EP 139: Applying for Arizona and Wyoming in 2020

Be willing to eat tags. You might do a lot better off hunting something three times than once every 25 years. More often you're in the field, more chance you have at killing something special. And there's only one tag in each of those units. Anything to do with Western big game.

Welcome to the Epic Outdoors podcast, powered by Under Armour. Here we go. Hey everybody, Jason Carter, Adam Bronson, and Wyatt Bowles, as well as Chris Peterson. I'd like to thank Under Armour for sponsoring these podcasts. Of course, they sponsor about everything we do here at Epic Outdoors. Thank you, UA. You can go to UA.com, type in Baron in the search, and up comes all the hunting gear, at least that's made in Baron. And that's what we like here in the West. So, anyway, they do have a forest pattern. It's awesome, kind of a green version of the Baron. And it comes in a wide variety of the different models of clothing they're making. So, 2020, can you believe it? 2020 is right around the corner. We're getting old. How old? Talked about our mid-40s in the articles in this latest magazine. Let's talk about that. January 2020 magazine. The old Tim McGrath song comes to mind.

Your next 30 years? Live like you're dying. How are you going to do that? I guess you did go to Mexico. I'm not going to skydive. I didn't drink the water. I didn't go to Mexico. I didn't touch base. But I was in the Caribbean. How's that? Okay. All right. You didn't drink the bad water. John drank a little water. He took a pill. John's on a little handful of water. Live like you feel like you're dying. Yeah. John, without even trying, he's on a New Year's diet cleanse. So, we've had our New Year's diet thoughts for the year. We can move on now because that's about all we're going to get from us. You guys got any New Year's resolutions? Wyatt? I don't have any that I've come up with yet. No. I don't. I haven't made any yet. I've got a couple days, though.

You've been thinking about any at all? No. Not really. No. But I'm just on that track. Guide and javelina tag holders in Arizona. Archery. Hams hunts. No. No. By the way, I did read that. Champ. Did read that.

Rule. Really? For the Utah changes, which that might not be appropriate in this podcast. Utah does have a few changes. Optics. Optics is the key word. Oh. I read it. Huh. Yeah. Do you want to expound upon it while we're talking about it? Well, I don't have it in front of me, but I did pull up Utah since we're really digressing and we're splattering stuff all over the board right now. Utah approved some new, they're called hams, handgun, archery, muzzleloader, shotgun. Seasons for deer. I think there was only, what, three? Yeah. Three units. But there's a couple that could be. Okay. They're late. They're November 6th or 7th through like the 20th, 6th or 7th. So, man, mule deer hunters' eyes light up when they see those on. It's basically just to abuse the migrating populations that otherwise don't get hunted. That's right. And a couple units. A few units.

I think Buckcliffe South, Kaparowicz, and there was another northern Utah unit. Yeah. But I don't remember. Morgan, South Ridge. I could be wrong. But anyway. But yeah, it was archery and the pistol can't even have a scope. Muzzleloaders, no scopes. Shotguns, no scopes. So. Is there a magazine capacity limit on a shotgun? Because I mean, 10 shots, you could just let them rip. Kapow, kapow, kapow, kapow. Well, I didn't. I don't know what. It's a lot better than a muzzleloader. I didn't. I didn't. I've never hunted big game with a shotgun. And I don't know. I would say 20 gauge is best for the ogive and all the other things that come into play as far as their ballistic coefficients. Kind of like rifle stuff. Maybe. But anyway. New hunt. But the key word is optics. No optics on those firearms, pistols, muzzleloaders. It's going to be more.

You can't really call them primitive, but open sight stuff. It's open sight, but you can still use your, you know, pistol brass in a modern muzzleloader. I didn't see anything that would prohibit that at first glance. It was mainly keying in on the word optics. And that word optics appeared. So anyway. And there's other changes with turning your tag back. If you turn the tag back. Major change in Utah. You know, more than 30 days prior, basically you can get your points back, but you're not going to gain a point. Did they talk about refunds on that? I didn't read that part of the refund part. But I think it's going to be like it always has been. Meaning you better have, be maimed or have a foot in the grave. Before you're going to get your points back, which is a huge deal. And turning it back within 30 days does nothing for you. Not even giving you this year's point.

You're going to have to have something major wrong. Really good doctor friend to give you a special note. Yeah. But anyway, those will be, we'll talk about those next month, probably in greater detail. But that's going to affect a lot. But in this issue of Epic Outdoors Magazine, since we're first of the year, we just crushed it. The EMAG's live and online. For those of you that are members, take advantage of that. You're going to get to see and peruse through the newest stuff for Arizona, elk and antelope in Wyoming. Moose, sheep, goat, bison, and elk. And before you get it in the mail, which just because of the business we're in, you've got to go to the printer. And it's roughly two weeks before that's going to get to you. But use the EMAG, especially these first states of the year where we, you know, we're not going to go to print without final regs in our hands and be a year late.

Other people might do that. We're not. We're not going to have, we're not just going to bank that nothing's going to change and talk about it like we did the year before. We appreciate these state fishing game agencies working with us a little bit because we realize we're asking them, you know, when their regulations are finalized at the commission meetings, we're asking to get our hands on them, or at least our eyes on them, so that we can get to print and get this turned around. You've got, you know, Christmas. You've got New Year's. Both of those involve mail and all that. But anyway, it's a delayed, the January issue is always a delayed issue. We realize it. Use the EMAG. So jump on there and look at it. Carter? Okay, epicoutdoors.com. Get on there. If you're not a member, great time to join. Yeah, it is. It's a great time to join. Basically, we have nine issues a year.

Come monthly, December through June. Talk about all the western states. Drawing odds, kill percentages, best units, comments on the units. Break it down for western big game. We do talk about Canada, Alaska, Mexico as well. Book hunts up there. But anyway, January is a great time to join. For those of you out there, it's kind of, even if you joined in June, it'll go through next June. So you're going to get nine issues no matter what. But it's a new year. It's the top of the application season. We're super excited. This is when we really get aggressive with our publication. As well as our online. We have interactive online drawing odds, different things like that. And it will help you kind of get a grasp on what the options are out there. Changes like Adam talked about and whatnot. So anyway, with this particular magazine, it's January 2020. Volume 5, if you can believe it. Crazy.

Issue 1, cranking through it. I don't know if it's 140 or whatever. 150 pages. Kind of crazy. Do have Clint Lindstrom, an old college buddy of mine, on the front cover. It's an Arizona bull. There's a lot of bulls killed in Arizona, of course. It's like Chia Pet down there. When you get water, you grow antlers like crazy. They did that. There was no shortage of giants. Many options to choose for the cover. However, this particular bull is a dream bull of many people. It's a straight, typical, basically 400-inch, six-point. Pretty awesome bull. Held it in our hands. And lucky for Clint, he's drawn that unit in the past, unit 23. He had an archery tag. Archery the first go-round, right? Yeah. He hunted a bull that's 420-inch, six-point. And it ended up breaking off. He had some bow problems, a few other things. Kind of comical, but not so funny at the time.

But just one of those kind of hunts that didn't go right. Has like six points. Draws this freaking time. Early rifle. Odds were unbelievable. But with that, Clint and I go back a long ways. Clear back in the college days of mid to late 90s. Applied back in the day when Deere first came out with the bonus point system. And did it with credit card checks. Because they accepted personal checks. You know? I mean, back then there was no online. I mean, when did the internet come out? 2000? Maybe late 90s? Mid 90s. It was mid 90s when it first came out. When it was 30. But yeah, the online application didn't pick up right off. But I mean, remember when we were in college, you basically have encyclopedias. And you have like great big, like freaking credenzas full of that shit. And now, you know, what's an encyclopedia? You'd have to Google that to figure out what it is. What's a dictionary?

You just Mary Webster Online. You look it up. Right. So, or Urban Dictionary, I guess. Wikipedia. Wikipedia. Anyway. So. And we're digressing. Yeah. But anyway. So, Clint and I go back a long ways. We've killed a lot of stuff. Been in on a lot of different animals over the years. And awesome. Awesome. Basically, I guess my point of that, and I talked about it a little bit in my soapbox for this particular issue, was apply, apply, apply. Guys need to be applying. You never know when your number's going to come up. You can force it like Clint did on his first go around with elk. Like I've done for deer. You've done, Adam. And multiple different times, you can force it, meaning you have enough points to guarantee you that tag. And then there's times you get lucky, like the cover bull. He got lucky. You know? Yeah. I don't even apply for those hunts. Do you? Early rifles anymore.

I mean, maybe one choice. Maybe it's the first choice where they go take both your choices and go the next guy. But like you did that 27 archery. You knew your time was coming up. Yeah. I knew I was going to get that a couple years ago. So. Good example. Then Adam did his soapbox. He talked about hunting with the crew. Yeah. We talked about it a minute ago. It's a good time to consider joining Epic Outdoors. And we decided as a way to reward our current members of Epic Outdoors and those that have supported us, I guess, in the first four years, four plus years since we've been up and rolling a magazine. Wanted to give a hunt that is dedicated just to our members. We've done that in the past, but it's, but it's, this one has a little bit of a different twist. So this is not going to be diluted with the ability for anybody to be able to buy tickets, add tickets, anything like that.

The only way that you can be entered into this Nevada Mule Der Hunt guided by us, the Epic Outdoors crew. And this is going to take place in the fall of 2020. The only way to be entered into that is to refer somebody that joins our service, Epic Outdoors. Or if you feel so inclined, you got a brother, a buddy, somebody that's borrowing your magazine, quote, stealing your magazine, whatever you're sharing, whatever like that. Maybe this is the time you get them to buy their own or you buy them a gift subscription. That counts as well. You buy a gift subscription for somebody or get somebody to call and join that uses your name as a referral and the reason that they joined. You'll get one entry for each person you do that for. And that is the only way that you'll be entered into that. This will run through February 29th.

So anybody that joins from, you know, December through then we'll have an entry into that hunt and that'll be a fully outfitted landowner tag, guide fee, everything included. And a great chance to hunt for 190 inch caliber deer, hopefully better with us. We're looking forward to it, looking to find out who it's going to be. So anyway, that's, that's what that's about. I talked a little bit about that and then we kind of got into our application strategies and thoughts. And it's interesting, Jason, we've written these articles for, I don't know how many years, but not just the last four or five in our magazine, but throughout our life a lot in other, in other way, shapes or fashions. Prior lives. That's right. We'll call it that. But this is, it's just different. You know, we talk, how can we talk about the same stuff differently every year? Like mule deer.

I think part of it is though, we're now in our mid forties. We were in our mid thirties or early thirties and your life changes. Or late twenties. And didn't, we didn't have kids to apply. Yeah. So that's added. Or you just have time and perspective in the scheme of things. And the realization of what changes on the landscape of drawing good tags in the West and making the most of hunting opportunities. And each year, um, I think as we've gotten a little bit older, as we've aged, um, we've probably become a little bit more aware of each hunting season. And don't, don't just, don't just let stuff happen. And if it does something good, doesn't happen. I'll put it off till next year, man. Like that's Wyatt here. Wyatt, you can waste yours. It's not that big a deal. Right. Yeah. Chris, you got 10 years on us, you guys. I don't know about waste years though.

Maybe we're going to make the best of every tag. Even now, I think that's a lot like what Wyatt's talked about and why you can expound upon this a little bit is you're a, you're talking to a little bit different segments. A little younger segment, but I've been impressed about your maturity and thought process of selling your time. You know, you obviously guided, uh, in your prior life and still do a little bit, but you're very keen, cognizant of the time you have left. Yeah, exactly. I mean, you only have so many, so many falls, I guess, as you, you go through it and you never know, I guess, what could happen. You know, we get guys all the time having knee surgeries, kidney stones. I mean, that was almost a season ender for Colorado this year. That was in the middle of the hunts, man. Didn't know if I was going to be able to hunt, but we tried to make the best of that hunt.

We spent a lot of time, looked at a lot of deer, but it's nothing big. Um, as far as not wasting time, you only get so many falls. I try to, you know, balance my personal hunts along with the hunts I guide. You know, I've kind of really cut down on what I'm guiding anymore just to kind of make more time for myself and, you know, research here at the office as well. I feel like we're saying that every issue of the magazine. I don't know why it is, but I, I'm feeling, I'm feeling that more. And it's part, part, part of, part of it is we are getting older. Part of it is our kids. I'm seeing getting older. Jason's having, I've had one leave the house. Jason's had one of his leave the house, meaning 18 plus, you know what I mean? And the other ones are right on their heels and it's like sobering, like, holy, better

set your hooks into what you got here because, uh, it's just a sobering reality of life. And we all go through it different phases. So anyway, a lot of our application thoughts and strategies in this magazine are geared a little bit more with that philosophy in mind, right? Wouldn't you say Jason was like, just make, make something every year with what you got. Don't wait for the app only the absolute best and the perfect year of every single thing. Cause people can overthink things. Another factor to this is we've been in this for a long time and I've been in this business for 10 years. And from that time till now, how much has every state changed? Like there, it's just not even the same game anymore. Like Colorado back then, you almost could do no wrong in Colorado 10 years ago. Just go show up. We were laughing at doing reality and here, whoever does this particular idea, I want some

royalties. Um, but a reality TV show on picking out a hunt out of the hat and then have a camera crew following each, each person, each contestant. It's back when we could get vouchers, you could just buy them and, you know, have them on hand and use them or resell them or whatever you want back when we just thought, Hey, let's get four or five comparable type vouchers. You know, they weren't going to be high price tag, you know, we'll call five 42, $1,750 to $1,500, you know, you know, lower end third season vouchers and draw them out literally the week before we went and everybody draws it and just go and do and come back. And you wouldn't feel like you wasted a year. You dang sure might kill a 90 inch plus deer. Now we're looking at it going, okay, I'm, I'm bowing out of that contest and I'm going to go exactly where I want to go.

I mean, and it's, and I say it right here in my application strategy and Adam was getting to this is we have very extensive articles in this particular publication talking about our thoughts and strategies. And my first line is I have 15 to 20 years left where I can do whatever I want. Now I might have 30 K I get it. 75 year olds hunt and we have some of those in our publication service that are just cranking and I love it. But reality, what can I expect? You know, I expect I'm going to have some health issues at some point and, you know, especially as much monsters we drink. Um, but 15 to 20 years left where we can do whatever we want. And then every year after that's a bonus. And so what are we going to do? You have 15 seasons, 20 seasons. What are you going to do? You're going to kill some big mule deer. Do you care about deer? Do you care about elk? Do you care about sheep?

Adam, you've been cranking on sheep. Of course, you know, I've killed my, you know, four species as well, but, and you're cranking and, and even continuing to plan out. And we've had to talk to these discussions. You have to plan out till 2022 now to buy a sheep hunt for quality stuff. And a, are you going to be that guy or what's important to you? What's important to you? Yeah. And so, yeah, our, our articles talk a little bit about the draw stuff, obviously, which you have to look at from a short-term, mid-term, long-term strategy. But with the emphasis, I guess more, wouldn't you say is don't hoard points as much. Go hunting guys. Use your points. It's, it's, uh, uh, a lot of times weather, a lot of times drought or the weather right during your hunt. If it's a later season deer hunt or something like that can have more to do with your, the

absolute success of your hunt and how everything lines. It can have more to do with the success of that than just, Hey, I had a 20 points and I could draw unit X and I should have an awesome hunt. I love to blame the weather. It had nothing to do with me. It was all the weather. I got screwed. The weather was something unforeseen. Couldn't tell. Not my fault, but actually. It is a pretty good factor. A lot of times. That's especially for these like Colorado, for instance, it does play into a lot of those. But I guess our point is, is go hunt more often and be willing to eat tags. Be willing to, I'm not, fail is a hard word to say because nobody wants to go fail when you've burned a decade worth of points. And we do go into detail and talk about, there are tags that warrant your full attention. If you're sitting at top heavy and can draw an early rifle tag in Arizona or Utah or somewhere

like that, you should, you should use those wisely. You should, you should carefully try to pick that. But if you're not, if you're in the middle of the pack, man, put, put, move your chits to the table and pick something good. Pick a good year that aligns in your schedule and go make the best of it. Point creep is only getting worse, you know, every year. It's not going to get better. I just, I don't know anywhere that's going to happen. Kind of a boat I'm in here in Utah, you know, I'm sitting on 18 deer points right now. There's a lot of units I could draw, but I just, you know, can't really make up my mind with what I need to do. So you need to take Adam's advice and use them, burn them, and be afraid to fail. Make a plan. Don't be afraid to fail. Well, I say that and then I, at the same, there's some states that are once in lifetime

opportunities you might, Colorado, you can do it often. That's why it's easy for us to say, go out and do it. Utah deer isn't. Jason, you've drawn one deer tag in your life. Is that right? Yes. I've drawn one. Wyatt, have you drawn one? I've not drawn one. Mountain goats. I'm only Utah per minute. Wow. I've yet to draw my Utah deer tag. Come on. We're talking limited entry. We get to hunt general season deer, some of us every year in Utah, some of us every other year as you get, you know, in the end of the loss. There's waiting periods. There's waiting periods on deer. So now it's a five-year waiting period. That's another change coming up for Utah. But so there are, it makes you, and the elk is, the elk's a prime example in Utah. People that call that have 24 to five elk points in Utah and are wanting to know how to kill the 380 bull. You're like, man, the ship's sailed.

You know, that same people that have 20 plus deer points in Colorado are like, where have you been the last 10 years? And I know sometimes things happen and you get caught up and it doesn't fit your schedule right and then you have a hard winner in the year you want to draw and now you're scared to use them in that unit. I get there's things happen, but man, points can hold you hostage and you have 20 plus deer points in Colorado on 24 to five in Utah for elk and the best years are behind us in those two states. It's kind of a... But now it's like, okay, so let's say they made a mistake and they've held on to them too long or they had other things going on in their lives. Kids are going to college, whatever. They don't have the funds to make good on the tag. Now they've got them. Let's say they've got them. Our strategy would be go ahead and use them. Like, go ahead and use them.

Like, is Utah elk going to get better in the next 10 years? No. So go ahead and use them. And I think that's the same thing we're talking about with Colorado. Although I've had good friends and of course people were hitting me up and referenced the last podcast we did with 17 plus points and it's stressful sending clients, friends, whoever, being the consultant that tells them to use them. It is stressful and we take it personal and I think that's a quality of ours here at Epic Outdoors. We take it personal. We want you to succeed. But we're also a fan of using points and being out in the field. The more often you're in the field, the more chance you have at killing something special. And so I guess part of my point is, is you got these points, jump in and use them and maybe be realistic with your expectations. If you have to kill and if you don't have to kill, go for the goal.

Go for a 380 inch bull. However, most years in Utah, there's three of them, four of them. Kill. You know? And so just understand what you're really asking for, I guess is our point. Kind of like Colorado elk, you could lump that into the same category. 25 points for elk in Colorado might kill you. Might kill you 340 or 50 bull. I mean, you should be happy with that. It's all relative and stuff changes from the time you start applying to this time you can draw what you want. Maybe a complete different outlook on what you can get. So control what you can control. If you're in more of no man's land, I guess, go hunting. Yeah. Use your points. Go hunt more often. You might do a lot better off hunting something three times than once every 25 years. So that kind of does a wrap up on our personal application strategies. Adam and I kind of throw it out there for you. You can read about it.

I go state by state. I think you went species. More just philosophy. I really, I remember, yeah, more of a philosophy on Adam's article. And it was awesome. Of course, it's from our perspective. 10 or 15 years from now, our perspectives will be interesting. You know, hunt everything you can. Don't ever come home. You know, you're going to die soon. Yeah. Then we jumped into an article that Wyatt helped us write. Go ahead. Yeah. So we put in the 2020, the state auction raffles and special tags. We go through, you know, each state and what they have for their raffle or auction tags. You know, kind of extra chances at drawing tags. In some states, there's actually, you know, better odds than the state drawings to play the raffle game. Walk through, you know, deadlines of the auctions. When you'll expect to see these tags sell.

Links to the websites to find, you know, more information on these tags as well. Got it on. It's just another opportunity. We're not talking to everybody here, but there's enough pages in this publication. We can definitely cover these things. If you're in the boat to purchase a tag, these are conservation tags. They're generally tax deductible. And we talk about that within that article. Not every tag is listed. There's landowner tags out there that you can buy. We're not talking about those. These are generally conservation tags through banquets. The big banquets, obviously, will be at the expo here in Utah. We're going to have a booth out at Wild Sheep. There'll be tags that we published about those. It'll be sold at these banquets, but then there's also local banquets and different things. Mule deer, elk.

This publication there at Epic Outdoors, we'd like to kind of cover the wolf hunting. Generally speaking, everybody's looking for something to do. Either you're in Mexico, hunting wolves, predators, maybe even thinking about black bear turkey coming up here in the spring. So there's things out there that you can do. People get cabin fever. We kind of covered the Idaho wolf, Wyoming and Montana. And, you know, just kind of covered the basic cost of it, how to do it, some of the basic information. We've done that, of course. Way more excited. When it first came out, Adam and I went up and did a smash and grab on some wolves up there. And it was awesome. Great opportunity. And we might even be going back. I mean, it's time. We should. But, yeah, it's definitely something to do come late winter when we're here in the office and need a break, go up for a few days if the weather hits.

Usually we try to time it on the snow so you can at least try to find some kind of sign or tracks that know you're in the right zip code. And on that wolf hunting note, Devin here at the office, he has some great outfitters too if you're looking to book a hunt and go. Give him a call. That's right. Whether it be Canada or here in the Lord 48, he's got outfitters for you if you're interested in doing that something this winter along with, you know, another thing in the winter is lion hunts, mountain lion hunts. Very popular this time of year. You don't need to have drawn a tag somewhere. If you've got time in your schedule, sometime January, February, March, even sometimes into April, give us a call depending on whatever state you're interested in or your method, how you want to hunt them. If you want to hunt them off of mules on dry ground, you've got stuff for that.

If you want to hunt them in the more traditional sense in the snow and the Rocky Mountain country, got options for you there as well. As far as our license application service, right before we jump into the states that we cover in this January magazine, you know, I'll put a little plug in on the license app service. We do have a thing going where if you are a current license application client of ours, meaning current for 2020, you sign up today or tomorrow, it'll be the 30th, 31st. You know, and do it prior to January 1st, then you'll be entered in to win one of our MOA rifles. And so anyway, we're giving away an Ascent rifle. It's a true thousand yard mountain type rifle, chambered in a 6.5 PRC or a 300 or a 28 Nozzler. So pretty awesome. We're working with MOARifles.com on that. And we've actually writing the check for it. So it's not something that was gifted to us.

It's a legit rifle that we purchased here at Epic Outdoors for this. So you can either renew current guys that are out there. If you renew by, I don't know, I want to say midnight, but midnight would probably be technically first. Let's call it 1159 Mountain Standard Time on the 31st of December. Then you'll be entered in for that rifle. Or if you become a new member by then, just if you drop in, you know, a new member of our licensed application service, you can drop us an email.

We can go from there. Info at epicoutdoors.com will get to us. Yeah. Another thing on it for our current licensed app members, if you refer a member to our new member to our licensed app, you will get an entry into that mule deer hunt guided by us in Nevada. Yeah. So if you refer either a regular magazine member or a licensed application service client, then you'll be entered to win for that. So anyway, we jump right into Arizona. We cover Arizona elk and antelope. In this particular issue, those application deadlines are due first, be February 11th. Pretty awesome. A lot of opportunities there. Super exciting with Arizona. Ton of moisture last year. Incredible bulls killed. Okay antelope for the state. Still some big bucks taken for anybody's standards for the most part. But however, Arizona being the trophy state that it is, you know, some of the upper end

outfitters have seen better years. Of course, there's a lot of theories that go along with that. Good moisture means they feed on less hardy feed and whatnot. Where dry years, they feed on more substantial feeds. You kind of change their diet a little bit. Even though, you know, a little bit tougher living in drought years, they grow better horns. And so, I don't know, just kind of a theory on that. Yeah. This magazine's covered, though, with giant bull pictures. Whether it be the stories, you talked about Clint's bull on the cover, or just the photos throughout the Arizona section. Just big bull after big bull. A couple other stories in there. Paul Berman has a story of a 406 or so inch. Basically six point. A couple small extras, but just a giant archery bull in there. A couple other just tanks. And Arizona, I mean, it was, you know, it's, it, like New Mexico, when you get a wet winter

and spring, which it sure had, it's going to produce. And it sure produced this last year. Man, we're just covered up in moisture right now. Yeah, it's off to a great start right now. Oh. Just unbelievable. Two years back to back. And sometimes people say the second year of wet after the drought is the best year. So. Getting a lot of late hunters calling in saying they couldn't even get around elk hunting because there's so much snow down there. A lot of bulls saved from that. Even people point guarded. Yeah. Even the locals. Point guard, point guard. Well, then they, those tags may or may not have time to have been reissued or who would want them even if they were. So your, your kill rates are down. Your actual tag distribution rate was down compared to what they, the tag quotas were. And so some of those will come into effect on bulls that made it that are in another year

older or otherwise would be dead on the ground or in somebody's freezer. So we talked about some of that. Of course, we have the write-ups. We go through the unit by units.

You know, the archery hunt being September 11th to the 24th is an awesome time frame. If you're out there, you're an archery hunter, we definitely suggest doing the archery hunt. However, those early muzzles and early rifles, you know, September 25th to October 1st is a great time frame as well. Those, those units and hunts in particular are just extremely tough to draw. Very tough. Talking about the late hunts for elk, that's probably would factor into what we talked about a bit ago, uh, in terms of if you're in no man's land and you're, everybody dreams of drawing an elite elk tag in Arizona. Uh, if you're not a bow hunter and you just put in for early rifles every year, just because that's what you dream for, you're really putting in for, it's hard to say. It can't happen. Cause like we talked about, it happened to Clint, but having said that you might consider

these late rifle tags at some point as your avenue to pull a tag, because that's the reality of it. Um, a lot of people get hung up, maybe treat Arizona early rifle and muzzleloaders a lot like Utah, but Utah has them on every single unit and, but they don't have a lot of tags. So, but collectively have a lot more tags in Utah on the early rifles than Arizona does. Cause Arizona only has, you know, a portion of their units, you know? Um, percentage wise, very, that's right. So you don't, you don't draw very many people every year. So these, these hunts are, uh, for the most part, uh, all of them are no end of November, early December, November 27th, December 3rd, you know, Thanksgiving time or just after. And it's, uh, bulls are broke up. They're scattered on winter ranges, but man, there were some great bulls that came out of Arizona this last year.

In a great moisture year, antler year, they produce some really good bulls on the late hunts. I was really impressed with some of the better late, uh, late bulls that we saw in some of the better units. And so they don't take, they still take a fair number of points. I mean, you look at 23 and some of these better units, it's not like jump, James, you're still burning 17 points to get attacked. And that did jump like that one in particular did jump because the outfitters are projecting the great antler growth and they have a few specific clients. Well, and they, and a lot of people, I think point guard the year before, you know what I mean? And so people that drew the year before just drew again. That's right. And so, yeah, you end up with like, for example, the number of non-resident tags be six as far as the bonus point draw. That's not very many.

That's why you can jump them with a matter of five. That's right. And that unit doesn't have a lot of tags compared to others, but it's been traditionally one of the better late hunts because it does have a late archery hunt that has, you know, a lot of tags as well. It takes a lot of that later season hunting pressure that they allocate them to then where other units have, you know, three or 400 tags, you know, like units one or 27 or units like that, that, um, you might get, you know, 40 non-resident tags, 20 going to the max point. And you can, you can draw with, you know, 11, 12 points on some of those units and, and which is a far cry from 23 and four points today and something you will never really catch if you, if you're, you know, four or five points behind, you may never catch it. That's why, yeah, we talk a lot about, you know, kind of the odd thing, like go archery.

If you, if you can hunt with a bow, go, go archery, go late rifle. You know, we, we do have a lot of clients that want the premier hunt no matter what. I've got a plan. I'm buying a tag somewhere. I'm buying a hunt up in Northern Utah, whatever the case is. Okay, great. I get it. Go for the gold, go for the absolute cover shot, uh, type hunt, but you can still kill quality animals. And some of these, and Adam, we've talked about even off the wall units, let's talk five bees, the, you know, four A's, things like that, that can produce big bulls. Yeah. In the magazine, we've got to basically be very realistic in, in what we print, you know, as far as what to expect. And that's true. Those are, we hold by those statements. However, just because a unit may max out what we're talking about generally on average, 320 bulls doesn't mean they won't produce a 350 bull. That's right.

So jump in there, uh, utilize your points, go often. Um, things like that. We're huge fan of course, they do point guards, $5 additional per species. You got to develop your online portal account. Um, you know, and if you do that and then you apply using the same email that matches your portal, those two programs basically will talk to each other and will allow you to purchase point guard for anything that you apply for. So antelope's going to be awesome. Very, very limited opportunities. It's like by, uh, drawing a sheep tag, uh, antelope in Arizona, very, very tightly managed. And as we believe is a good program as well for producing quality bucks. Um, you kind of just go when you can go. You can't really bank on those. It's taken 20 plus years and a lot of units. Yeah. Yeah. Which is crazy. I mean, the maximum point that you saw that we had a table in there for the number of applicants

with each point level, there's people with 30, 30 antelope points in Arizona. Yeah. People meaning two, two, two, but, but there are people with 29, 28, 27, 26 and cranks down into 254 applicants total with 25 points. I'm just saying. This is not your traditional antelope state. Like St. Wyoming. No, you're not, you're not burning. And I mean, this is, you said it best, it's somewhat like sheep, but there's more collective tags for antelope in the state than there are sheep tags, but not many more. And, and they're, they're just about as tough to draw. Yeah. But relatively cheap opportunity, you're buying your $160 license. You might as well throw your name in the hat for this. That's right. And you're doing a one time a year, 160, for example, let's call it a sunk cost from business perspective. I mean, in reality, applying is, is business.

Uh, of course we don't have a lot of inflows except for bone. But, um, you know, as far as, you know, you're paying this $160, well, you're going to end up, um, you know, applying for deer, applying for sheep, bison, maybe elk, antelope. And so, you know, the additional fee per species is so minimal. Like you said, 15 bucks. Have your name in the hat. So anyway, lots of opportunities there in Arizona. Be creative, be willing to, you know, except less than the perfect. Any noteworthy changes, Jason? And, and whole, didn't seem like a lot. The paper thing was kind of the main thing that, that kind of. Yeah, they're done with that. For me to go away with. But I don't, I don't think. They just barely did that with this last draw where you apply for turkeys and things. And of course it'll, it'll morph over into these other, uh, draws. But yeah, for the most part, um, you know, there's that.

And then they flip flop the units like, uh, yeah. You know, nine, one, and 27, they swap from those early rifles to early muzzles and things, depending on the year. Um, they do offer kind of a weird, you know, where they'll have a super early hunt, um, for muzzle or a rifle. It happens to be, you know, muzzle this year in 5B South. And that's earlier than normal. And then they make the archery after that. And so kind of like this year, the, the exciting news is you're going to have a gun hunter. Let's call it a gun hunter. Cause you, you know, with muzzle, you can use scopes and lines, all of that. Um, but you can have a gun hunter prior to the archery. It's rare to do that. But, uh, Arizona does do that, but I kind of like it because the archery is a little bit later. And I think it's better. I think that later hunt in the 5Bs for archers will be a better season. Yeah. And I don't.

My opinion. The 11th of September to the 24th, it's a good solid season. It is a two weeks long. Um, it is slightly earlier on the opener probably than you would, than you would prefer. Um, but what you're saying is those units might be something you consider because you get a hunt seven days later. You're sitting, you're sitting at September 18th, October 1st. I just feel like that's more, more, more better. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? We saw that last year in 3C. Yeah. In fact, that Berman bull. Okay. That's the reason it was cool. Yeah. And it was toward the end of the archery on the, and it happened to be late because there was that early hunt. That's right. So. Exactly right. Anyway. And then, uh, and yeah, so you'll see that muzzle or season for 5B South is September 11th to the 17th. And, uh, yeah, it's only 25 tags, but for, uh, patrolling purposes and whatnot, uniformity,

both 5B South, 5B North, we'll have the later archery just for uniformity and, uh, you know, patrolling purposes on there. Should be. I mean, stuff could always change, but with the patterns we continually keep getting, it's shaping up to be another good year for, for moisture and antler growth wise. I don't know if the amount of rain and snowfall that they're having in some of these units already, how it could be terrible, even if it's shut off right now. I think it's going to be solid. So definitely we feel it's a must apply for a state. If you can swallow the, the sunk costs like Jason talked about 160 bucks to buy a license in Arizona. And then, uh, you know, then you're doing business at $15 per species, but you don't have to pay for the tag fees unless you drop. So anyway, I want to give a shout out real quick to one of our sponsors at phone scope.

Um, great piece of equipment that none of us leave home without, whether we're scouting, whether we're hunting, no matter what we're doing. Um, if you're, if you're holding your phone or your, or your camera up your scope, those days should be long gone. The vinyl scoping system that phone scope makes is awesome. Something for every make and model of phone and optic that you have. Check them out at phone scope.com. P H O N E S K O P E.com. They're lightweight. Um, you know, very easy to use, you know, uh, like I said, you can use them, have them for binos for your 15s, for your spotters, for BTX, whatever. They make something for everybody. So check them out. Appreciate their support with us here at Epic Outdoors. It's awesome. We're actually, uh, getting our footage ready to, you know, to go to the expo and do different things up here that will be up here in Northern Utah.

And, uh, Chris, you're cranking through a lot of our phone scope footage, basically all taken with phone scope. We're not, you can't get close enough. Well, Chris can, but we can't get close enough to get good footage with a, with a regular awesome video camera. So we're using our phones. Yeah. It's changes the game. And these, these new phones, the footage is, is great. So yeah, they're awesome. It's awesome. So anyway, and, uh, of course we use the, some of these, uh, live clips in our, in your stories and whatnot that are featured in the Epic Outdoors magazine. So anyway, as you submit stories, you might submit some of that footage as well. That brings us to Wyoming. Start us off, Bronson. Well, I guess we'll start off with probably the biggest change that's probably not going to make a lot of non-residents really happy. It's been sitting on our money for months and months.

That's right. Go ahead. Forever. Forever. The application period is opened up in Wyoming for deer, elk, antelope, sheep, moose, goat, uh, the first of January. And, but they have different closing periods. The elk coming first, which has historically always been, uh, January, um, 31st, which is, uh, you know, the case again this year, except for if that falls on a weekend and it, you know, hits the next business day, things like that with, you know, the deer and elk moving to the end of May, the sheep, moose, and goat, the end of February. Um, they have moved the bison this year to the month of March. That's a new change, but the big change, which is really going to affect a lot of people is with the elk. You still have to apply, um, by, by January, um, deadline. And, but the biggest thing that's going to come into play on that is normally we've gotten

our draw results by the 20th or so of February. And everybody loves that about Wyoming. It's the first elk state to open up. You can apply for it and you find out in about three weeks, if you wait, you know, three, three and a half weeks, what you draw. The only state you've missed that you've had to make a commitment to apply for is Arizona that we just talked about, which is usually the 10th or 15th of February. That's the only one. So if you find out you drew an elk tag right out of the gate in Wyoming, great. Now you can plan around it with all the other states, move on down the road. Or conversely, if you don't draw, now you just keep being aggressive on down the road. That's all changed for this year. Primarily due to the fact that harvest date has not all been in winter and winter and all that.

What normally has been happening is they've drawn the non-residents by the end of February, but the resident draw for deer, elk, and antelope doesn't occur till May. They set everything, final permit recommendations and everything in late April, and then they run the draw in May, and they draw the resident tags in May. Well, what's happened on a few instances is if a unit has to cut tags, well, they've already drawn the non-resident quota kind of somewhat based off the year before's quota back in February, February, and the residents end up taking the full brunt of it. When they have to cut, you have to cut 50 or 100 elk tags, and you've already drawn the non-resident tags back in February. Where's the cut going to come from? Residents. Yeah. And so through that and some other of these things, like I said, harvest data, they've

elected to push the non-resident draw date for elk back to May as well. And... But they want to keep the January 31st to keep us on the hook and to not have too much change because everybody expects to apply in January. Wyoming wants to be that, has always liked to be that first door to open, right? We're junkies. The first girl out on the dance floor. That's right. You're ready to put in for something January 1st. You know, this year it's January 2nd. You're ready to put in for something. So the deadline is still the 31st. But this year results are not going to be out until May 21st. How about that? Then you can modify and amend by May 8th. The big thing that you are going to be able to do is you're not going to find out in late February before what you draw. You're going to have to wait until May 21st.

But if you do, if something changes in your schedule, you can amend your unit, modify or withdraw your application until May 8th. That's as good as it's going to be for you. And then as you've been able to do in the past, you can still do points only in the summer from July through October. So... That way if people say, oh, there's a major die-off or something, which just don't die. But if something changes, then you could say, you know, in theory they're saying, then you could go ahead and amend. You can pull it. You're not going to get your refund until they're in the draw. You can either pull your app or you can go ahead and amend to a different unit, make your changes and adjustments pending the winter-spring outcome. That's right. But this big change, this means you're not going to get your Wyoming non-residents, you're

not going to get your drawing results for three months later than the past. You know, it's been late February, now it's going to be 21st of May. Makes it officially the... Tougher to plan for. Well, and officially the longest period of time that a state will hold your money, because you've got to pay for it. Well, and you could put in January 2nd, you could put in for deer if you want. That's right. You could do it. It's not due till May 31st. You always could have done it. Or this year, June 1, technically. You always could have done it, but we just... We tell people not to. We don't even cover deer and antelope until a later issue, because we analyze the winter, and then we give our full interjected thoughts. And oftentimes, we have an idea of what permit numbers are going to be by late April when we go to print. We still have to cover the elk now, because they're making us apply.

And again, if you go to apply in February, March, April, May, there is no such thing for non-residents for elk. Yeah. Yeah. You can't decide... So there's nothing to amend. You have to apply now and amend. That's your option. So anyway, that's kind of a big deal. That's the big change. It's a monumental change. A couple of other big changes is in the past, you've noticed four or five years ago, Jason, they had this online kind of tables and hunt planner feature for the application booklet. They did it for one year. Then they went right back to the full 100-page whatever PDF booklet. Non-resident application booklet. That's right. They're going back to more or less their hunt planner format now, where they're going to not have a page one to 100, here's your non-resident application. It's going to go elk, you're going to go there and you have drop downs, it's going to have

the hunt units, the types, the seasons from last year, and all that. And that's just, that's the way they're going to do it. It's not going to be a reg booklet like some of these other states like Arizona, like Utah, New Mexico still put out an application booklet and it's in start to finish page one to 100 or whatever. Wyoming's going to be a little bit different. So be prepared for that when you go online to look. You're going to go to that hunt planner feature. You're going to go to each species that you want to hunt. You're going to hit the drop down menus. We still were able to, as we prepared for this magazine, go in and we were privy to that information and printed it from a 2020 perspective. The sheep units that are open for non-residents, for instance, the moose units that were open for non-residents, for instance.

There's usually no elk that aren't, aren't available to us that residents can put in for. But that's, that's another fairly big change. If you're going on there, just looking to download and save or print or whatever, that's not going to appear like it has in the past. So, um, keeping in mind, again, we covered in this magazine, we covered the elk, like we've just hammered. We covered the bighorn sheep. We covered shirus moose, mountain goat. Both of those are due by the end of February. And, uh, we covered the bison, which is now due in March, which is a new change. Primarily they've addressed that, that fact they wanted to allow the current hunts that are going on to be able to finish and end and have their harvest reporting criteria met before their application opens for the next year. So they've moved that off one month in the past.

So that's basically been a February 1st to 28th or 29th application period. Now that's the month of March for, for bison. So those are species we cover there. And like we said, we, we still postpone covering the deer and antelope till the May issue of the magazine. We're going to have a better idea and the grasp of what the winter looks like. So we can give our full take on, on things there. From a sheep perspective, I know we talked about this last year. Uh, last year, if you may remember, they added a two and a half percent online convenience fee. Of course, Wyoming, when you apply, they don't have, uh, uh, a main hunting license. It's a big hunting license purchase like Nevada or Arizona does, but they, they make you pay your species permit fees up front, which are pretty stiff. I mean, bighorn sheep, 2,300 bucks, you know, mountain goat, 21, then change, you know, moose

two grand bison expensive 4,400 for a bull. If you're ambitious on a credit card with two and a half percent non-refundable and the mandatory point fee non-refundable for moose and sheep, that's right. 150 a pound. You end up. It can really add up. We, I think we did the math. It was 225 or so roughly dollars per moose. And she, you know, if you're going to pay the app fee, the point fee plus eat the two and a half percent. And the, the, the, the big kicker is Wyoming for always, for a lot of years, has been one of those, well, they give random tags. 75% go around or in the max point pool, 25% of their moose and their, uh, sheep tags go, uh, randomly. But having said that, the first three go to the preference. That's right. And there's not always a random. That was kind of our point. That's our point. Last year, unit two through five were the only units that gave a random tag.

If you want to, uh, click over to the, click over to the, to the sheep. And there was only one tag in each of those units. One, one random tag. And when there's zero random? Three, four, and five. One tag. So four total random sheep tags total for non-residents in Wyoming last year. Four. Four. One in each units. Two, three, four, five. And the non-refundable point, and my point is the mandatory purchase of a point that they make you do and they don't give you your money back on. It's all lumped into the original purchase price, so to speak, your application fee. They don't let you, they don't give you a refund of that. It's mandatory and it doesn't even help you in the random draw. And I think that's kind of, we've had a lot of questions on that as far as, you know. I've got six points or eight points. Should I keep going?

I don't really like this mandatory, A, up front, all the money on my credit card. B, what I don't get back. You know, is it worth it? Well, no, it's not worth it. It's never going to help you in the random. They're divvying out tags. For example, unit one, three preference point tags, zero random. If you have, let's say you have 15 points. Let's just throw 15 out as a random number. You're probably never catching up. A, you're not going to catch up. But B, you're not even in the draw. You're not even in the draw. They cut the quote in unit one last year from 20 to 12 total tags. And that meant that the only three non-resident tags in all three of them went in the maximum preference point draw. You have to have four tags. They give the point tags first and then they'll give a random if there happens to be four. That's right.

Whereas in a lot of states, in most cases, you're going to at least get a random. The first tag will go random. Yes. And that's not the way. Wyoming is the case. And moose is even probably more discouraging if you can say that. Most people have looked at Wyoming for a lot of years as a state. Hey, I want to share this moose. We used to say it's a must apply for. Would you say that anymore, Jason? It's just hard. I mean, hey, okay. Moose are hard to come by. So, you know, you've basically got, you know, Utah, Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming. And so that's kind of what you're going to do. Colorado, maybe. But like, yeah, you want one. I want a Shiras. And you can't really, you can't buy Shiras tags very many places. Unlike, you know, you want to shoot a Canadian moose. You don't have to draw them. Alaska Yukon, you book a hunt and go do it.

If you have to have a Rocky Mountain sheep, if you have to have a Shiras moose, of course, our friends call them Shiraz. But just in teasing. But, you know, if you have to have one, then, you know, maybe it is a sunk cost. Maybe it's the price of doing business and being in the draw. Adam, you and I, depending on our schedules, some years I apply for sheep. Some years I don't. And I look at it, and it's my gut field. Does 220 bucks sound worth the 1 in 200, 300, 400, 500 type drawing? It's getting worse and worse, yeah. I mean, is that worth it to me? And so I look at it, and I weigh it out and say, yeah, I'd take a raffle ticket at a banquet for that, for those kind of odds or not. And that's the way you've got to look at it. Does my point ever going to help me? I don't even think about that. That's just what they're going to charge me to apply. In the case of moose, same thing applies.

You need to look at the tables and pay attention to the units that give enough tags that some tag, at least one, will go in the random draw. If you don't have, we'll just say that 15, 16 point range or higher, and have the ability to maybe swoop in and out. And when I say 15 or 16, that's on a pretty marginal unit. Most of them are in the 18 to 20, 100 point range. But if you are not in that range, you probably better look at one of those handful of units. Again, we're not talking about very many tags, and we're not talking about very many units. Most of the units up there do not give a tag in the random draw. So do not put in for a unit that does not have high enough tag numbers or historically been giving a random tag, or you just lent them two grand and lost 200 bucks with zero chance to draw. And another point I think that's worth making, we get this one a lot too, Jason,

is people don't apply for moose and sheep in the first go-round. I don't have the money in my car. You get a point in the summer. Is that worth it? No. If you don't have the point, if you're almost a draw, absolutely. Okay. If you're not, do not waste 150 bucks. I changed my answer. Depending. Yes. Do not waste 150 bucks on the points. If you're in no man's land, apply in the draw so you at least have a chance to draw for that 200 to 225 bucks that you're going to lose for a sheep or moose application. If you have 10 or less moose and sheep points, it's not worth it just to get a point in the summer. No. You should at least be in the draw. You should be in the draw. And Adam, I think this goes back to what you and I talk about. Let's call it the Clint factor. He made the cover on six points in a special draw unit that you would never think you could draw was possible. One non-rescent tag.

Yeah. He beat one in thousands type drawing odds. 6,000 or whatever it is. I mean, he calculated it and he could tell us to a decimal point of what his odds were. But having said that, you know, somebody's going to draw it. Be in the draw. We have 15 to 20 years left. 25 years. 30 years on lots of bonus years, if, you know, God willing. Having said that, be in the draw. As many draws as you can be in or that you can afford to be in that make sense for your personal application strategy. I think that goes to, you know, Wyatt, me, Adam. We're constantly, you know, consulting our license application guys. Developing strategies for them. Putting us in their shoes. Well, you know, what would I do if I were you? This is what I would recommend. And so we do that. And if you don't like to analyze this, it does get, Adam's talking about, does this, you know, have a random tag?

And if it does, what are the drawing odds? And by the way, what's my non-refundable fees? We can do all this for you in every state with every species. And I think we've talked a lot about that. Had a lot of clients that we've consulted over this. Well, one thing that I guess, if you want to put it in perspective, your membership to Epic Outdoors is $100 a year. And I'm not saying that you should apply how I think or how Wyatt thinks or Chris or Jason. Because everybody's situation is a little bit different. But $100 a year for a subscription to Epic Outdoors, if you learned a couple things like that, what we just got done talking about, about Wyoming sheep and moose, and you weren't really sure about how the draw worked, you just saved yourself $200. You more than doubled your worth out of the membership on a few things like that.

Or when it comes time to Utah, it's not really a secret anymore. But the deal of being able to buy a non-resident hunting license for $65 and it's good for 365 days. So if you buy it late enough in the application period, the first year, the next year, you can use it to apply as well and not have to purchase that. Well, if you've learned that little loophole, you almost paid for your membership as well that way. So this principle in Wyoming for sheep and moose, not just buying a point in the summer blindly. If you're going to make the commitment to apply, apply for them. If you're not, don't. And save some money. Deer, elk, and antelope. Of course, there's no points for goat. We'll get to that. But while we're on the point subject. Deer, elk, and antelope, buy points. I know it's not the best deer state in the world. I am as discriminating of a trophy deer hunter as there is.

I'm buying points in Wyoming. I'm the first to say Wyoming's terrible for trophy mule deer. I'm the first to say it. But it gives me options. And in the event, I learn something. I learn something new. Maybe a ranch comes open or somebody hears about a specific deer. Whatever. Sometimes things happen. We have a lot of outfitters in Wyoming that are killing some great bucks in less than great areas. General tags. Including general. Just generals. I mean, we've got guys killing 190 to 200 inch deer. One or two every year, every other year. On a private match. Zero tag unit. Zero. Zero point. So, I mean, hey, if it did take a point or two and you didn't get one because it's not known as a trophy deer state, you'd be a sad guy. Same thing with the antelope. Same thing with the elk. Tags come around. I took my kid hunting. By the way, how does it go from six points to two points? What?

Like unit 40, for example, on the special. I mean, things like that happen where people analyze these odds. And I guess I want to, I guess we'll dive into that for a quick second. They do have the special license fee and the regular license fee for deer elk and antelope. You can analyze the drawing odds and you get a lot of flip-flop. You're not going to pay extra. It's an expensive tag fee. Once it's drawn, it's the same tag. But, you know, it puts you in a separate set of drawing odds, separate drawing pool, so to speak, with people that are willing to pay the additional fee. And so you get guys saying, well, I'm not going to pay the expensive fee for worse drawing odds. And so you get a lot of flip-flop each year. Yeah, they'll look at the odds and say, well, it didn't pay off to pay the special last year. I'm not going to do that.

And that's the year you should pay special because everybody's going to be thinking that way. And there's 60% of the tags, like Jason said, for only, this only applies for deer elk and antelope. 60% go in the regular draw, 40% go in the special. They divide them up then in the preference and random draws. But once you draw tags, it's the same. It's just they charge more for the special tag. That's the only difference. Way to play. That's all it is. European hunting. Here we go. So anyway, unit 40, for example, I brought that up. 20% draw with two points in the special, paying the expensive tag fee. 27% was seven on the regular, on the cheap fee. I, for one, think it's worth it. I chose it. I paid the additional for my son, and he could have paid the youth fee. Yeah. But because we went in special, he had to pay not only, he wasn't involved in the youth fee anymore,

and paid the adult special. But due to him graduating high school and leaving, going out to the world and all that, you're like, I want to get him on an elk hunt this year. I want to insure. And so you said, I'm going to pay the extra. And lucky we did. Eight or 900 that year, whatever it was, over the youth fee. Yeah. And get him drawn. And lucky we did. And all of a sudden, I mean, I'm cruising through the odds, and I'm like, really? Wow. Who would have guessed? And I think it's just one of those things where things flip-flop back and forth. And hindsight is 20-20. We wouldn't have predicted that. Having said that, there are times, Adam, that we can predict. When there's such a gap, that gap's going to flip-flop. And so you're going to see that. You're going to see that gap filled. I can bring it up. I'm not hurting anybody.

It's going to be filled on its own just by people analyzing the magazine, analyzing the drawing odds on their website, whatever. It'll also have a much bigger impact on a unit with low tag numbers. You talk a unit that has 50 or 100 total tags, some of those 80% roughly going to residence, the other 20% now getting carved off for non-residents in that special and regular. Pretty soon you split the pie up really small versus a unit like Unit 7 with 1,500 elk tags collectively in it. Generally, you look at that every year. It's a little better in the special every year because you've got a much bigger pool of pie to split up. But yeah, analyze those closely. Try to guess or out-guess, I guess. Out-guess. That's really what you're trying to do. And if it's worth it, pay the extra money. If it's not, go on the regular draw.

And also, much like we talked about with the elk and the sheep or the moose and the sheep, there's elk units that don't have random draw tags either. There are some of those. You can start getting them those 50 tag units or less. 50 total with 16% to 20% carved off for non-residents. Then you divide a 40-60 split. You get a couple landowners that they give tags. And then you do a 75-25 split. Now you're sitting with a preference tag. So if you see a no tag in our notes field in the random, that means for three years in a row, that means historically, unless they increase tags this year, they probably don't plan on them giving a random tag. If you see a random, you know, you go to the, you know, some of these units with no tag, like, you know, 54, popular unit, 54 for elk, 58 for elk, no random tags. Non-resident. Yeah, non-resident we're talking. So anyway, pay attention to that as well.

So a lot of these elk units, I guess, while we're kind of sticking on elk for a sec, you know. Anyway, they do allow, you know, in many cases, a majority of cases, a lot of cases, they allow the rifle hunters to hunt archery season with a bow. If you're not successful, you can come back with a rifle during the rifle season within that particular unit. Some of them, 31, 32, whatever, end up with a rifle season October 1st, and you can hunt the month of September with a bow. Next day, pick up a rifle. Yeah. Very unique. Most states, you know, you choose an archery tag, and that's what you draw, and that's what you go hunt. Or you draw a rifle tag, and that's what you draw, and you go hunt. Not the case in the majority. We do have a list of the type 9, which are the archery-only hunts for elk in Wyoming.

And pay attention to those if you're only wanting, you know, to compete with, I guess, archery and archery odds. It's not always, you know, most states we think of archery odds being easier. This is one of the states that's not usually the case because, again, you can hunt the whole month of September with a bow. September 1 to the 30th at some point. Yeah, versus late October with a rifle. Most, the rifle's not as desirable. A lot of times, the archer's harder to draw. And at some point in that month, there is a dark man. Yeah. There's a lot of these states, you know, September 11th through the 24th. Is that a dark moon, full moon? What? I mean, there's a lot that comes into play. September 1st to the 30th, there's going to be some good bugling activity sometime in that month. That's right. And so it's awesome. You get to hunt 30 days. Where else can you do that?

Very rare to be able to have a 30-day season. That's right. Kind of cool. Very diverse. Wyoming, the best way to put it, is there's something for everybody. There's wilderness backcountry, horseback, grizzly-infested hunts for people that like to- They love it. They like to- Clamber to the top of a tree. And they like to sleep with their rifle in their lap at night. There's people, there's some people that probably like to- They thrive on it. I had a guy who says, yeah, me and my son, we want to go. We're good with horses and we're good with grizzlies. And I'm like, okay. What does that look like? What does that mean? I'm not really good with grizzlies. And I don't love horses, although I'll do it. But, you know, there's guys that are willing to do it. And, hey, that means something to us. You know what's interesting, Adam?

When the wolves really got cranking, and, of course, grizzlies forever, but wolves really got cranking in Wyoming, we saw such a dip. I think the elk were- Naive. They've learned to live with them. And also, there's been some- Some harvest. Harvest on wolves and kept at bay, so to speak. And we've seen an increase in numbers and quality. And I'm talking an average overall the last five years. Yeah. The last three years. A gradual resurgence, if you can be as bold to say that, in some of these backcountry units that are bordering apart. The 55s and 6s and 51s and 59s and all those. Yep. Exactly. You're right. And, but they have a lot. The extremes of elk hunting are endless. You've got those extremes, the backcountry wilderness horseback. Keeping in mind, if you hunt a non-resident as a wilderness, hunting wilderness, you need to hire an outfitter or have a resident of Wyoming with you.

Another unique lot of Wyoming. A lot of people don't like it. It's just the way it is. It's the- I don't like it. You know? It's just the way it is up there. So, if you don't have a resident that can get their resident guide permit, which is easy to get- Hold your hand while you go into the wilderness? Then, then you're going to need to consider an outfitter to hunt wilderness. If you don't want that, then you need to identify the units that have enough non-wilderness, designated wilderness to hunt on your own. But then you've got, again, horses, grizzlies. If you want an outfitter, there's a lot of units with moderate terrain throughout Wyoming with lower mountain ranges with ponderosa pine and easy stuff, you know, in the central and eastern part of the states even. And there's public lands like that as well.

Having said that, if you're a public land hunter that wants to hunt with no grizzlies and have lots of public land, no horses, there's a lot of demand in those type of units. It's tough. Oh, Unit 7. You know? 31, 32. I mean, there's a number of them. The bighorns, you know? I mean, there's places you can go. 1,500 tags. I just can't get over it. Unit 7, I hunted it in the 90s, Adam. You've hunted it recently. I mean, semi-recently. It's always been 1,500 tags. I don't know how, I don't remember a time it wasn't 1,500 tags. Is that some funny stuff? I know. Still producing good bulls. There's quite a bit of private there, but there's also enough public to do some damage. So, and we don't mean to, you know, spotlight that unit. Just an example of what we're talking about with the diverse opportunities. Doesn't have to have grizzlies. There aren't grizzlies there.

There aren't necessarily wolves. You might have an outlier here and there. I don't know, but for the most part, they don't. No, that's right. There's something for about everybody. But also, we try to hammer this home in the magazine as well. Wyoming is pro. If you've got max points or one off a max or something like that, okay, maybe it makes sense to hold out for that one tag or two that you're chasing. If you're in the middle of the pack, try to draw a tag and go to Wyoming more often. It's a great elk state. It's got abundant numbers. Probably best put as a, you know, 300 to 340 type category bull. Does not mean 350 to 380 bulls don't happen. They do. But even on the, quote, better units that we list in our magazine, you know, 370 and 80 bulls aren't common. You know, they're not common anywhere. A little bit of a tough year this last year. Yeah. It was a little bit of a tougher year.

So, use Wyoming to supplement your elk hunting plans. If you don't have max point, apply. Go more often than waiting 15 to 20 years for a tag. Again, unless you already have max point or one off. You can buy your way in, like Wyatt talked about with the article in the earlier part of the publication. They do have governor tag, commissioner tags, like 56 commissioner tags, I think. And they go at public auction. And that allows you, like a commissioner tag, you can choose a unit and, you know, hunt during that respective season within that unit. And so, anyway, there's ways to get around that. But basically, these points, I guess, to put it mildly, these points have value. And everybody should be applying for deer, elk, and antelope in the state of Wyoming. Sheep and moose is a little bit different story. However, it may fit your budget. It may be what you need to do.

And, of course, we do it at times, too. They also, we did cover the goats and bison as well. You can cover that. You can see that in the magazine. There is opportunity there. No points associated there. Truly a random draw like New Mexico or like Idaho. It's just truly a random draw each year. The drawing odds for bison, it's the best state of all the western states. And it's partially due to the fact that they make you front the tag fee, $4,400 plus bucks to apply for a bull tag. Cow tags are about half that. But the best odds of any western state for free-ranging bison, you know, you're hunting bison that adjacent to or as they migrate out of Yellowstone, Teton National Park, down north of Jackson, that's where you're hunting. Sometimes dealing with cold, flat-out miserable conditions at times. But where can you hunt a free-ranging, you know, bison in the U.S.?

Not very many states that allow you to do that. Wyoming's one of them. If you can stand to afford that. Here's a question, Wyatt, since you're an official scorer. Bison and a three-standard wire fence. Is that high fence or low fence or free-range or not? Where did that come from, Montana? They have them all broke out into, you know, B.C. officially accepted herds. There's very few of those. And they're not going to accept, you know, the farm-raised ones right out there in Kansas. Like a cattle farm. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I don't know. Just thought of that.

That brings us to Outdoor Edge Knives. We appreciate their support. We're a great partner of ours, the replaceable blade knives. We just barely killed a desert sheep with my niece in Nevada just a few days ago. And, of course, we were cranking with the Outdoor Edge Knives. It was awesome. We all had them. I can't believe it's like they've taken over the world, the freaking knife world. It's unbelievable. You get five or six of those hacking up a desert sheep, you better get out of the way. Oh, especially with the hyenas, my brother-in-laws. Jeez. That's right. Anyway, but the nice thing is everybody's, the new blades fit anybody's knife. Anyway, it's kind of fun. But they have done a great job at infiltrating the hunting industry. Make a great product. Very affordable. Of course, we're giving away the knives with the... Ticket purchases and stuff. Yeah, different things.

We're offering here at Epic Outdoors as far as the hunt giveaways and the package there. So, anyway, if you purchase a $200 package, you'll get a knife from us with our logo engraved on it. It's pretty awesome. Anyway, we appreciate Outdoor Edge. What a great company. And, of course, make a great product. Enough of a great product that we want them in all of our members' hands and we're giving them away. One more shout-out we'd like to do also on this podcast is one of our sponsors, St. James Sporting Properties. Blaine St. James, he's been a friend, a fellow hunter we've known for years, Jason and I. Based out of Colorado. But he's licensed in Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, New Mexico, Oregon, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming as a real estate broker for sporting properties. These are farm and ranches for recreational type purposes. Whether you're looking to buy a piece of property.

Whether you've got a piece of property you think you may want to sell. Give Blaine or his crew a call. 970-596-6089 or sjsportingproperties.com. Great crew if you're looking to buy or sell some kind of western sporting or recreational property. We are going to have some more podcasts with invited guests. Change things up a little bit. A lot of times we talk about the publication, online offers, some of the different things we're offering. Our partners, of course, that's Ab and I and Wyatt, Devin, Chris, and John and whatnot here in the office. We will be mixing it up. We're back in the saddle, so to speak, here at our desks. Cranking through. We have a lot of office work to do. And we'll also bring on some great guests, talk about their seasons, strategies, and different things like that. So be watching for that.

The next publication we're working on is going to cover Oregon, New Mexico, Utah. We are cranking hard here at Epic Outdoors. We appreciate all your support out there, all the listeners, both outfitters as well as clients. Couldn't do it without you guys. We appreciate you and your loyalty.

We're cranking. It's awesome. Lots of exciting things for 2020. I can't tell you how excited we are. Again, I talked about it in this last publication. But I hit Bronson and I just said, man, I'm so ready for this year to end. And I lay awake at night thinking about next year. That was about November 10th last year. Yeah. And it ended like two days ago. That's right. That's right. And yours is still going, actually. We're all about in 1,000 right now. You know, we're going into, well, I guess. Yeah. Sportsman tags, but we don't count those for Utah. But we're all 100% until we get the first rejection notice. So full of optimism around here. First of the year brings that. We're excited. We love doing the research. We love writing about what we love. And I encourage you to become a member of Epic Outdoors. EpicOutdoors.com. Or you can give us a call at the office. 435-263-0777.

435-263-0777.