EP 114: Nevada Department of Wildlife Deputy Director, Jack Robb. In this episode of The Epic Outdoors Podcast we talk with Deputy Director of the Nevada Department of Wildlife, Jack Robb. Jack gives us some insight into the opportunities that Nevada has to offer. The uniqueness of the state is discussed and some of the new regulations are explained. Jack covers the trail cam regulations as well as the new shed hunting law. We also talk about sheep, deer, and elk in depth.
Disclaimer: this text was produced through an automated transcription service and likely contains errors. Please listen to the original audio for exact content.
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We have 895 species we manage and we hunt or fish. 8% of those species
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Rule changes are the, the shed antler gathering law, and the other one’s a truck camera law,
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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 coming at you from Southern Utah, snowy southern Utah. Might add Bronson.
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Absolutely got
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A lot of weather here, A lot of weather across the southwest. We’re super excited. Of course, everybody that pays attention and lives out here super excited as well. Water means antler and antler means happy people. So anyway, super excited. It’s awesome. Almost March. So here we, here we go. But anyway, another podcast here. We got a special guest, Jack Rob. He’s the deputy director of Nevada Fishing Game, and we’re excited to get in it with him. We’ve known him for many, many years, been a huge supporter, him and, and all the different aspects he’s played over the years. Been part of the commission and now within the game and fish itself. So before we get started, we want to thank Under Armour for sponsoring our podcast, sponsoring a lot of different things we do. We appreciate them, their support, they got a lot of good things going, and you can order some of their [email protected]. I just type in Ridge Reaper and up comes all the hunting gear. So anyway, check it out. And they’ve got a lot of things out there right now, even kind of in the off season. So if you’re
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Looking to get a new rifle set up for this upcoming Falls Hunt, give Kurt and the guys there at Red Rock Precision a call 8 0 1 4 2 5 6 5 7 4 or visit ’em on the [email protected]. Great custom rifles, they can customize a caliber for each situation, whether it’s a sheet honing, backpacking rifle, or a great all-around rifle. Great guys, very knowledgeable. We use their guns every year. Great long range setups, but just, just great all around well built guns. So give ’em a call and you won’t be disappointed.
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Anyways, we get started. We just want to thank Jack, Jack, Jack, you on with us here today.
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Yes, I am.
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How you doing? How’s it going over there?
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It’s, it’s a good day in Reno. It’s first day that I haven’t had snow in front of my house since the beginning of January. It warmed up enough, it melted stuff off pretty good last night. So yeah, same. Happy to, happy to see it warming up a little bit, but glad we have all the water.
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Yeah, absolutely. It’s just like that over here. We, the last two days, we finally got the first smell of spring fever, it feels like with warmer weather, it’s melting water, running the gutters, snow’s melting. But hopefully we got, you know, good things to come. I know there’s, the prairie dogs are poking their heads out yesterday the first time. So I guess that means something. I don’t know what that means, but Spring’s coming. That’s, I guess, and, and you guys have been good over there, it sounds like. I know most all the weather that you get, we get, not necessarily Reno weather, but from from you to Vegas. That weather pattern really comes through us, us and from what you’re hearing as well, we’re really excited about the, the moisture that’s been hitting Nevada, Southern Utah and all that. Is that pretty much what you’re hearing from your guys across Nevada Jack?
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We’re, we’re in the Sears 150, 160%. And across the state we’re seeing that also. It, it’s great for Habitat, but it, it grows cheat grass at a wrapper rate too. And then we have those fires. It, it’s, it’s a blessing and, and it’s good and bad. Nothing’s perfect, but no, we will take it when it comes. No,
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Let’s just call it good. How about that? Yes, let’s call it Good. Good for mule deer over here on this side. At least this side of Nevada. So yes, well, give us a little background. Where’d you grow up? How’d you get started? Just a few things like that.
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I proud to say I was born in Taw, Nevada, and many people probably don’t know where that is.
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Wait a wait, you, you said you’re proud, you’re proud to say you were from Taw. Let’s talk about that a little bit. How
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Many people live there
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Currently? Less, less, less than 3000. And it’s 250 miles from Reno and 200 miles from Vegas in between. And it’s, it’s in, it’s in the middle of nowhere, but it’s in the middle of God’s country too. Yeah,
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You could probably get to do what you want out there. It’s, nobody’s bugging anybody out there.
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It’s, it’s everything I wanted going up, access to the mountains, access to the resource. Not many people around and surrounded by B l m. If you saw it, you could go climb it. You didn’t have to worry about asking permission to go through a gate to get someplace. Wow. You just went and did it.
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That’s awesome. All right. Started to digress there. Go ahead. Keep going.
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Yeah, I was born, went through eighth grade in Ton Paw and then my family moved to Reno and I’ve been in Reno since 1982. Another great place to live. Proud to say I live here, but tonal will always be home without a doubt.
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I assume growing up in Nevada and outdoors and all that, you started hunting early age. How did you get involved in that and, you know, was the,
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The way, the way I really got involved, my dad was always supportive. My brother, I have a younger brother, both of us hunting, but he wasn’t an avid hunter, but I grew up, all my friends were avid hunters from Brian and Mike Ache, Joe Atch, the normal topo crew. They were very avid and it set into my brother and I, and then my dad supported that. And it’s continued lifelong friends with friendships with those guys and still love to just get out and be around friends and outdoors.
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That’s awesome. Yeah. You mentioned Joe Malu and a few of these guys, you know, those guys, I mean, they defined early hunting there in Nevada early meaning, you know, 20 plus years ago, seems like to me they’ve, they’ve been there and done that about every aspect of it.
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Well, their multi-generation have been there and done that from their grandfathers to their fathers. And all of our parents and grandparents grew up around each other and multi-generations doing the same thing in the same area. Lot of knowledge, lot of knowledge there.
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So how did you, you moved to Reno and then how did you, career-wise, obviously there’s some steps along the way that got you to where you are now with deputy director within Nevada Department of Wildlife at, tell us a little bit about your career path and then what motivation did you had to get to where you are with the Department of Wildlife?
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I took an odd career path to end up being Deputy director of Nevada Department of Wildlife. I was married and had kids when I was in college and had to go get a job and be responsible adult. So I went to work for a power company and ended up working for a water company and then owned my own business for seven years. But during that time, 1995, I got lucky enough to draw a sheep tag in Central Nevada down the pancake range. And the same year my brother drew a sheep tag in 16 in Mount Jefferson. Wow. And, and when we did that, I looked at him and I told him, I said, you know, we’ll forever be indebted to the fraternity, desert Bighorn and Nevada Bighorns Unlimited because those opportunities were given to us by those organizations through their efforts of trap and transplants, guzzlers and everything, they, the areas we drew were transplanted areas
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Not native. Nah, they weren’t there before,
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Not they were there. Extricated. And then, yeah, those groups reintroduced helped bring them back. Yep. And, and it was a special opportunity my brother and I had and we started doing guzzler projects at different projects with them. And that was 95. And come 1997, I found myself on the N B U Board, did that for eight years and that led into being a wildlife commissioner in 2005. And, and then I was changed governors. I was off the Wildlife Commission for three years and then changed governors. I was back on the wildlife commissioned for three years. And during that time, I, the second time I was on, I owned a business and was traveling the west coast. The economy went down in Reno and I had to figure out how to make money for my family. So went on the road and the economy was coming back in Reno area. So I figured I’d sell my business and try to get a job back in Reno and went off to commission at the same time. And I was offered a position at the Department of Wildlife. And at first I said, no, ’cause I’m not a biologist. Know what a habitat guy, I’m not a warden.
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But our director was forward thinking and wanted to focus more on the customer. We, we focus on the customer and the wildlife a ton through quality opportunity. We have, we manage our, our big game for quality opportunity and, and older age class animals. But we needed to convert that experience into license simplification into new vendors that are user friendly and mobile friendly and, and just change the way we do business and interact with customers. So we’ve been working on that for the past four and a half years. And I’m extremely happy to be at the Department of Wildlife and just love what I do and fortunate enough to have great staff that has common vision and goals and we can get some stuff done that benefits sportsman.
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You know, we re we remember you, Adam and I attended a lot of those commission meetings and back, you know, pre deputy director back when you’re on the commission, you know, I mean, we would go and course just mostly listen ’cause it’s non-residents. We don’t wanna, you know, voice our opinion too loud. I mean, obviously we help fund your state, but, but at the same time it’s your state and the residents and they kinda get to de decide and, and whatnot. But we did get to watch a lot of change happen while you’re on the board and whatnot. But tell us a little bit about, about that and, you know, there’s just a lot of pressures to please everybody and you can’t please everybody and, and, and whatnot. But at the same time, you’re trying to do what’s right, you know, whether it be, you know, with politically with people or, or managing game. And so just tell us a little bit about that.
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Well, Nevada’s experienced huge changes growing up. Nevada had less than a million people in it. Currently, we’re sitting right around 3 million people. So I’ve heard statistics, one in five people living in Nevada were born in Nevada and from Nevada. So there’s been a huge change that way. The first time I was on the Wildlife Commission, there was a little bit of controversy, but most of the controversy was with our sportsman. Then during the time I was off the Wildlife Commission, Nevada implemented a bear hunt and there was some trap in controversy and, and multiple groups merged together and, and we found ourself in the political cross hair more than ever. And that was when I went back on the commission, I knew that I was going into that type of environment and being a commissioner, you know, you can’t please everybody if, if you think you walked outta there and you pleased everybody, you’re lying to somebody.
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Yeah. You, you’ve gotta make tough decisions and you’ve gotta stand by what your morals and values are. And, and it’s hard on friendships sometimes, but you just gotta stay true to who you are and what you believe and, and try to do the best for the sports in Nevada and the citizens of Nevada. As, as a wildlife commissioner, you represent all wildlife. You represent all citizens. The Department of Wildlife, we have 895 species we manage and we hunt or fish 8% of those species. And less than 2% of Nevadans pay for the right to hunt and fish that funds the management of the 895 species for the 98% of the people that don’t hunt or fish or pay into the system. So it, it’s, it’s a balancing act. And we’re in a legislative session now, and it’s not our job to lobby things. It’s our job to put the facts out there and tell ’em what we know and let the citizen legislature tell us what they believe the political wind is that day.
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And, and then it’s our job to implement the laws they put in place. So it, it’s, Nevada’s changed a lot and the west has changed a lot. I know Utah has some growing pains and Arizona, Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, Wyoming, I guess they’re pretty stable right now. But things changed. Demographics have changed and, and values towards wildlife have changed and how people view wildlife. So that’s our, that’s something we struggle with on a daily basis around here, trying to juggle all those balls. And like I said, you can’t keep everybody happy. You just have to do the best for wildlife and, and stay true to who you are.
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So from that per perspective, as a commissioner, you’re right. I mean, we attend, we attend meetings over here in Utah. I would say more, more when things come up that are maybe controversial or maybe have, especially
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When they’re controversial. Yeah,
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I wasn’t gonna emphasize that too much Jason, but thank you. But you know what I mean, when we’re something passionate about something, whatever you, you’re gonna go and speak your mind. But it is, it is a tough, you know, it’s tough to manage for wildlife and the betterment of them and the habitat and things like that. And then you superimpose things like drought or wildfire or all the things that get thrown on top of it. And you guys feel pressure to reduce deer populations in certain places with whether it be, you know, antlerless sense or whatever on a short term basis so that you can get the fire rehab in place and done and and established before you, you start trying to grow deer or elk again. And it, it’s, you guys, it’s a hard deal because you got a big picture. I have a biology background and I, I, I know, I know what that’s like going there, presenting, presenting one thing that is not a popular thing because you feel like you know that, that that’s best for the specific situation that you’re making that proposal for. And it’s a tough balancing act and it’s a social biological balance and it’s not an easy job. So. Well,
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And I think there’s a lot of things that come into play too with the economy within the hunting industry. You got outfitters and a lot of different people trying to make a living, you know, within the hunting industry. And there’s decisions you’re making that, that impact them directly, whether it be season dates or tag quotas and quality or lack thereof or, or or whatever. And so there’s, there’s a lot of pressure from, and a lot of, you know, very emotionally charged people when it comes to change or, or even, you know, trying to make change. Maybe they want change and, and yet trying to do what’s right. You’ve got the, the department’s perspective in regards to game and fish. And then you’ve also got, you know, commission trying to represent, you know, hunters and sportsmen and, and then how do you mix the two?
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Yes. And you know, it, it’s was a real learning experience for me that second time on the commission. I always grew up thinking that if you could educate people, you could inform ’em into your way of thinking. And what I’ve come to realize is there’s core values that people have and we all have them. And core values oftentimes don’t marry up to other people’s core values. So the Department of Wildlife is, finds itself stuck in the middle of controversy on a regular basis. And what we have to realize is people have different core values and, and you just have to respect them and, and listen to ’em. And, and a lot of times as a commissioner, we were told you didn’t listen to me. And listening and agreeing are two different things. Just because I didn’t vote with the way you thought I should, doesn’t mean I didn’t listen to you or take it into consideration, but you just, what I found you people’s core values, you don’t change ’em with data. They’ll dismiss data to stick with their core value. And, and you get into wildlife management, you got two extremes on the items as predator control. You get, you have sportsmen and ranchers that think we don’t do enough and you have animal rights, people that think that we should, shouldn’t do any and we’re stuck in the middle on a regular basis. Yeah.
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So as you moved from that commissioner role to your role as deputy director, tell us a little bit about what you, what you do, your director’s Tony w Waley, we, Jason, I remember him back from his biologist days in Elco. That was where we associated him with a lot of times. Tell us about what your role is there, and then talk about some of the changes. You alluded to ’em a bit ago, what you, what you’re trying to steer, help steer the ship for Nevada Department of Wildlife and the changes in this, you know, 21st century and maybe from when you started really getting involved in the nineties to now, what your role in that is and what you’re, where you’re, where you guys are trying to, you know, rebrand, if you can use that term. The, the Nevada Department of Wildlife.
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I, I appreciate that term rebrand because we truly are my role, my official role on papers, I’m deputy director over resource management. So I have all the wardens, game biologist, habitat B, conservation education, fisheries, and then the diversity, which is a non-game. They all fall under me in the org chart. But we have tremendous people that run each one of those divisions. And Tony, with his biology background, he handles the day-to-day biology decisions with each one of those divisions. My role here has been more in the public interface. I, I spend, depending on time of year, 50% of my time dealing with public records request. People want to get information outta the department, whether it’s on wind energy bear management and the Tahoe base and just a whole host of items. So I spend a great bit of time with the public that just wants information outta the department.
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Like grammar requests, like we grammar type requests when they’re wanting public record. Correct.
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Yeah. Tell us a little bit about the black bear. You, you made mention that takes up a, I mean, a alarming percentage of your, of your daily routine or yearly, you know, work. But tell us a little bit about that and, and the challenges there. Most
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People probably don’t understand what that means. Black bears are not the sexiest the big game species in the West. But why is that a, why is that a hotbed of controversy in Nevada?
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We have a ever expanding black bear population in western Nevada focused around the Reno Tahoe area. We’re, it’s not a Nevada black bear population. That’s one thing we always try to, to point out to bleed
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Over from
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California. Yeah.
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We, we shared black bear population of 40,000 plus animals with California. It’s just, some of ’em happen to live part of the time in Nevada and some of our Nevada bears live part of the time in California. We have tracking collars on a good number of them. We see their movements. We through d n a analysis know that it’s one population. They’re not distinct populations, but there’s a lot of people that love to see ’em. And there’s a lot of people that get their homes broke into their cars, broke into their kids, get bluff charged. So you, you have two extremes in a very heavily populated, recreated area in the Tahoe Basin, we have a duty as the Department of Wildlife to make sure citizens are safe. And if we have a bear breaking in the houses, we need to address that situation, remove that bear from the situation, whether, take ’em outta the basin and locate ’em in another portion of the state to the pot or, or we won’t put them out there yet. We, we’ve put it in there, we won’t.
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That’s pretty funny. You gotta admit that’s pretty funny. It,
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It is pretty funny.
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But
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You have theirs show up there naturally. But you know, your Department of Wildlife, they think that we’re scattering stuff out. We, things show up naturally, but if we relocate a bear, it’s into bear occupied habitat. We will not at this point, without going through the federal agencies and through a wildlife commission, the very public process, we wouldn’t be moving bears in other areas.
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I’ve been, I’ve been surprised at the lack of bears over on this east side just, just surprised that, you know, it seems suitable, but you know, they don’t really, they don’t have a have ’em over there.
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There we got kind of a gap on this western side of Utah, Utah that kind of probably blocks to some extent. It’s a lot of
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Desert isolated. Isolates it cross.
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Yeah, but,
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Well we, we do have confirmed sightings in Lincoln, white Pine, and Elco County, even N County. That’s the dead center of the state. We, we are, we’re getting not just anecdotal sightings, we’re getting scat we’re getting good reputable sightings of, of bears in areas that they hadn’t been in a hundred years. And, and if they’re moving in, there’re on their own, that’s great. Wildlife needs to do what it needs to do. And, and they were there for hundreds and thousands of years. And so if they go back there, it’s suitable habitat and, and we’ll, we will learn how to manage ’em just like the moose that are moving into Elco County. That’s been a big thing lately is we, we do have moose movement in Elco County and that, that’s become quite the topic down at the legislature this year and made the press more than we ever imagined so.
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Well it sounds like couple
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Moose show, couple moose show up and it, it really, really makes people smile. Let’s,
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Let’s jump into something, I don’t wanna call it more exciting. It sounds like we’re under harvesting black bears to me. Is that the end of the day you’re feeling, or, or can you say that?
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I think we have a reasonable amount of harvest. Okay. We, we look at what car California harvest percentage wise and we look at what we harvest percentage wise. We’re currently doing a couple different models. Dr. Inger up at the university’s helping us. We have other universities helping us do models to verify each model to come up with a population estimate. Like I said, those bears, they’re part-time California residents, part-time Nevada residents. It’s just one population.
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Well, let’s jump into sheep, deer, elk, some of these exciting things. We’ve seen incredible things happen with sheep. The numbers are off the charts. Adam and I just marvel every year at the number of tags we’re, we’re able to have and and whatnot. You guys have gone through, you know, a lot of, a lot of phases and, and just, you know, doesn’t seem like disease has been a huge issue. I mean, although it’s here and there, it’s just man, it’s just off the charts with populations and whatnot. We’ve got some new units coming on for non-residents even. And a few things, both California big horns and deserts. But tell us a little bit about that.
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As we talked about earlier, there’s the sheep programs are, have been driven greatly by the N G O community. Nevada Big Horns Unlimited. And there’s multiple Nevada Big Unlimited chapters throughout the state. Elco Bighorns Unlimited, the fraternity Desert Bighorn, those guys, they do fundraisers that bring money, but more importantly than just the money they bring into the, the sheep arena, they bring volunteers. We, we have off the top of my head, been in 150 big game guzzlers throughout the state that benefit sheep and those guzzlers, you show up on a weekend, they’re building a guzzler, rebuilding a guzzler. You’ll have 40 to 60 guys out there volunteering their time. We do a guzzler project in one weekend. It’s, it’s a pretty amazing feat. But the benefit to the Department of Wildlife, when those volunteers are out there, we get to count all their man hours and, and assign a dollar value to those man hours.
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And then that becomes matched for the department that then pays, helps speak for the materials to build the next guzzler. It’s just something that between the dollars the NGOs bring to us and the, the volunteer force that they bring to us, it really has been a driving factor that has made our sheep program to go from 2,500 sheep in the state of Nevada and with only one species Nelson deserts in, you know, the 1960s to 12,000 sheep in the state of Nevada today representing three species. It’s been an incredible success story. When I drew my desert sheep tag in 95, there was right at a hundred tags given out this year we put out 316 tags. So that’s a lot.
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Is that for just deserts?
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That’s just for deserts.
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That’s what I thought. Yeah, that’s
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A lot. 316 desert tags.
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Yeah. And we, Jason and I often, we get asked by a lot of people as we’re building draw strategies and stuff for folks, we tell ’em Nevada, I mean they give more non-resident desert sheep tags than all the other states combined. And you guys are about 30, 28 to 30 31, you know, depending on the year for non-residents. Yeah. So that’s awesome.
00:25:49:15 –> 00:26:47:20
It’s 31 non-resident sheep tags. And every time I talk to somebody that’s had a chance to hunt sheep in Nevada, I I really stress that, that they need to join N B U and the fraternity and even see one of their dinners to, to find out the work that went into giving those non-residents that opportunity. Yeah, it’s a passion. A lot of these guys, a lot of, a lot of my best friends were made through sheet programs. Goler builds lifelong friends that have actually become part of the family special people. And then you talked about the non-residents and, and putting in for tags in Nevada. We do have more areas this year for non-residents, but one of the things you get asked, I’m sure a lot is what’s the best area to put in. Last year I’m looking at it, we killed 23 Boone and Crockett Rams out of 15 different areas.
00:26:48:07 –> 00:27:41:16
Geez. So when you look at that, what’s the best area? Well, I’d tell you the best area that the one you draw, how the cheapest the one you draw that, that’s exactly what I was gonna say. Geez, you know, we had two rams on our checkout. They show a hundred nine seventy nine inches, but I think one, the final B n C score on both those rams were 180. Those are just fantastic sheep. Yeah, they are 91% harvest rate and an average days in field of 5.4 days. And the commission a couple years ago, even lengthened the season from November 20th for most seasons through the end of December, gave it another 10, 11 days, which my wife really appreciated. ’cause that just gives me more time to go out with different friends sheep. Yeah, yeah. Well it’s, she she really appreciates that. But,
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Well, and
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We’ll
00:27:43:07 –> 00:28:35:09
Our wives appreciate, appreciate it too because we, we chase sheep over in Utah, but that usually is over by about the 10th of November for us over here. We’re done. And so we love to slide south and go to the warmer weather, Jason and I and November and December or whenever it is and get on another sheep hunter too. And it’s, it’s, it’s awesome. There’s the sheep numbers in Nevada are really incredible. And I know us over here in Utah, I used to serve as the president of our Utah Sheep organization, Utah FAU at the time. And you guys were great partners in Nevada Department of Wildlife in providing transplant stock for us over here on many of our units. You know, historically, I mean our Zion unit, our east and west Capic units are pretty much all a product of Nevada stock from the 1970 East 90 73 or fours when they brought ’em to Zion.
00:28:36:01 –> 00:29:23:10
And you know, look at what that’s done both inside the national park and outside now where there is hunting and as well as compare what’s east and west in the late nineties, early two thousands, mid two thousands either from a lot of different source populations in Nevada. And, and I know you guys have done that with other states as well. I think maybe Colorado got sheep from you. So just an incredible resource of sheep. We’re talking about desert sheep primarily, but that has really extended outside your boundaries of just in Nevada. And I know as Utah residents, we really appreciate that because we have what we have to some extent because of our sheep organizations in Utah and our Utah D W R. But, but you gotta have sheep to put on the mountain and you guys have had ’em to give. And so we’re appreciative of that. So,
00:29:24:06 –> 00:30:07:10
Well we, we, we’ve been on the receiving end of that. Our California big orange sheep, our our elk, our rocky mountain bighorn sheep, our goats, a lot of our priced possessions in our state didn’t originate in our state. They were historically here, but we had to bring ’em back in Canada, Colorado, Oregon, Wyoming with our elk. A lot of people have helped us build the, the level of game we have in our state also. And, and so we don’t see it as giving sheep away. We see it just as our taking, taking our turn in in the, the betterment. The betterment of everybody. Yeah.
00:30:07:10 –> 00:30:43:22
Go, goes around, comes around and type of thing. And that’s, that’s kind of been true. What about your, your Rockies? There’s, you know, we get questions every year from, from applicants that have some rocky points built up and, and mountain goat points built up for Nevada and they just are kind of sitting there, you know, in their account. Can you give us a kind of a current status update? You know, we know of the die-offs back in the East Humboldts and that where you guys were killing phenomenal rams in the early two thousands until the disease issue went through there. And I know there’s been some re reintroduction efforts there. Maybe bring us up to speed on those as well as the goats as well.
00:30:44:24 –> 00:31:49:25
We’re hopeful that we could get that back. It, it’s had a couple die off periods and it did come back and that’s when we were hunting them. I think it was 2007, 2008, we had that crash. Again, we’re trying to do some studies right now. We believe that there may be some goats that are sheds that are the disease carriers that limit our recruitment. When you have a shedder, they’re, they’re actively carrying the virus, but it’s not killing them. But when you have the young come on, they transfer that to the young and then your young don’t make it. So your recruitment is low. And we believe that’s part of our problem with our goats and our rocky mountain sheep. So we’re trying to design some studies that we can go in and capture and call some animals, look for which ones are potential sheds, and then look for ways to remove those outta the population so we can get a healthy, viable building growing population again.
00:31:51:02 –> 00:32:24:19
So I’d like to say it’s growing and things are all rosy, but right now we’re still struggling with our Rockies and our goats. They’re just not performing as they did in the past and we’re trying to figure out why. And as soon as we figure out why, and I know that we have the habitat to support ’em and, and we’ll we’ll get back to where we need to be. It’s just, we need to get better at it and, and it’s gonna cost some money and that’s where those NGOs come in and it’s gonna take some volunteers to do some things and we’re gonna stay after it until we get there.
00:32:25:18 –> 00:33:33:10
Right on. Yeah, we totally agree with that. It’s tough and some things that just aren’t totally in your control. And so you just do the best you can at managing ’em and continue to work with it and, and, and learn from it and move forward and take care of some of the problems that may have caused it initially. Before we leave that we do wanna, you know, a little shout out. We talked about Nevada Bighorns Unlimited. You can go to Nevada bighorns unlimited.org. I think their banquet this year is April 5th. They sell out. I don’t know if they’re sold out this year, but anyway, anybody that’s interested might go onto their website and check it out. Maybe buy tickets. Same thing with the fraternity there of Desert Bighorns there in Vegas. May 18th is theirs. Adam and I are gonna, are planning on making that one. You can go to desert bighorn.com and get tickets and, and learn more about that and then show up. It’s gonna be quite an event. So anyway, Adam and I have both been to Nevada Bighorn Unlimited here and there, depending on the year. We get busy this time of year here in the office. But anyway, we thought we’d go support the, the fraternity down there in, in Vegas. And so
00:33:33:19 –> 00:34:13:05
Just wanna give another shout out to another one of our partners phone scope. It’s that time of year if you’ve got a new phone and you need a set up for your bios, spotting scope, whatever before scouting season comes jump [email protected], P h o n e s k o p e.com. Pick the model for the, your phone and your optic of your choice. Get it set up before you need it and capture a lot of great scouting footage. We all, we, we all use this here in the office, won’t, won’t leave home without it on a scouting trip. So visit phone scope.com, p h o and e s k o p e.com.
00:34:13:11 –> 00:34:15:04
Anyway, a little shout out to them. So,
00:34:15:15 –> 00:35:40:12
And, and before we get too far away from Desert sheep, Adam brought up that, you know, he likes that the Utah sheep season ends and he goes south and he hunts. And then a little while ago I also spoke about 91 success, 91% success rate. When people look at Nevada, I think they need to do their homework. Some of that 9% is not successful is they put in for areas that they can draw. But we do have some northern units that have big mountains, Mount Jefferson, the Arc Dome area. They’re just, they’re 11, 12,000 foot mountains, very rugged. We have people draw those that are outta state and they come in and they don’t know what they’re getting into. They think they’re going to a desert, big horn sheep hunt, and they, they’re not hunting, hunting zero degrees at 10,000 feet. Make sure you do your homework. Those are great areas. They’re some of the my favorite areas to hunt. But know, know your own physical limitations when you’re applying for each area. Don’t just look at the area that you can get a tag in. Look at what your, your own physical limitations are and apply accordingly there too. And that’s when where you guys come in, you can help your, your clientele pick what areas better suit their, their own personal challenges. You’re
00:35:40:12 –> 00:37:01:20
Right, yeah, we do publish that and a publication will come out in the April issue. In fact, we’re working on it right now and we do go over those units and, and what to expect and things kind of give a brief overview. I did talk to a guy that hunted the Arc Dome Desert this past year and he loved it. Went on and on and there’s just a lot of unknowns. There’s, you know, bigger sheep than people think. And, and it was quite, quite an interesting conversation. And so anyway, a lot of quality spread across the board, just like we talked about earlier. But let’s, let’s jump into elk a little bit. There’s been a, of course Nevada, Adam and I have always argued, not argued with other people just that Nevada’s one of the top producing elk states in the west. I mean, maybe not numbers wise, but quality’s pretty much unsurpassed and e Lee’s helped put that on the board and now it’s, it’s branched out in a lot of different areas, whether it be area 13, area six, all that country cleared by Wells and Elco have been just phenomenal. Had a buddy draw one of the two non-resident muzz tags up there in area six and just off the charts had had the time of his life this past year. And so anyway, just dive into that a little bit. What you guys have seen, the quality numbers, the, the spreading out of elk and, and and whatnot, which allows, you know, increase in tags and different things.
00:37:02:26 –> 00:38:33:19
Well our, our bulk cow ratio is just through the roof and, and elk hunting in Nevada is just a phenomenal thing. I’ve been lucky enough to have a muzzle loader tag up on Table Mountain in area 16. Both my boys have been lucky enough to draw over an Ailey and, and all three hunts that my family’s been on have just been quality hunts. The chance of seeing big bulls every day is, is great. The chance of getting to ’em is big country. Big country. Tough to get to tree up as you guys know and, and they make you work for ’em. But the qualities there, we, we, throughout the years when I was on the commission, we paid for studies. You might remember going to commission meetings. We talked about collecting teeth from elk so we could do age studies on the Yeah. On the bowls and you bet and we, we equated those ages and we were taking ages and we were having to hunter harvest people, send in what their main beam length was. And, and we’ve come up with, you know, an eight year old bowl is where you start seeing that 50 inch main beam. And that’s, that’s the type of bowls we we manage for is that 50 inch main beam where most areas were over a third elk killed with a 15 inch main beam. And some of them were up to almost 50% of the elk killed in some areas with that 50 inch main beam. So eight year old bulls are out there, eight year olds and older bulls are out there.
00:38:35:20 –> 00:39:32:19
It’s not a rarity to see a big bull. You see, you hunt over Neely, you see a lot of big bulls. Like, like I said, seeing it and being able to, to get in position to, to make it happen are two different things. But every day you have that chance to try to make a different move to get into position. And it is just a special thing to hunt elk in Nevada without a doubt. And, and with our success in elk and move them into Elco County and you know, Lincoln County, Nye County, we do have agreements with our federal partners that we need to keep our elk numbers at a certain level. So we had exceeded most of those caps in a lot areas, so we really put the gas pedal down and started harvesting cows at a pretty good rate. And when you harvest more cows and bulls, that’s when your bull ratio ratio really starts growing too. So some of our areas were almost one-to-one caliber bowl ratio.
00:39:34:22 –> 00:40:17:00
I know some of your listeners are opportunity people also and wanna put meat in the freezer. 40% of our tags last year for non-resident cow elk went to people with zero bonus points. People overlook Nevada as a place that you can come harvest a cow elk in a archery or muzz or rifle season doesn’t conflict with a, a season in your own home state. And that’s, that’s one thing people don’t realize is we do have cow elk tags that 40% went to people’s zero bonus points last year that that’s something and and their success rate’s high too. So good place to come hunt elk and chase elk
00:40:17:15 –> 00:40:25:19
And it’s a different point system. Right. And worth pointing out. Right Jack? So people don’t need to worry about burning their, their regular bowl points for that, right?
00:40:25:23 –> 00:41:18:15
Yeah, yeah. We have bonus points because we have a spike elk hunt, we have a bull hunt, we have a cow hunt. Each one of those is a subcategory and they have their own hunts. Your bull, bull cow and, and spike your points gain for bull and your points gain for cow. Yeah, yeah. Separately your weapon you don’t gain for weapon class. ’cause on one application you can put in for muzzle loader, archery and rifle on one application. So that’s one set of bonus points. But that and the other thing, Nevada bonus points work different than everybody else’s too. We’re not to take the top off, you know, you don’t have to be in so long to draw. We have people with 0 1 2 bonus points. Draw desert big orange sheep tags. Yeah, we have, we have people that have max points that don’t draw. Yeah.
00:41:19:19 –> 00:42:02:02
The point system. We square your bonus points. All it does is put more chances into the drawing for you. It’s not a guarantee like it is in other states, it’s more chances. But what we really like about our point system is everybody’s in the game. Year one. You know, there’s places I’d like to hunt in other states that I don’t even put in. ’cause I’ll never catch that wave. I wasn’t in the beginning. And if I start now, if it takes 10 points to draw that area, by the time I get there, it’ll be 35 points to draw that area. Yeah. In Nevada, I’m in year one, it’s kind of a high red, you know, we’re not Idaho and New Mexico we’re straight and non bonus point. But you’re still in year one
00:42:02:07 –> 00:42:15:08
Random draw. Yeah. Yeah. Five choices as well. So allows you to stagger your choices a little bit from swinging for the fence, maybe on the first couple to gradually third through fifth willing units you’re willing to take. Yeah. So
00:42:15:12 –> 00:42:25:25
I, I drew, I drew a California bighorn sheep tag on my fourth choice. Yeah. And it, was it there area long to go? No, but it was a great sheep tag ’cause it was in my pocket. That’s
00:42:25:25 –> 00:42:55:04
Right. So, well very, very good points. There are people, especially a lot of folks, we get a lot of calls from folks from maybe from California looking for, you know, cow elk hunts, things like that. And obviously they gotta drive through Nevada to get to Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, all these others. So good that you brought that up for those guys. And so do you find any, any errors in Nevada that you still have in your sites potentially where you think elk can expand or do you have at least populations where you feel currently where, where you can grow elk and manage elk?
00:42:56:07 –> 00:43:22:20
Elk are naturally expanding. The Santa Rosas, we, north Winnemucca, we opened them up to hunting a couple years ago. That’s not a transplant area area 17, just straight north of tonneau that we didn’t put elk in there, but there’s an increasing elk population in there. We manage it with area 16, not too much opportunity to move elk anymore. They’ve
00:43:22:20 –> 00:43:23:12
Done it on their own,
00:43:23:25 –> 00:43:39:09
They’ve done it on their own, but they continue to do it on their own. We have sheep continue to do it on their own. We have pioneering elk and sheep, hers and you know, we think we know where we want ’em to go. And they’ll tell us sometimes where
00:43:39:09 –> 00:43:40:29
They want to go. Elk will live about anywhere
00:43:41:16 –> 00:43:43:29
They’re experts on it. They’ll, they’ll tell you where they wanna
00:43:43:29 –> 00:43:59:15
Go. Tell us about, when you mention Area 17, just for the listeners that don’t know, that haven’t spent, you know, 20 plus years applying for Nevada, you know, tell us about area 17 versus 1 71 to 1 73 as now known. You know, nowadays just the,
00:44:00:19 –> 00:44:18:23
The difference. Well when, when I talk about area 17, that’s just just old school talk growing up in tonneau. If you ask somebody in Reno area 14, they think of Granite Mountain north of Gerlach and you ask somebody of unit 14, they think of the Diamond Mountains in their backyard and
00:44:18:23 –> 00:44:19:14
One 40 ones
00:44:19:27 –> 00:44:22:00
1 41. And
00:44:22:00 –> 00:44:28:03
That’s because I think back in the days they call ’em area 14, it wasn’t segregated into three digit units. You know
00:44:28:22 –> 00:46:06:21
That that’s exactly it. When you bring in sheep and you bring in elk and you have these different species you have to manage in different ways. So to break 17, what, what what I call 17 is now we added 17 south, not we, the commission added 17 south a year ago, 1 71 south to split 1 71. So you can manage those sheet populations different. Yeah. You have that high, high alpine area, the arc dome area that 10, 11,000 feet and then 20 miles south there you have some rolling hills that go to seven, 8,000 feet. And it was two distinct populations, but it was in one unit. And to manage those different, then you come up with do we just keep subdividing those units, 17 becomes subdivided and and right now we have a 17 1 71 north and south. And in the future when when we get around to it, we’re going to have to give it another number than just the north and south. Yeah. You look at what we’ve done in two 11, it was a sheep unit just be two. It used to be two 11, it was two 11 north and south. And now there’s a 2 13, 2 14. So the, it used to be area 21 then became two 11 and then subdivided even more. Yeah. That subdivision happens for different management strategies. Yeah. For different species. So when I talk about 17, I mean torn upon it is the 1 71, 1 72, 1 73. And when I talk about 16, that’s 1 61 through 1 64.
00:46:06:26 –> 00:46:16:12
Right. And we just get a lot of questions of that just, you know, but it’s, it just stems back from the old, old days, 24, 2 41 to 2 45, all that. So anyway.
00:46:16:12 –> 00:46:35:19
Yeah. And when you, when when you draw a deer tag, it is all the one 70 ones or the everything that’s in the one 70 series. And when you draw a deer tag, it’s everything in the one 60 series or the 14 series or Sure, yeah. It, it depends what species you’re after. But it has been subdivided over the years for different management plans.
00:46:36:08 –> 00:47:37:14
Well, let’s jump into deer of course. We’ve seen a lot of good things in elk. We’ve had tags ourselves. We tell everybody they should be applying Nevada’s a must apply for state when it comes to desert sheep, California, bighorns, elk, deer and antelope. And so anyway, definitely huge advocates of the elk. We’ve been a part of some of the amazing bulls actually I guided, you know, 400 inch over there, clear back in the day, back down in 24 when it first opened. And so it’s just one of those things, you know, and, and I’ve ate my tag too personally in there looking for a giant hunting, a specific bull. But we are, it’s always exciting. There’s not a lot of non-resident permits. However, for the minimal non-refundable application fee, you know, to apply, it’s well worth getting points for. And so Adam and I tell guys every every person that has any interest in elk, sheep, deer whatsoever to be applying. And so I just wanted to throw that out before we move on to deer. But you have anything to add on that, Jack?
00:47:38:11 –> 00:48:09:02
I I, I think that we have different deer hunting in Nevada than a lot of other states and, and we manage for things that other, other states don’t even consider managing. Two. We we’re at a 30 buck per hundred dough post hunt buck ratio. A lot of other states don’t see 20%. And we do have some areas that exceed 40% buck per hundred dough post hunt survey. That’s, that’s just unheard of. Is that
00:48:09:02 –> 00:48:17:17
In all units or just certain units? And you have others that you manage for below 30, but is that a, a benchmark you try to have in all units? Postseason, it’s,
00:48:17:27 –> 00:49:21:19
Th 30 bucks is what we manage for. But you go through a county advisory board process and you go through a commission process. The commissions the social end of wildlife management. And if they want to have some areas that are 40 bucks per a hundred, those the way they set the quotas, that’s, that’s what, that’s what comes out in the quotas. And, and that’s part of the department commission role is the department tells ’em what the biology is and the commission, it’s, they’re the social end of meeting what some constituents want. And and we do have extremely high buck d ratios. We have high success rate. What I’m seeing off my dashboard is 55% success rate statewide last year. That’s just opportunities there. And I think what really sets us apart from other states is we’re 85% public land, like I talked about before. If, if you see a mountain, 99% of the time you can go hunt.
00:49:23:05 –> 00:50:46:26
You may not be able to get up a particular canyon because of private property, but you can find a way on the mountains. And that, that’s what I love about Nevada is just our ability to get out and hunt in areas we wanna go without asking for permission or a trespass fee or whatever it may be. You see it, you wanna go there, you put your boots on, let’s go. And the other thing there is a lot of high mountain areas that you gotta put your boots on and go and, and earn it. And there’s, because of some people’s physical limitations, there’s a lot of areas in the state that have tremendous road access also. So that’s something that needs to be taken into consideration too when they’re, when your customers are applying as their own physical limitations. And there are some areas that offer better access, whether it’s through U T V A T V or or truck. And we have a lot of areas that, like I said, they’re B L M and Forest Service managed and, and pick what, what hunting style you, you, you have. And, and there’s a lot of opportunity to, to match that in this state. Whether it’s get 10 miles in away from people and hunt, you know, out of a two man tent or whatever it takes, but, or, or drive around and, and take that chance
00:50:47:12 –> 00:51:50:02
Anywhere in between. Yeah, we, Jason, I talk a lot about that with our client and you have, for the most part, you have, you know, archery, muzz loader and rifle seasons and in some cases two or three rifle seasons, an early a middle or a later at least, at least one long rifle season, sometimes the later season for those people that wanna, you know, try to be a little bit more exclusive in, in the hills with fewer people, dates that flirt with the rutt or even to get into the rutt. So there’s something for everybody in Nevada. And the other thing worth pointing out on deer, you don’t have a waiting period. If you draw a tag one year, you’re back in the next year. You know, you gotta wait, you know, seven years for elk, 10 years for sheep, you know what I mean? You’re, those are maybe one or two in your lifetime for most non-residents to get where deer, you know, you draw, you’re back in the next year, apply aggressively if you want, if it’s a year you need to get a tag, add some, you know, opportunity hunts for archery, muzzle loader or maybe some of those high country units you alluded to, to, if you want to get a deer tag in Nevada, it’s, it’s something you can be as aggressive or non-aggressive each year.
00:51:50:13 –> 00:52:09:22
And it’s interesting that antelope has a three-year waiting period and deer don’t. So Yeah. You know, for us, I know that’s, I know it’s, there’s less antelope tags and I get, and I, and I get the demand for all that, but it’s just kind of interesting. We’re, we’re, we, we are grateful. There isn’t a waiting period for deer. We like to, we like to kill your deer, Jack. We like
00:52:09:22 –> 00:52:26:05
To Yeah, I, I know. And, and, and, and it, it, I I think you guys will agree it’s a special opportunity in Nevada and, and there is some units that do historically produce bigger bucks, but just as we have in our sheep, there’s big bucks all over the state. You just gotta go find
00:52:26:10 –> 00:53:09:29
’em. Well, and I want to, yeah, I was, I was gonna expound upon that a little bit. We, Adam and I have talked a lot about the changes we see in the different units and a lot of people say, well, the same units produce the same year in and year out no matter what. And it’s just not the case. We’ve seen the two seventies for desert sheep go from on paper, the worst units in the world for desert sheep to be one of the best trophy producing units in the state. You know, quality wise, we’ve seen the Sheldon in that northwest corner go back in the late nineties, early 2000 was the most revered country in the state for mule deer. You know, to, to now being, you know, less, let’s just say, you know, less than perfect trophy quality wise. Where, where we’ve also seen, you know, Elco come and go that country.
00:53:09:29 –> 00:54:00:23
And Elco has an incredible history in the record books. And then they, they took a dive and, and now it seems like they’re coming back a little bit. And of course Area seven seems to be doing really well right now. But, you know, and then everything along the Utah border, you know, like you said, and, and of course, you know, the two forties and two thirties and two twenties and one thirties are just producing an incredible number of good deer right now. And, and a lot of that, you know, depends on moisture. Nevada’s an arid state as we’ve talked about. But, but we have seen change come and go and, and like you said, you know, the more we branch out, Adam and I branched out, I’ve hunted 25 and a few of these other places, you start to realize there’s good quality, you know, wherever you go if you work hard at it. And some of these are easier to draw than others. And, and with less than perfect season dates, you got really good drawing on. So,
00:54:01:27 –> 00:54:57:27
And, and you know, there’s, you, you, you, you bring up a few of those areas. You go to that center part of the state, 16, 17, 14, they’re big mountains. People don’t realize the mountains we have in Nevada, we’re one of the most mountainous states in the country. It just, it’s not one big mountain range like the Sears or the Rockies. It’s just 7,000 foot valleys with 12,000 foot peaks on each side of it. And just a lot of different ranges. And my boys and I, we love putting the boots on and, and our goal is to find deer. But we start with finding where we can get away from people and then we go look for deer when we get away from people. And, and those possibilities exist in a lot of those areas. If, if you want to get off the road and go hunt, a lot of times you’ll be by yourself. And that’s a pretty special experience.
00:54:58:12 –> 00:55:00:08
We just wanna know where you’re gonna apply Jack,
00:55:00:29 –> 00:55:01:09
Where
00:55:01:09 –> 00:55:02:03
Where are you gonna apply
00:55:02:11 –> 00:55:03:03
Or does old habits
00:55:03:10 –> 00:55:10:05
Die hard? One of the, one of those numbers you just came up with, I’m gonna apply for, but I’m not gonna tell you which one we
00:55:10:05 –> 00:55:11:29
Just rattle. You’re going to Sheldon, we just
00:55:11:29 –> 00:55:16:05
Rattled, we just rattled off about 10 units. So it’s one of those
00:55:17:05 –> 00:56:06:06
I’m not going to The Sheldon. The Sheldon. And in northwest Nevada, it, it was subject to, you know, record breaking droughts. Yeah. Year after year. Four consecutive year. Yeah. It is just your recruitment’s down habitat just really got beat up during that time. I wouldn’t be putting in for the shellman for a while, but when it comes back, we, we have good moisture up there this year, but it, it’s going to take a few years to get that thing back, you know, a few good consecutive years to, to get the habitat and condition that you can start producing. What, what it used to. It’s got the genetics, it just, we need that habitat back. And when you have snow till sites that don’t register any snow over a season,
00:56:06:06 –> 00:56:06:19
That’s a problem
00:56:06:27 –> 00:56:08:06
For a couple season. It
00:56:08:06 –> 00:56:11:11
Doesn’t a, it doesn’t matter if you’re in Vegas, orton of pot. That’s a problem. Yeah.
00:56:11:22 –> 00:57:05:12
Yes, exactly. One thing the unique you guys have in Nevada as well for rifle deer hunters is the Nevada guide draw for deer, which is pretty unique. There’s only another state, New Mexico has that for all species. But talk a little bit bit about that. The application period is open right now for about another 10 day, it closes March 11th. Yes. Just discuss, discuss that. We have a lot of clients ask us about that. We generally tell them if you know you’re gonna use an outfitter when you draw, you’re, you’re in almost every single case. Jason and I have not found a case, I don’t think where the odds are worse for a particular hunt. There may be one obscure one, but for the most part we’ve looked at it’s two to four times better drawing odds to apply for the same unit in the guide draw. So talk a little bit about that’s unique and, and you also get to find out, you know, six weeks or two months earlier that you drew a tag or not.
00:57:06:05 –> 00:58:11:01
Definitely. So legislature, it’s probably been 20 years now that the guy draws me in effect and approximately 300 tags a year. It comes outta the non-resident quota. Non-residents get 10% of all species. The guide draw comes right outta the non-resident quota and you have to apply through a guide. The way it currently works is the guide can apply for you or we assign all the guides a unique number for their guiding operation and then they can give that unique number to their clientele and then tell them what areas they would like them to apply. It did increases your odds, like you said, tremendously, but you are hooked to going with that guide. It is a guided hunt, so you can’t, you can’t just use that outfitter to apply to get the tag and then do it a do it yourself hunt. You are tied to that guide. At that point. He needs to accompany you in the field to to legally Yeah. For the have that tag and for
00:58:11:01 –> 00:58:19:19
The whole duration. Like New Mexico, it has a provision of a minimum of two days. But Nevada, it’s ev anytime you hunt with that tag, you gotta have a licensed guy.
00:58:19:21 –> 00:58:49:19
Some, yeah. Some of your seasons. And it’s for rifle only, like Adam said. And some of your seasons are, you know, three plus weeks and you know, a guy’s gonna get a tag. You book a five day hunt. I mean, you, you, unless you rebook, you know, you, you’re not able leak to be legally your own in the field. Stay on your own. Yeah. And need to be applying where that guide guides too. You can’t, you know, don’t expect a guy, you know, out of pooch or something to be going over to Reno to guide, you know, or you know, any, anyway, there’s just different provisions that way. So a lot,
00:58:49:23 –> 00:59:41:29
A lot of the guides that we deal with, they, they apply for their clientele. So their clientele can’t, as we talked about earlier, we have a, what people in renal call area 14, which is Granite Mountain, and then you got people in Eureka that say area 14, they talk about the one 40 series. So guides will apply for their clientele just to make sure that those little nuances don’t creep in and all of a sudden one of their clients draws a, a tag in an area that they might not have a forest service permit it for. Yeah. So work with your outfitter. Another opportunity we see a lot is outfitters working with private landowners and we on elk and deer and antelope, we have landowner tag opportunities that the department works with landowners, whether it be in a damaged compensation fashion or in an Lent fashion.
00:59:44:16 –> 01:00:23:26
We private landowners get tags and, and they, they’re not really tags or vouchers that they can turn around and sell. They can sell ’em straight to the client or a lot of times they go through services like your, like epic outdoors or, or outfitters also get ’em and, and do it that way. And sometimes outfitters work for you through you guys on those tags. So there’s multiple ways that you can get tags in Nevada, whether the general draw the guy to draw landowner tags depending on your financial wherewithal and, and your your want. There’s opportunity in Nevada.
01:00:24:01 –> 01:01:13:04
Yeah. And we’re, you know, we’re huge advocates of that. Being able to, you know, you guys issue landowner tags, basically layman’s terms. We’re talking about landowner tags being issued to landowners and they can sell ’em for profit. Not a big deal. You guys condone that obviously. And it, and it allows people in the private sector to be able to, you know, help with co compensating for damage. So landowners actually, you know, don’t mind having wildlife on their property and, and fixing fence and a few other things that damage that may occur, having animals on their property. So what a, yes, what a great program. I know none of these programs are perfect. Every state deals with, you know, the different ways that they divvy out landowner tags, some of them make ’em transferrable to blood relatives only or, or ranch managers, things like that, whether it be Wyoming and and whatnot.
01:01:13:05 –> 01:01:56:01
But, but anyway, we, we do deal in those tags as you, as you mentioned, and happy to do so. I think we probably, you know, one of the largest companies that deal with those. But a lot of it’s just because we’re huge advocates of hunting deer and elk in Nevada. You guys got a great resource managed for quality, you know, for the habitat you got and and whatnot. And the animal, the animals that you have, you sure do a great job of, of managing ’em. And, and there’s a lot of people, there’s a lot of demand for those tags. So part of that equation is, is predators. You guys are also fairly liberal. When, when, when it comes to lions and different things, do you know, maybe do you wanna take a quick second and just talk about your predator management?
01:01:56:16 –> 01:03:20:23
Yes. If you apply in Nevada every application there’s a $3 fee for predator management. And then there’s a legislative mandate that the proceeds of that $3 fee, we have to use 80 per 80% of that for lethal predator management. And we use that management tool. If we have a certain population that’s underperforming, whether it be sheep or deer, we may go in and do some coyote removal on fawning grounds. We may go in and do lion removal if we have a big horn sheep population and we think predators may be a limiting factor to them getting over the bubble where they can be self-sustaining. So that’s the $3 fee program. You, you brought up lion hunting, that’s another activity that is guides really enjoy in, in Nevada, because like I talked about, the 85% public land, they good snow conditions, lion hunters are out now. We do have a 365 day lion season. So if you have a tag in your pocket, it’s good for 365 days from, well tomorrow will be a brand new line tag because it resets once a year. It’s not, it’s not, it’s not a,
01:03:21:29 –> 01:03:23:28
Not annual January to December,
01:03:24:01 –> 01:03:27:08
It’s not Yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s March 1st.
01:03:27:23 –> 01:03:56:15
You have to have, you have to reset quotas at some point on the year. And this is March 1st. Is is the day you do that? Well, the nice thing about that too, we noticed when you apply everybody, when we apply for Nevada, you guys are pretty cheap when it comes to non-resident lion tags. Just like 104 bucks or something. If you, yeah, if you draw a tag and want one in your pocket, even on an incidental hunt, deer, elk or something like that, you see a lion gives somebody for a hundred bucks, gives you an option to whack a lion on your deer, elk hunt, things like that, which,
01:03:56:17 –> 01:04:06:27
And it’s happened. Those opportunities are coming more and more prevalent to the hunters just out in the field. So if you’re gonna spend some time in Nevada, I’d say pick up a lion tag. It’s worth the a hundred bucks.
01:04:07:13 –> 01:04:51:09
Definitely. So there’s an unlimited number, we just have a limited number of harvest you’re supposed to call in before you go into the field. But during your deer seasons, we’ve never deer and elk season, sheep seasons, we’ve never reached that harvest limit. I I haven’t seen us reach the harvest limit since I’ve been associated with this. So those opportunities exist and I know it’s something that, that the guides love doing in the January february timeframe with the snow on the ground and, and it just gives an additional opportunity coming to Nevada and hunt. Let’s, and, and you can get two tags annually currently, so you go pursue one, you like it, you can come back and do it again the same year.
01:04:51:28 –> 01:04:54:03
We, we wanna talk about something controversial.
01:04:54:23 –> 01:04:56:05
Yeah, we can’t let you out too.
01:04:56:17 –> 01:05:01:02
I’m, we wanna rattle your, we’re gonna rattle your chain. So go ahead Bronson. Go ahead. Rattle this chain.
01:05:01:23 –> 01:05:34:02
Well, well probably a couple of, a couple of changes that have, that have been very recent in Nevada. A couple of law slash rule changes are one is the, the shed antler gathering law and the other one’s a truck camera law. So tell us a little little bit about, I guess let’s talk about the shed shed season law that’s was in effect the last year or two, maybe two years, something like that. And how that came about. I mean, I realize there’s resource protection, but you know, it’s feels like for us Utah, people that love
01:05:34:02 –> 01:05:35:01
To shed hunt your state.
01:05:35:23 –> 01:05:38:25
It’s a little bit, a little bit targeted to the eastern side of Nevada.
01:05:39:10 –> 01:05:42:28
Bothersome Jack, it’s bothersome. So hey,
01:05:43:07 –> 01:05:44:06
It, it’s all good.
01:05:45:26 –> 01:06:51:28
You know, back in the first time I was on commission between 2005 and 2008, we recognized that shed hunting was, was pushing animals more than sometimes we liked them. Pushed on winter rain and or winter range and, and tough habit, you know, tough winters. So it was something that was on our radar. I actually did a radio spot over in Neely encouraging people to shed hunt ethically, the commercial commercialization has changed it, you know, it’s, it’s a good family activity and we really support family activity and being, having people out in the field, it’s a great thing to get your kids out and do, but we just saw more and more heavy pressure on, on some critical mill deer winter range and, and elk winter range. And, and the legislature, I believe was 2011 actually mandated the Wildlife Commission take a look at a shed season.
01:06:52:16 –> 01:07:52:19
Yeah. And it, it took a few years to, to come to fruition and then it was talked about and when I was on the commission the second time, and we actually passed a regulation, but the way that it works in Nevada is anytime the commission passed a regulation, it goes to a legislative body that then has a final say. Whether the regulation passed by a commission can become law. And it was held up even though the regulation was passed by the commission, it it wasn’t passed into law by the legislative body. And then couple years ago when we had that terrible winter and, and Utah didn’t want people out in their habitat, we saw an influx of people coming into Nevada that year and it really drove the, the need for some type of regulation protect key habitat when animals are most vulnerable. Well,
01:07:52:19 –> 01:08:01:12
Let’s just be honest. You’re, you’re talking about people driving cross country or just doing anything and everything it takes to gather sheds brown is that’s what you were, I mean I’m not,
01:08:01:12 –> 01:08:02:03
That’s what I, that’s
01:08:02:09 –> 01:08:03:29
I mean, you know, just call it what it is,
01:08:04:24 –> 01:09:20:23
You know, between fat tracks, ATVs, UTVs. Yeah. It just, it was, it was pretty, pretty outrageous some of the things we were seeing people do and, and actually discharging firearms to get deer to run, hoping they’d go through the trees and knock off antlers and Yeah. It just, it it was a situation we needed to address and the Wildlife Commission addressed it. And we’re not saying don’t shed hunt. We believe it’s a great activity and we want you to get out there with your families and do it. Yeah. We’re just saying, Hey, let’s wait a couple months and get out there when, when those animals have moved off that critical meal, deer winter range and, and then respect the habitat when you’re there. Don’t, don’t grid out with your quads and ATVs and fat tracks. Yeah. Over in Ailey for, you know, I, I did a, when I had my own company, I did a electric meter automation job over there. I’d been to every electric meter in White Pine County and I was over there working during the shed season and the number of trucks in town with fat cats, every, everybody had one in the back of their truck. And then you couldn’t get to a wash or a canyon that didn’t have, you know, fat track tracks up the bottom of it and all overrided out. So
01:09:20:23 –> 01:09:24:10
Especially in that to Ofaw country, especially out in that crazy
01:09:25:02 –> 01:09:25:11
Yeah,
01:09:25:11 –> 01:09:50:15
There’s a lot of country out there and, and you know, this stems it’s, it was, it was acceptable so to speak. Back in the early nineties, there wasn’t as many people, like you said, the commercialization things changed, you know, and it was different. It was just different. And nowadays, you know, with the people and the demand and whatnot there, you know, as things change, maybe you’re, you’re indicating there’s a, a need for regulation to change. Is that what we’re getting at
01:09:51:08 –> 01:10:17:28
It? It, it was time. It was something that had been talked about, like I said, since about 2006. And it is a wholesome family activity. I, I don’t wanna do anything to not have a guy take his son and daughter out and you know, his wife and have a great family activity, but we just need to respect those animals and let them do their thing during, during we just, during the tough times of year,
01:10:18:02 –> 01:10:24:08
We just wish you would’ve done a pilot program in other parts of the state that aren’t near us, you know, for a little while. Yeah, exactly. So,
01:10:25:18 –> 01:10:41:19
So the way that stands is that a May 1st through, I mean December, that’s your, that’s your go any anything ghost type thing. I mean in terms of Yeah. Shed hunting. Yeah. And from January one to April 30. Right. That’s the critical time you guys have kind of want that avoided
01:10:42:12 –> 01:10:56:16
And only in the, I believe it’s the six eastern counties, Eureka Nye, white Pine Elco Lincoln. You know, that was part of the reason they didn’t pass the time before is ’cause we have Chuck runners in Humboldt and Oh,
01:10:56:19 –> 01:10:56:28
Okay.
01:10:57:09 –> 01:11:02:12
Washoe County that would be out and stumble into a shed and you know, they’re like, I wanna be able to,
01:11:02:21 –> 01:11:04:09
Now they’re in violation. Yeah.
01:11:04:10 –> 01:11:10:27
Well, yeah. But, but we separated out. Not all counties are covered under that regulation. Yeah. The western counties aren’t, the eastern counties are.
01:11:11:00 –> 01:11:25:05
Well, and part of that too is, I mean, we’ve talked about, about that on your elk distribution. I mean, we’re talking deer and elk, but when, when elk pound antlers are 15 plus bucks a pound, I mean there’s the commercialization of that’s what you’re talking about and that’s where the bulk of your elk are and is
01:11:25:05 –> 01:11:26:17
The west better deer eastern
01:11:26:26 –> 01:11:34:02
State? So that’s kind of mirrors that. And I mean, we feel, we feel targeted, but we know we’re really not Jack, I guess is that that’s what
01:11:34:02 –> 01:11:51:05
You’re saying. I’m not so sure yet. I’m not convinced, but I do, we do love it. We, we do love it. And, and it is, you know, there’s I would say 80 90% of the people, you know, by, by the rules and aren’t wouldn’t Yeah. Wouldn’t do that anyway. It’s the, it’s the few that have Yeah. That have caused that. And so anyway,
01:11:52:06 –> 01:12:24:16
Another factor we have is we’ve been devastated by wildfire on a lot of our winter habitat. Yeah. And we’re trying to get that habitat to come back. And when you have wildfire go through big sagebrush stand or buck brush stand, you know, bitter brush stand the next year when that brush isn’t there, we just see snowmobiles and, and ATVs just gridding that stuff out and it’s like, we’re trying to get this to come back to support the wildlife and you’re not helping in that effort by being out there tearing it up.
01:12:25:04 –> 01:12:46:19
Tell us about the trail cam law, another one of those controversial subjects, although, you know, we, we still can run cameras, but just not from August 1st to December 31st, but just jump into that a little bit. Is it something you guys would continue to condone after going, you know, after having it, you know, on the books so to speak, after the first year?
01:12:46:22 –> 01:12:47:23
Yeah. Last, last
01:12:47:23 –> 01:12:48:15
Year was the first year.
01:12:49:13 –> 01:13:49:22
And it, it, it’s a, that was a big argument. It started when I was on the commission the first time also. And, and it was a growing concern. And when we have water developments that the fraternity Desert Bighorn and N B U and others have paid to get it in there and it’s doing great things for wildlife and in very water limited country. That’s why we put the guzzler in and we had 35 cameras on a guzzler site and people say, well, my cameras there, I’m not disturbing it. But when you have 35 different cameras and you know, people going in and checking cards and stealing cards and stealing cameras, and it was to a point that it needed to be addressed because we do believe it was having an impact on our wildlife resource. And, and the commission took that on. And, and if it’s a transmitting camera, it can’t be on after July 1st. And if it’s a camera you have to go pull a card on. It can’t be on after August 1st.
01:13:52:11 –> 01:13:53:16
Did you guys see any
01:13:53:25 –> 01:14:25:25
I I, you know, if, if you ask me and, and I take heat some from some of my friends on this, I, I, I love sheep hunting and, and sheep are a lot of times tied to water. We’ve had multiple sheep tags in my family and I’ve never used a camera. I would rather put my boots on and wear an area out every weekend before the season, you know, put 30 days in the field glassing and, and figuring out the animals rather than spending five days in the field pulling cart. That’s
01:14:25:25 –> 01:14:26:16
Just, but I, I got it.
01:14:26:16 –> 01:14:27:26
Who I’m, and that’s the way I go after
01:14:28:03 –> 01:15:20:22
On the other, on the other, on the flip side of that, it’s like Christmas for a guy that likes to run cameras when you’re going, you know, you’re out in the field. My kids love it. Oh yeah. You know, doubt. You know, we’re setting cameras, we’re hiking in teaching us country and setting up a camera and then going back and checking the card. It’s just like Christmas. I mean, it’s just for a guy that runs cameras, I like running cameras. Adam runs cameras, you know, and it’s not, it’s not necessarily directly tied to success, but it does help at times. But it’s so fun to see what’s on the camera, see what’s in the country, especially in arid states. And, and so, you know, there’s, it’s a, it’s a love hate deal. I can see it. It’s gonna, it’s gonna save a few animals here and there, but it’s, I don’t think it’s responsible for all the death of, of, of, of the bigger animals taken like some might think as well. So there’s, there’s no a couple sides to it.
01:15:21:14 –> 01:16:35:08
There is. And, and I, one of my best friends, he, he was on the commission with me and, and he really loves it. He is outta Eureka and he, it’s a good family activity for him. And like you said, it’s Christmas, you know, to see bobcats on it. Eagles, i, I, there’s a gosser named after my dad, and there’s some video of an eagle using my dad’s drinker. I call him my dad’s drinker, drinker at my dad’s guzzler, using it as a bird bath for 15 minutes. It’s just in there splashing around. Yeah. You know, you, you, you can see some fantastic things. Oh. And there’s a lot of legitimate uses for him. And, and it’s, it’s a controversial item, but sounds, it’s one of those items that the commission looked at and said, you know, it is time that it, it continued to grow to a point that something had to be addressed and, and they did address it. And with sheds and with trail cams, it’ll be in place for a couple years and I’m sure it’ll be addressed into the future of Sure. Is this working? Is it working? Do we need to adjust it? What needs to occur? Yeah, sure. And and, and those discussions will come. Yeah.
01:16:35:24 –> 01:16:39:12
All right. Well we, we, we grilled you enough. That’s not too bad though. To,
01:16:39:18 –> 01:16:39:24
To,
01:16:40:00 –> 01:16:40:29
And, and, and I wanna, I wanna
01:16:40:29 –> 01:16:43:26
Go, you answer these questions every day. We know you do. Yeah.
01:16:44:11 –> 01:17:51:00
And, and I wanna go into something else about the shed hunting. A lot of people think we keep ’em off the habitat longer than they really should because those deer and elk have moved back up out of their winter range and, and they could go in there and collect those sheds at that time. But there’s a big concern with a lot of our biologists of letting people back in earlier because we have the safe grass issue in Nevada. There’s a lot of other western states, and we don’t want to have that influx of people hit that habitat Right. When we have Sure. Peak lacking and, you know, the survival of our sage grass and, and keeping ’em off that endangered species list is one of our key activities we’ve had here for years. Sure. And we just didn’t wanna keep people off to help out the mule deer and elk, and then have it be a negative impact on those sage grass during key liking times. So there’s our restrictions and we held that date off a little longer. Yeah. What a lot of people are comfortable with, but there’s a biological impact you can have to species other than just to deer and elk that we’re trying to avoid at the same time.
01:17:51:12 –> 01:18:25:05
Well, and, and all the, a lot of other states face the same thing with sage grouse and a lot of people scratch their head. Why do we care so much about sage grass? Well, sage grouse habitat is mul deer habitat. And so as they hopefully are never listed as endangered threatened species and all the governmental restrictions that then come in place with ma having to manage them and the landscape that they’re in, that’s gonna affect mule deer. So that’s the connection and yeah. So you might be able to let ’em on April 1st, you know, things are starting to gravitate up, but April’s a big month for sage grouse licking, like you talked about. So
01:18:25:05 –> 01:18:29:08
Goes back into managing those 14,000 different species you were talking about earlier.
01:18:29:22 –> 01:18:36:14
Yep. Without a doubt. We, we can’t just look at the ones that pay the bills. We need to look at all of ’em, protect them all at the same time. You
01:18:36:14 –> 01:18:51:14
Brought up a bird sage grouse. So I gotta bring up, I gotta bring up one that’s very unique to Nevada and maybe you can just briefly talk about the history of, of how they got there and the uniqueness of the Himalayan snow cock.
01:18:54:12 –> 01:18:57:18
We’re, we’re the only one, I mean,
01:18:58:11 –> 01:19:01:22
We just want to kill one. That’s what we know. We just wanna go hire this
01:19:01:22 –> 01:19:26:21
One. You know, it it, it’s on my bucket list too. My brother’s actually taken one. Yeah. I I have to, my boys and I, we need to go after that and get that done. But it, it’s, it’s something that if you wanna do it, it’s one of those high out, they’re called himayan snow cocks for a reason. They’re just a great big partridge. They’re, they’re overgrown chucker is what it comes down.
01:19:30:02 –> 01:19:34:29
They’re big. We go another hour. We’re gonna get you really comfortable on this podcast, Jack. Yeah. So
01:19:35:02 –> 01:19:44:15
Well on. They tell us where they’re at and, and where they, how what, why, how’d they getting into Nevada? Did they fall out of a pickup truck on I 87 days?
01:19:44:15 –> 01:19:45:22
Seven seven or what
01:19:45:27 –> 01:20:03:10
Happened? No, no. They basically came in on a 7 47 in the forties and fifties, fifties. And primarily the Department of Wildlife really experimented with multiple weird birds up on, up on games, pieces,
01:20:05:02 –> 01:20:05:21
Weird birds.
01:20:06:17 –> 01:20:24:14
The, the, the, the Yeah. But the chucker and the Himalayan snow cock, you know, Hungarian partridge, a few of them managed to survive and become viable populations. Gee, the chuck, the chucker. The chucker Oh yeah. Just took off that, that’s synonymous
01:20:24:19 –> 01:20:25:06
With Nevada
01:20:26:13 –> 01:21:11:03
Main and upland species and Yeah. And that was growing up in Oma pa they’d be in my backyard. It just, they were special birds to me. I can remember as a kid, my aunt, my great aunt, she would tell me, my brother and I would chase chucker and, and she’d say, you know, your uncle Tom was instrumental in bringing those in. Your uncle Tom brought those in. And I never understood what she was staying until I came to work here at the Department of Wildlife. And I had a question about a commissioner from years past, and they wanted a list of who was commissioners years past. And it was within the first couple weeks I was working here. And Suzanne Scoby gave me the list of prior commissioner. I looked on there and my uncle Tom was a wildlife commissioner in the fifties.
01:21:11:05 –> 01:21:11:26
Wow. That’s
01:21:11:26 –> 01:21:31:14
Awesome. And so I didn’t know the, the family history, because that part of the family, they’re all deceased. So by the time I was a commissioner, nobody could relay that family history to me. To me, I found out after I worked here, but that, that’s what it came down to is the department went all over the world to
01:21:31:21 –> 01:21:33:26
Gathering beasts and fouls of
01:21:34:28 –> 01:22:00:26
Geez. And, and, and, and it worked. You know, it’s a unique opportunity. And the Himalayan, it is something that, it took my brother multiple years, multiple refining opportunities. We ask anybody that comes in, into pursue to get a permit so we can manage effort and take and just make sure that, that they’re getting taken care of in a proper manner. How can, but they’re,
01:22:01:04 –> 01:22:05:14
How can we as a non-resident get a tag? We, I mean landowner tags, what do we got?
01:22:06:06 –> 01:22:06:26
No, no, no. It’s just
01:22:06:26 –> 01:22:07:26
What can we do to get a a tag?
01:22:08:06 –> 01:22:50:21
It’s, it’s just a permit process. And come on in and pursue ’em. They’re they’re in the rubies. Yeah. Just east of Veco. It, it, it’s basically the rubies are the Yosemite of Nevada. It, it’s Memorial Canyon. Unfortunately we had a fire in there last year. But it’s just a beautiful canyon that offers some camping. It’s a good place to, to drive into it’s paved road. You can drive in camp and then take off on the hikes or or backpack in for a couple days and Yeah. And pursue that big old bird. And, and they, they’re, if if, if the listeners haven’t seen ’em, you gotta google him Emily and Snow cock and Oh yeah. They’re
01:22:50:21 –> 01:22:51:16
A different animal.
01:22:52:03 –> 01:22:56:22
They, they, they, they are something special. And we’re just extremely lucky that
01:22:57:18 –> 01:22:58:08
They survived
01:22:58:18 –> 01:23:08:02
The, the department and the, the sportsmen in Nevada years and years and years ago jumped at those opportunities and traveled around the world. Yeah. Picked up crazy birds and
01:23:08:07 –> 01:23:14:17
Kind of like the modern day, the modern day Noah’s Ark and they opened the, opened the thing in Nevada and see what lived.
01:23:14:26 –> 01:23:15:11
Bronson
01:23:15:25 –> 01:23:58:08
And, and I, we, we have some, we have some older publications around here. I’ve gone through and it wasn’t, we tried the three birds I spoke of. Yeah. They they tried all kinds of birds and some worked and some didn’t. But the ones that worked were lucky to have. Yeah. They’re, they’re a tremendous opportunity. And you know, if somebody draws a big game tag in Nevada, you talked about getting a lion tag in Nevada, you can pursue the chucker without any stamps. We simplified everything we have. There’s no trout stamps anymore. There’s no upland stamps. There’s not a state duck stamp. Non-residents when they come in, they get a hunt fish combo. There’s no,
01:23:58:28 –> 01:24:03:23
And that covers, that covers everything. You’re not gonna get us for a Laci Act violation, have too many truckers in
01:24:04:06 –> 01:24:08:18
It. It it covers everything. And and that’s what we wanted. Yeah. We wanted to simplify.
01:24:09:03 –> 01:24:58:21
I think that goes, I think that goes in large part when we were talking right before the podcast starting about, you know, the department’s change and of looking at hunters as a customer and you as the business and where you guys are trying to become more customer friendly. And, and we applaud that quite frankly. It’s not, people forget about an archery stamp or some obscure habitat stamp and access and validation stamp and different things that all the different states are dealing with. And it, and it’s frustrating on our part. ’cause it’s not like we wanna be illegal. We’ve, we don’t care. It’s not necessarily about the five or 10 bucks or four bucks. It’s, but it’s, it’s just hard to keep track of it. And then you got 14 kids flying in five states and anyway, it’s just, we like the simplicity of it and I think that, that it shows with Nevada trying to do that and be more customer friendly.
01:24:58:27 –> 01:25:45:04
Well we did focus groups. It wasn’t something we just sat down and wrote on a napkin. We did focus groups surveys, we did all kinds of background checking to find out where we, where we needed to be. And we went from 28 officers down to eight. And during those focus groups, there was two columnists that really stuck and resonated with me. One of ’em was buying a hunting license is buying a truck with no tires. And that was an accurate statement because the hunting license was just a vehicle to hold the stamps that allowed you to go do what you wanna do or allowed you to put in for a big game species. The hunting license did nothing for you. Yeah. The other thing that resonated with me was the guy said, I know there’s six different regulations, but there may be a seventh and instead of getting in trouble, I just choose not to do that activity. Yeah,
01:25:45:06 –> 01:25:45:15
Yeah.
01:25:45:26 –> 01:25:54:13
And so when it becomes a deterrent, I, growing up in topo, you guys know what to is. I’m not a duck hunter. Yeah. And not much opportunity
01:25:55:09 –> 01:25:55:20
Water,
01:25:57:13 –> 01:25:58:16
The white ones or some
01:26:03:26 –> 01:26:42:09
Domestic. You’d be lucky to get one of those in too. Yeah. But, but not growing up duck hunting. I can’t identify ’em in my hand, let alone on the wing. Yeah. So with the re federal regulations on duck hunting, I choose not to duck hunt because, not because I don’t want to duck hunt because I can’t get in trouble. Yeah. Yeah. And, and that’s, that’s a bad place to be. We need, we need to do better than that. And, and we, we recognize that and that’s why we’ve made the changes. Our license are good for 365 days. We have, like I said, non-residents get a fishing light. I’m sorry, my phone’s beeping at me, but turn it
01:26:42:09 –> 01:26:44:00
Off. Non-resident. Turn it off. I just,
01:26:44:28 –> 01:26:47:02
Non-residents I’m talking on, I can’t turn it off.
01:26:47:03 –> 01:26:47:29
Oh, that’s a good point.
01:26:48:04 –> 01:27:09:29
No non-residents get a fishing license, but people don’t realize the number of streams we have that hold native trout in them. We have a tremendous opportunity. And if you come here, if a buddy of yours is lucky enough to draw a tag, you come here, bring your fishing pole. Because you’ll be surprised the fishing in these small streams in Nevada, the small lakes in Nevada,
01:27:09:29 –> 01:27:16:05
Well even the lakes like Pyramid Lake and some of these others, there’s an, there’s amazing fish in Nevada, no question about it.
01:27:16:29 –> 01:27:38:14
And, and people don’t think about it. Yeah. But if we put a fishing license in their pocket, they might hopefully, if they come here scouting while they’re scouting Yeah. They, they go, well I I I can go fishing ’cause and and then they’ll realize that there’s native trout in these little streams. Yeah. That they’re not, you know, a lot of the streams are not trophy quality, but they are pretty good in the frying pan. Yeah.
01:27:39:03 –> 01:28:40:24
Well that’s what we like, we like Nevada for a number of reasons. You can go out there and hunt coyotes and do all kinds of fun stuff and be out there by yourself. There’s not a high population base of people anywhere near except for Vegas and Reno and Yeah. And so we’re just, we’re huge advocates. We love it out there. You feel like it’s the last of the good places. It just, it’s pretty awesome. Yeah. I mean there was a time, I remember deer hunting down there in 24 and I came back to my truck and there was truckers in the bed of my truck on top of my truck and crapping all over my windshield. And I was just couldn’t, I couldn’t, you know, at times it’s just like you said, it’s an amazing resource that I always just took for granted. I wasn’t really raised around checkers. We killed a few back down in southeast, you know, Utah there by Moab and whatnot. But overall, just an amazing amount of resource and, and opportunity for the state that it is for the arid state that it is. And so anyway, yeah. We’re huge advocates of Nevada. Anything else you wanna talk about? Any crazy hunting stories you, you wanna share with the listeners?
01:28:41:09 –> 01:29:36:08
I, I do have one hunting story I’ll go into with you guys, but before we get there, I, you, you talked about the customer service last year we put in that new system and it actually saved the sportsman a considerable amount of money. We made it user friendly. We know that 51% of our people in the first year applied on a mobile app, or not a mobile app but on a mobile device. But the one thing that we did as an agency that you don’t often see with state agencies, we, we put people in this building during that application period from 7:00 AM till 7:00 PM if the phone was still ringing, we were here till nine. If the phone was still ringing, we were here till 11. Wow. We wanted to make sure that if a customer called, that phone got answered and we’d have people call seven o’clock on a Sunday and we’d answer and they’d go, God, I can’t believe you answered. It’s like, well if you didn’t think we’d answer, why’d you call? Why’d
01:29:36:08 –> 01:29:43:07
You call? We, we have calls like that when we’re here at the office on the weekend cranking on a magazine at about Saturday night at 10 30. And
01:29:43:18 –> 01:29:46:06
Geez, Adam at six in the morning. I didn’t think you’d be there.
01:29:46:25 –> 01:29:48:01
Like why’d you call me?
01:29:49:15 –> 01:30:34:02
But you know, that’s a business approach at things and we realize that we can’t just give a quality product. We need to give quality service along the way. Yeah. And, and I can tell you our staff really stepped up and it, it was one of the best team building experience we’ve had as an agency rolling out that new vendor last year it was a home run, increased license sales in both hunting and fishing and saved this money over prior year’s contracts. So it was a good thing for the agency and it is just wait, it’s gonna get better when you apply. Things are gonna get better. We’re communicating in different ways. Return cards, you know, when you hunt Nevada’s you mandatory return card if you have a tag. Yep.
01:30:35:11 –> 01:31:04:14
We sent out, we have good emails now ’cause we kicked you off the system. You need to have a good email. So yeah, everybody has fresh emails. We send out postcards and now we got down to the end and we, some of the people hadn’t gotten their return card. We actually sent a text message to those people and that drove a ton of people getting their stuff in because not everybody checks their, their mail or checks their email, but you text ’em, they’re going to reply. So we’re using different things to make sure we can communicate with
01:31:04:18 –> 01:31:52:07
And they wanna be able to apply in their state. They just missed an email or went to their junk folder or whatever. It’s not that they’re, and maybe they are ignoring you for the first couple emails, I get it. But you know, it’s not that they’re being belligerent about it. And I think too, we appreciated the simplification of the license, which we talked about. And then we’re huge advocates of the youth. And of course he’s, you know, let’s just talk non-resident perspective. But the youth licenses were 15 bucks. That helped Adam and I with our kids. Of course we were applying ’em anyway back in the day and, and paying the big bucks. But, but it was, it is nice. Helps out a lot. Helps encourage the youth to apply, get points and of course it’s good business for you. ’cause they’re gonna continue to want to gain points after they turn 18 years old and they’ll be a, a customer for life in giving you that non-refundable license fee. I if you’re gonna gain points of course that
01:31:52:07 –> 01:31:54:03
They’ve been invested for five or six years already.
01:31:54:03 –> 01:31:58:26
That’s right. It’s good business. But you know, we appreciate it for the young kids. Of course it helps our
01:31:58:26 –> 01:32:56:02
Pocketbook and you know, you talked about a hunting experience and, and I’m gonna relay one to you and, and I know you talked about taking bowls over 400 inches and, and elk or you know, over 400 deer, over 200 inches. I can tell you I, I’m lucky enough, we have enough cheap tags in state and I’ve got enough friends that I get on two three sheep hunts a year. So I, I’m extremely fortunate that way. But I can tell you the, my three favorite sheep hunts I’ve ever been on, we killed rams between 1 48 and 1 52 and they’re the, if I had to give up all my other hunts or just have three, I’d keep these three. One, I was with a gentleman that had cancer and I ran into him in the field and ended up just helping out A guy I met in the field the day before harvest the ram, he was with his two boys and his grandson, his gun had problems.
01:32:56:02 –> 01:34:08:26
He ended up actually using my gun to harvest his ram and he sent that picture out as his Christmas card and I think he died by Easter. It was just a special moment to be able to help somebody out in the field. Another one, one of my dad’s good friends, he was 80 years old, two bad three heart attacks, two bypass surgeries, macular degeneration. He draws a sheep tag. We took him hunting and he had his wife with him. That was in her late seventies. You know, we killed a six year old, one 50 ram. It was just a special time. So not everything, you don’t measure the best time in inches. But the one that sticks out to me is my dad passed away in 97 and we built the guzzler in memory hem in 1998 from the time my kids were little. We, we go to that guzzler multiple times a year. Look at the sheep, do maintenance on the guzzler. Just that, that’s our special place to go connect with my dad. And my son actually drew a sheep tag in that area and the that for some reason it’s the volcanic hills in area two 11.
01:34:11:01 –> 01:35:22:18
It just, that year it’s a very small part of the big unit, but that year there was four hun four hundreds on the volcanic hills and it usually didn’t get that kind of pressure. And we were after one particular ram and we couldn’t make that happen. And then we’re right along a highway and all the rams went north and went into another unit where we couldn’t hunt ’em. And my son’s sitting there with a sheep tag and there’s no rams where we wanna hunt. And I, I looked at him, I said, Hey, we need to head down to the silver peak so, and find your ram to harvest. He looked at me, he says, I put in for this area to harvest ram behind Papa’s G we’re here. Hmm. So we, we looked at an empty hillside for a lot of days and stayed with it, stayed with it, stayed with it. And 21 days later we got lucky and found a ram that somebody else had previously taken a crack at because it had a hole in the end of its horn where somebody else had shot it prior. And you know, my, my son ended up harvesting in that ram and, and those are special times and he put in for that area for a reason, stuck with it and that meant a lot.
01:35:23:27 –> 01:35:29:07
That’s pretty awesome. That is man. That’s what hunting’s, that’s what hunting’s really all about so
01:35:29:09 –> 01:35:32:19
Oh yeah. Fa family and knowing who you are and what you are and why you do it.
01:35:33:16 –> 01:36:29:24
Yep. Well we wanna thank you for spending some time with us today Jack. You’re a good dude and we appreciate you spending a little bit of time. We’ve had a few states on and, and we appreciate them as well and our partnership, we feel like it’s a partnership. We cover your state in depth and our publication here at Epic Outdoors and we try to do it justice. Try not to be too critical, although get our point across at times. We do, we are passionate hunters and and we represent a lot of non-resident hunters as well. And so keep doing good things. I know you gotta be thick skinned over there in Reno, you’re dealing with a lot and you know, you just gotta realize there’s, if it’s not you, it’s the next guy. And and everybody that’s in that position has gotta be thick skinned. There’s, you can’t please everybody and but at the same time, you know, we know you listen and, and take in a lot of different info from different groups and whatnot.
01:36:30:17 –> 01:36:47:04
Yeah, well we appreciate the partnership. We do see it as a partnership and I do appreciate you telling the listeners what a special resource Nevada is because we, we see it here but I just hope more people get to see what we have here ’cause it is special.
01:36:48:13 –> 01:37:05:12
Absolutely. We’re glad to do it. And thanks again for coming on Jack. Appreciate your friendship too. It’s great to run into the sheep show for a bit and we’ll Yep. If luck’s on our side, we’ll spend some time in Nevada ourselves with our families this year hopefully and hope you get to do the same and keep doing great things over there. Yeah,
01:37:05:12 –> 01:37:18:04
We also got to visit with the Calie boys there that kinda run your application system and that was, I thought a great move on your part to have ’em there and actually listen to, you know, listen to people,
01:37:18:05 –> 01:37:18:16
Users
01:37:18:17 –> 01:37:21:01
Yeah. The users that used their licensing system and so
01:37:21:27 –> 01:37:36:28
Well when we brought, when we brought Cal on, we told ’em we, we weren’t looking for a vendor, we were looking for a partner. And that’s the way we approach a lot of things is partnerships like we have with you. It’s let’s, let’s do the best thing for the sportsman and, and make sure it happens. Yeah.
01:37:37:17 –> 01:37:50:04
Well good. We’ll be covering Nevada here shortly, everybody. Our April issue, we’ll be covering it in depth Jack, we’re gonna wanna visit about a few deer quotas. We want to kind of be careful on a few places so we’ll talk about that off the air maybe. How about that? Alright,
01:37:50:16 –> 01:37:51:01
Anytime.
01:37:51:16 –> 01:37:52:28
Alright, we appreciate you,
01:37:52:28 –> 01:37:53:28
Appreciate it. Have a good day.
01:37:54:06 –> 01:39:04:14
Thanks for opportunity. Thank you. You bet. Talk to you later. Alright, bye. Hey everybody, we wanna throw a little shout out to Outdoor Edge. They’re a good partner of ours. They, they make a wide variety of products including a knife that has replaceable razor blades. They’re very sturdy. We’ve used them on a lot of our hunts and they’re just an incredible product. So give ’em a holler at 1 804 4 7 3 3 4 3 or go to outdoor hedge.com. Wanna do another little shout out to ourselves. We have a hunting application service. We’re, we’re coming amongst a bunch of deadlines. We’ve got Utah coming at us, be March 7th. And so anyway, we’re busy applying guys. If you need help give us a call. Admiral, I happy to visit with you over the phone. You can call us at (435) 263-0777. We charge $50 a state. If it’s two or less species, three or more is a hundred with a max cap of 500. So as far as the regular state applications, you can’t spend more than $500 with us. And we go through, we develop a file with you, get a personal program built for you and we keep track of those from year to year to year. So anyway, ha, happy to help you out. Very personalized to what you’re looking to do and so give us a holler. Happy to visit.
01:39:04:29 –> 01:39:59:24
Yeah, if you’re the kind of guy that does your own applications but you want another tool to resource, you may just consider and you’re not a member of Epic Outdoors, just consider join. It’s a hundred dollars a year. You get nine issues of the magazine. The first six months of the year. It’s monthly. We cover two to three states. We break ’em all down, how the draw works, drawing statistics, kill percentages, best units, narratives on all the different species in, in each part of the state. It’s a very in depth tool. You also, we have an added feature that we started this first, this year is our online epic hunt planter, which you can use unit overlays, G M U overlays, aerial imagery, topo maps, all that for all the various different hunt units across the west, drawing odds. You can search and query minimum point queries, all that online, all that’s included in your annual membership for a hundred bucks. So check us [email protected] or give us a call 4 3 5 2 6 3 0 7 7 7. We’ll get you set up
01:40:00:21 –> 01:40:57:12
In addition to these magazine resources we’re talking about as far as covering the units and helping you apply and figure out what units match you. We also have a member draw program. If you draw a tag and you need help, of course you can call out on I, Jeff, Chris John here at the office. We can visit with you about some of the units and different tags that you may have drawn. We also have a, a resource, it’s our member experience database. We will get you out free of charge for those people that are members. A list of members who’ve had your tag in the past. And of course in large part a lot of these tags are tags that are extremely tough to draw. And, and so guys are sure willing to help you out and for doing that, of course you agree, agree to be on that list to help guys out in the future. So what a great membership we have here at Epic Outdoors. We’ve got serious hunters that are willing to help each other and, and it’s just awesome. It’s been such a great resource. So anyway, shout out to those guys that have helped make this program successful and don’t be intimidated to give us a holler and let us know what you draw. We want to help you.
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