last year. Some of ’em are little, one of ’em was a big ram that I was able to get the D W R involved and go pick up. I found a few that I’ve kept. And like anything else, when you find Deadheads or for Deere and Al anything else, it, they’re kind of neat. It tells a story, you know, with sheep, unfortunately sometimes it has, you find a lot of them in, in places where they’ve had a die off. Sheep are very susceptible to that. So you can end up stacking ’em up in a hurry. But sheaths not very common. Kinda like antelope antelope, you find ’em. But I think coyotes and things, I mean I’ve been out with my dog out in the west desert. They’ll come packing ’em back. I think they stink. But I mean, if you’re starving to death, I’m sure coyotes gna that thing down to nothing. You know, they’re kind of hollow hair, stinking things and they don’t hold up super well for year after year, like as well as bones. So yeah. Anyway, anything to add on that, Jason? No,
01:15:04:02 –> 01:15:15:11
You covered it. Good. It’s something that, I mean we’ve seen, we’ve seen how that can happen, like you said and and whatnot. And so it just depends on, on the ones that he found and obviously a little something there.
01:15:15:15 –> 01:16:17:08
Well, and since we are talking about sheep a little bit, just mention one of our partners who has been with us from the start, and that’s the Wild Sheep Foundation. Great organization that’s purely dedicated to putting and keeping sheep on the mountain. They’ve, they’ve put millions of dollars, in fact over $13 million into wild sheep and wildlife restoration the last three years. Their mission is to enhance wild sheep populations and promote scientific wildlife management and educate the public on sustainable use and conservation benefits of hunting. So big advocates of Wild Sheep Foundation. And obviously we, we had Gray Thornton on Yeah, good. Just prior the, which is the c e o and President of Wild Sheep Foundation. If you wanna go back in the archives and listen to that podcast, we did that with grade right before the Sheep Show, first of the year, 2018. And if you want more information becoming a life member, summit life member or regular member of Weill Sheep Foundation, go to wild sheep foundation.org and and join up. Okay,
01:16:17:11 –> 01:17:04:14
So last question of the podcast. I just want to keep in mind, you know, let everybody know this is gonna be a multiple part series. If you do have questions, throw ’em in there. Dmm dmm us at epic hunts on our Instagram or Facebook or what have you. Us personally, we have Instagrams as well. So anyway, and we’ll try to get ’em covered we’re, it’s been kind of fun. But last question, here we go. We saved it. Good friend of ours, Colton in Nevada, you know who you are. Sent us a little question sometimes he’s digging me a little bit, but he, he knows some of these answers. But anyway, what’s your favorite unit to hunt Nevada and why? Also did a lot of big deer from 2 41 to 2 45 survive the 2017 hunting season? He’s trying to extract a little info on this one.
01:17:04:27 –> 01:18:15:17
Where do all the giants in 2 42 shed their horns? Okay, I’m gonna give you a coordinate, stay tuned here in about three minutes, I’m gonna cover it. What is the biggest deer you know about Nevada that’s still alive and where is his exact location? And so anyway, classic love these guys pretty funny. Spent a lot of time and they spent a lot of time in the field. I can learn a lot from them, especially shed shit. I know they started, him and old Colby outta southern Utah started a new Instagram page. It’s the number one hunted, H U N I D outdoors. So anyway, not sure where they’re heading it heading with this, but him and Colby are gonna be doing that or are doing it and cranking. And so anyway, my favorite unit, they probably know I do like all units, you know, so the two forties, two thirties, one thirties, two twenties, there’s about everything. There’s a big deer in any of these units and I like to keep learning and and whatnot. And so we just keep moving, moving and killing as best we can. And so where do they all shed? Who knows? And what’s the biggest deer you know about in Nevada that’s still alive?
01:18:18:00 –> 01:18:20:26
I don’t know. I don’t know. You never know. Some of the biggest, those
01:18:20:26 –> 01:18:30:19
Are questions you don’t ask Colgate especially, don’t ask Jason Carter. I’m just gonna tell you right there. And I know you were, you were needling him here.
01:18:30:29 –> 01:18:33:04
Oh yeah, he’s given me grief. But they do,
01:18:33:06 –> 01:18:45:06
Everybody’s tuned up this driving down the highway, running on your stern master, the volume’s high right now, waiting for those words to come outta Jason’s lips. And I’m telling y’all, you, you’re wasting your time. You know?
01:18:45:16 –> 01:19:24:29
So the biggest deer, I ne you never know, like last year he turned to, you know, did, wasn’t big. He, he lost 30 inches. And so some, it seems like last year, Adam, and, and you and I talked a lot about this, but there was some big deer in 2 42 and 2 31 really big deer in 2 31 just produced like crazy, lots of deer. We wrote about it in the magazine, you know, killed the world record archery buck 2016, killed the two 30 net, which we killed with Adam Kearney in 2016. And then we, and then we jumped into 2017. Think that it can’t be beat. Boom. Here comes how many? Over 200. How many over two 20? Yeah,
01:19:25:10 –> 01:19:34:11
2 31 kicked him out. It did. And when, when as a whole, Nevada was off. You can’t, you can’t say it wasn’t anything but off. Yeah, it was as a whole. That’s
01:19:34:11 –> 01:20:20:07
Right. Like and specific deer we know about, and these guys know too, there’s specific deer that were down, but maybe there was a little bit more rain up in the northern part of 2 42 and in 2 31 and just kicked out a bunch more big deer, which those desert units in 2 41, it sucked. It was tough. But anyway, as for coordinates going to Onyx, hunt, map, Onyx Hunt. Here we go North, 37.7 9 0 4 3 1 West one 14.407. 3 0 3. That will take you to the biggest deer I know about. Just kidding. But go check it out. Anyway, that’s some of the best country in Nevada. And for that I guess, I don’t know, it kind of wraps it up. Adam, what do you think? You got anything else out there? Theyve kind of grind us out a little bit.
01:20:20:10 –> 01:21:02:01
It was good. You know, these are, these are good. They’re obviously, hopefully get something you glean out of this and, and maybe a glimpse into our minds, which maybe isn’t a good thing, but at least how we perceive and how we go through a thought process of picking units and, and going on some of our hunts. We really appreciate everybody that sent stuff into us. We, we realize that, you know, we can come up with their own content for podcasts, you know, on a spur of a moment. We can jump in here and just talk about something or set up guests and things like that. But it’s nice to have some ideas from you all. So keep ’em coming, like Jason said, through our Instagram dmm or you know, send us an email or whatever and glad to do it. So
01:21:02:02 –> 01:21:07:26
Well, should we give a little something away? I don’t know. What do you think? Maybe just epic hat and a decal or
01:21:08:06 –> 01:21:09:20
Throw a knife in there too. All
01:21:09:20 –> 01:21:31:13
Right, we’ll throw one. These outdoor edge knives sponsored back since it’s sponsored back by them and you bet. And we got a partnership with them. So let’s throw an epic hat decal, truck decal and a knife. And we’ll do that to one guy. You got, you gotta get on our website to go on there and you’ll enter a promo code. What do you want the promo code to be? Throw it out there. Epic
01:21:31:26 –> 01:21:34:16
Knife. How, how about that one? Epic knife. All one word. Okay.
01:21:34:16 –> 01:21:35:19
Epic knife. Knife, lowercase.
01:21:35:21 –> 01:21:36:14
Yep. All lowercase.
01:21:36:20 –> 01:22:39:11
All right. Epic knife. E p i c k n i f e in case you don’t know how to spell, which sometimes I wonder about myself. So, and everybody else does too. So anyway, go to epic outdoors.com/podcast. Enter epic knife and we’ll give that away. We usually send ’em out in a week or so, don’t we, Chris? So we got ’em here in the office. We’ll get it out right away to you. Appreciate everybody that’s out there listening to us. Every other podcast I listen to, which they’re all kind of addicting. It’s kind of fun to listen to podcasts, but they do say you’re supposed to go out and give us a five star review. Go out there, tell whoever you want that we, and give us a good review. Hey, I give these guys a good review and if it happens to be on the web somewhere where it’s supposed to go, why that all the better. So appreciate everybody and all the support. If you do wanna visit with Adam and I about your draw strategies, of course we’re willing to visit with you, especially if you’re a member of Epic Outdoors. We charge a hundred dollars a year. It’s pretty cheap considering the price of gas, the price of trucks. I know you got a new set of tires, Bronson, that’s a lot of hundreds. Yeah. And so thanks
01:22:39:11 –> 01:22:40:01
For reminding me.
01:22:40:16 –> 01:23:20:28
So anyway, it does, nothing’s cheap anymore. And so a hundred dollars seems to be a good value. You get nine issues a year and, and of course we break down all the states drawing ons, kill percentages and everything. And we also have a license application service. You don’t wanna do it yourself. That’s a separate service. We charge a a little extra for that, but well worth it if it, if you’re a kind of guy that doesn’t like to do your own taxes, you’d be prime candidate for this. So anyway, it’s very customized from Adam and I. All right, till next time we’ll do another question and answer. We got a whole bunch more questions we didn’t get to, but here in maybe another week, week and a half. Appreciate everybody, like Adam said. Thanks for your questions and until next time, we’ll go from there.
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