Legendary Bulls of the Acoma with Scott Mabray. In this episode of The Epic Outdoors Podcast we talk with Scott Mabray of Acoma Big Game Hunts. Scott helps us get an in depth look at a place known for Incredible Elk hunting opportunities. We talk about management, harvest rates, how to get a tag, and much more. Any place that has abundant 350″ bulls is hard to come by. You will hear about what makes the Acoma stand out as an Elk hunters paradise.
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’ve cut at least one bowl that was 14 or 15 every year.
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When, when do you generally find peak rutt
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Compared to the West? Wide Opportunities? Very reasonable pricing for what you’re getting on. Half a million acres of exclusivity. Anything
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To do with Western big games.
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Welcome to the Epic Outdoors Podcast, powered by Under Armour.
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Hey everybody, Jason Carter. Adam Bronson, busy time of year. Phones are going crazy. But anyway, appreciate all you listeners out there. We’ve been cranking out a few podcasts. We’re also right in the middle of application draw results, things like that, landowner tags. Everything’s happening right now. People are ordering optics like crazy trail cameras. It’s that time of year. We’re out scouting every weekend. Just going crazy. Anyway, got a super good podcast coming up. Before we get started, we wanna thank Under Hammer, appreciate their support here at Epic Outdoors. We crank forward Podcasts magazine. Everything we do, we work with them and they’re awesome. They’re an awesome partner of ours and we appreciate them. Got a lot coming out here. Mid-July is when they’re gonna showcase all their different products and have ’em available online. ua.com, you can go on there, type in Baron. Pretty much all the options will come available and that changes day to day with July 15th being kind of their opening up of the 2020 lineup of gear. Alright, let’s get started here. We’re gonna call the Akima Indian Reservation. SCO Maberry. Super good guy. We’ve dealt with him a bit in the past. They got quite a program going on over there. So anyway, we’ve got ’em lined up. We’re gonna give him a call and visit with him about what kind of hunting opportunities they’ve got on the Akima.
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Hi, this is Scott. Scott.
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Hey, Jason Carter here. How are you?
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I’m doing great, how about yourself?
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Doing good. Doing good. How’s things treating you down there in New Mexico?
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Doing great. Finally starting to get outside at work and out of the office a little bit out of the house. So things are looking up.
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That’s awesome. Yeah. How’s the weather and everything? We’ve got some fires going on around us up here on the Kaibab and different parts of this place. Yeah,
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We don’t have anything real close, but there’s a few fires popping up around in Mexico and we’re waiting for that monsoon pattern to come through. Yeah, always, always hoping for rain, so, but we got a lot of moisture over the winter, so everything seems to be greening up well and just hoping that the moisture keeps going over summer.
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Yeah, you bet. Yeah, we’re, we’re in that same boat and everybody’s starting to get out and scout and whatnot. How’s, how’s the reservation looking as far as any covid restrictions or what have you guys got going on there with all, all the things that are going on at this point in history?
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So right now the reservation itself is pretty much shut down to outsiders, non-tribal members and even non-resident tribal members. Yeah. But we’re working towards, you know, opening up and all the casino and businesses are moving that way and just creating c o plans for the fall and making sure everybody’s safe and keep everybody healthy at camp, all that stuff.
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Yeah, yeah. Everybody I’m talking to, they’re expecting, you know, the hunts to go forward. Even had a guy at the Navajo hit me up and he said, Hey, you know, our regs are out and, and are you gonna apply? And a few things. So it seems like everybody’s, you know, the general consensus is, is things are gonna be lifting and, and they’re expecting hunts to go forward. Is that what you’re feeling?
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Yeah, we’re moving forward as if hunts are happening. So as of now, we’re good to go. Just kind of make sure we have the plan in place for whatever the current status is once September comes around.
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Yeah, you bet. Well, before we get started, why don’t we get a little background on you, who you are, you know, growing up, how did you get into the position you’re at, a little bit of history with you, little hi, bit of history on the reservation and things like that, just to kind of, you know, get us affiliated with you a little bit and your position there.
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Sure. So I’m the wildlife biologist for the ACMA game and Fish department. I’m the Pueblo of Acoma. I started there in August of 2015. So I’ve been there for about five years growing up. I, I am here from Albuquerque, New Mexico, which is about 60 miles east of Acoma. So I grew up kind of hunting around that area and all that. Yeah. And then kind of my peak interest in wildlife, my dad’s best friend was the longtime biologist at the Hickory Apache Reservation. Okay. And my, my dad actually was a veterinarian and kind of helped them with some capture stuff back in the, you know, late nineties, early two thousands. So I was pretty much being out on the hickory, helping them out, really sparked my interest in wildlife as well as working for a tribe. It’s really where, where my job searches was. So I did get my master’s up at Utah State University kinda Wow. Here next of the woods.
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Geez, that’s, so Bronson just, he just came in, we’re super busy here in the office. But anyway, he’s joined us here. He’s graduated.
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What years were you there? What years did you do that, your master’s?
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So I started working for another grad student in 2011 and then started my master’s in 2012. And I think I, I graduated in 2014.
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Gotcha. So, well cool. Yeah, a
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Little more recent than when we were there. We’re
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Old,
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Right? We’re old.
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Yeah, we were there in the mid nineties ish. Ish. Mid late nineties
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Ish is a good addition to that, but, nice. Well, so yeah, tell us I guess a little bit more about as we get into the hunting and the camps and what the hunting’s like, and maybe you already covered this, Carter acreage wise, did we talk about how big the reservation is? No, this
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Just, just the kind of the intro, how
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Big we talking for our listeners. I mean, in terms of size wise and, and you know, what it looks like distribution to game wise and things like that. I mean, Jason and I have known about it for a long time, but a lot of our listeners probably don’t know
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For sure. Yeah. Acoma has had a program since the mid to late nineties and it really took off in the early two thousands. But Acoma itself is in south central New Mexico. It’s about an hour west of Albuquerque and it encompasses about 475,000 acres. So really, if you’re familiar with the area, it’s Northern Boundaries up on I 40 near grants and then it goes south and it almost makes it down to Magdalena, New Mexico. It’s southern border is the Double H Ranch, which the Rocky Mount, Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation used to own. Yeah.
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Well and it’s been, it’s been, it’s been known like, and, and, and the reputation for, for us goes clear back into, like you said, the late nineties, early two thousands. I mean, it feels like, you know, back before people really knew what a 400 inch bull was, you guys were killing them pretty regular.
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Right? That, that the heyday back in the late nineties, early two thousands, I believe the, the best year they, they killed four, 400 bulls in one year. And we get a lot of real clean 400 bulls clean six by sixes, which, you know, aren’t that’s rare. Aren’t super common. And, but we do have a lot of, of non-typical bulls over the years our clients have killed 13 bulls over 400, and the reservation record is 4 62. Geez. And that, that bull was pretty much a four 12 and then it had a 50 50 inch third main beam. So Wow. That was about as non-typical as you can get. And that, that bull right now is the New Mexico State record non-typical for the Safari Club scoring system. Hmm. So, and then the most recent 400 bowl we killed was this past year in 2019. There was a four 13 grow spoon and Crockett was killed. Wow.
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So big enough. Yeah. Big enough.
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Right. Like I’ve told Adam and I mean a clean six times, 400 inches, like the ultimate, the absolute ultimate
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For 20 years, we’ve said that to each other.
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I know. Green ball you guys, and for you guys to say, and that’s the kind of the, you know, not, not to say it’s common, but you’re known for clean six buys that are giant. I don’t know, it’s just pretty special,
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You know. Right. And honestly, you know, back in, in the early two thousands there’s a lot more clean bowls and recently we’ve been seeing a lot more extra points and stuff off our bigger bowls. So it is changing a little bit, which is interesting to see. Yeah,
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Crazy. Wow. And so back in the day, maybe give us just a little history of the reservation. It seemed like you, you know, there was an outfitter that was kind of running your hunts versus how are you doing it now? Maybe just walk us through that little bit of history.
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Right. So in the, when it first started in the, in the nineties, there was an outfitter named Ross Johnson. He’s pretty well known in the New Mexico area. Yeah. That started outfitting and he outfitted for about five years. And then in the early two thousands the tribe decided that they would like to own, essentially own their own outfitting business. Yeah. So we now have what’s called Acoma Big game hunts. And the best way to think of it is an outfitting business that’s owned by the tribe and then operated by the game and fish department.
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Okay.
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So the thing that’s a little bit different for us is once you purchase a license with us, pretty much everything else is taken care of. You don’t have to worry about hiring a guide, you don’t have to worry about finding accommodations, any of that sort of thing. It’s kind of a all in purchase and then we take care of all the other stuff for you.
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So how do you choose guides, the sub guides, let’s call ’em sub guides, we call ’em sub guides, like Nevada, they have an official designation, a sub guide. But what, how do you choose those? Do I get to, as a customer, you know, say, Hey, what about this guy or that guy or tell you what I’m looking to do or whatever. I mean, how do you line up clients and guides? Is that up to the game and fish? Is it up to you?
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Right. So that’s, that’s up to our hunt manager, our head, our head guide, hunt manager. He’s been working with Akima gentleman named Rick Chancellor. He’s been working with Akma for I believe 18 years now. So he is in charge of setting up guides and we try to pair pair guides with the client, what the client’s looking for, maybe physical ability, that sort of thing. ’cause we assign our guides areas as kind of how we do it to make sure that don’t overlap client, you know, no hunters are seeing each other no overlapping. So each guide is assigned an area that’s a, a minimum about 10,000 acres.
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Okay. So kinda like a concession within the reservation. Like that would be where I guide, I guide this portion southeast corner. Right. Or whatever.
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Exactly. And we, we really like our guides to, you know, learn that area, master that area and you know, become a, obviously an expert on that area. And then we bring our clients in and kind of pair it up with what the guide’s seeing. You know, if a, if a client’s coming in looking for, say, a three 50 bowl versus somebody that, you know, won’t pull the trigger unless it’s a three 80, you know, we’ll, we’ll pair ’em with different guides in different areas just knowing what’s out there.
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Gotcha. And how, how do you run your hunts I guess a little bit when it comes down to it, they, you don’t have to follow a New Mexico game and fish guidelines, season dates, things like that.
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Thankfully, thankfully. Right. Yes.
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So what your, what are your season date? And I guess maybe we’ll jump into a little bit about, you know, the main species we’re talking about elk, that’s what we’ve, Jason and I have associated with Akima.
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Right. Primarily
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We
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Have, but you’ve probably got a big old deer we need to know about.
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Yeah. So there’s, you know, we have mule deer, merriam’s, Turkey pronghorn, antelope, bears lines, the mule deer and, and Turkey are reserved specifically for tribal members. So the mule deer is a really important, it’s cultural species for the tribe. And they have decided that mule deer hunting is reserved specifically for tribal members. So that’s, you’re not gonna hear anything about Ackerman mule deer, but the potential for, you know, 180 to 200 inch bucks is there definitely not the size of, you know, northern New Mexico, Colorado stuff. But yeah, it, it’s there. The potential’s there.
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Yeah. Well I know even on the public side, let’s call it the public side, the normal game and fish, you know, regulated under New Mexico game and fish, there is great potential there. You know, it’s just, but it’s a lot of, lot of thick, flat, somewhat tough to hunt type country, which allows those deer. Right. Which, like you said doesn’t not necessarily matter for, for guys like me that want to come there not, not a, not an option necessarily. So take, take
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The camera.
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Yeah. So the, the stateside stuff is, you know, there’s the potential for big bulls, big bucks, you know, New Mexico, definitely. You know, I’d, I’d argue every unit in New Mexico you have the ability to, to a mon find something monstrous. But you know, obviously other places, some places are better than others. But for, for Akima specifically, so as my job with the game and fish is, we’ve been tasked by our tribal council that we do all the flight surveys, all the data collection on, on the projects and then I make tag recommendations to the tribal leadership and then they approve ’em on an annual basis, annual basis. So our management is extremely, extremely conservative with our trophy elk program. And then the desires of the tribal council and tribal members. We manage all our species for quality. So, you know, it’s an age class thing, very, very low conservative tag numbers. Just really trying to get those bulls and bucks is up to mature. Give
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Us an, give us an idea on, on what do you mean by low? Like just give us an idea, you know, tribal wise and then, you know, trophy wise trophy tag from a guy that’s, let’s call it a non-resident,
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You know, non-tribal.
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So,
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So elk specifically, we give about 90 tags to tribal members and we give 40 tags to non-tribal or trophy hunters, and that’s bulls and cows together. Wow.
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So how many roughly of that 130, how many of those are bull would you say?
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There’s about 80 bowl only and then a few either sex archery tags for tribal members and then some cow hunts.
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Gotcha. So on the trophy are, are the 40 kind of what you could designate as trophy? Maybe it’s the season dates or, or when can the tribal hunt versus non-tribal trophy?
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So we have the dates staggered a little bit and then we have, say for archery we have tribal specific hunt areas and trophy specific hunt areas. So they’ll, there will be tribal members hunting the reservation during the trophy hunts, but they’re in different areas. Okay. So for example, the tribal member archery season starts September 1st, but just not in the areas that the trophy operation is running.
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Gotcha. And on the trophy operation, they open September 1st as well with archery or with any weapon.
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So we’re a little different since we’re not stateside with our hunts. So we do six weeks, essentially we do six weeks of hunting, starting the first week of September is our main camp. And then we do a one one week of late season rifle hunts in, which is the first week of December. And really the general setup is three archery hunts, a muzzle loader hunt, and a two rifle hunts for that six weeks. But a hunter could choose a, the weapon of his choice during those, his or her choice during those weeks. So you could hunt an archery week with a rifle or a muzzle loader if you, if you chose to, that’s what you wanted. And the way that would Right. And that would change, the price would just change versus your weapon or the date. So if you’re wanna hunt a rifle tag with an a bow, you can do so, but you have to pay the rifle tag.
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Okay. So that makes sense. And so let’s say September one looks like for your first, let’s call it three weeks, you know, you got three weeks of archery, a guy could go hunt rifle and maybe the reason why you’re allowing him to do that is they’re in a designated area, let’s say a 10,000, I want to keep calling it a concession, but a 10,000 area acre area with a specific guide. I’m not gonna be hunting against other archery hunters or whatever.
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Right. Exactly. And we, we really do try to keep our archery hunters away from, if there happens to be a rifle hunter in camp, we’ll even make sure that the rifle hunter’s far enough away that archery hunters aren’t even gonna hear a gunshot. Right. You know, if they want just the archery experience, they don’t want to hear gunshots, then we’ll we’ll work with that and just, you know, we have enough room that we can keep ’em separated.
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Pretty easy to do on half a million acres to spread out. Geez.
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Exactly.
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It’s giant. Yeah. Some of the best habitat down there. Yeah, there’s no question. I mean, you guys are, I mean, geez, it’s crazy. So, and
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It’s, it’s not the typical, you know, a lot of people think elk habitat, they’re thinking aspen’s up in Colorado or you know, high country or steep stuff. In Montana, we’re flat mesa lands, we range from about 7,000 feet to 8,500 feet in elevation and we’re looking at a lot of pinon juniper country. And then we’ll get up into some ponderosa pines in the higher elevations. Yeah.
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But overall, a, a mellow by physical standards moderate to easier elk hunting country than, than a lot of places. Yeah.
00:19:11:04 –> 00:19:30:06
Right. It’s honestly probably one of the easiest physically when, when it comes to elk hunting, it’s probably one of the easiest hunts out there. You know, you might be walking say seven, eight miles a day chasing elk, but it’s flat or you know, just rolling hills type of country. So,
00:19:31:03 –> 00:19:48:01
Well we’re, people are kind of used to some of these giants. Like we know Bronson, we’ve watched for decades, giants coming outta Arizona. And a lot of, most of those units, with the exception of maybe one or two, are this same type of habitat. Yeah. This flatter high desert,
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High desert stuff. Grassland not, you know, scattered pin juniper, run running gun and trying to catch up to ’em because it’s, you know, elk can cover country in flat ground pretty easy. They can cover country in steep ground, but man, when you get ’em on the flat ground and they’re they’re walking,
00:20:05:20 –> 00:20:15:12
You can’t catch a up well you can’t catch it, but Right. They’re, and Adam you killed a fricking giant New Mexico last year in, in the same type of country. Oh yeah. Country. I mean it’s desert country. That’s
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A lot of New Mexico. Frankly, a lot of it is, you know, this type of country, it’s a youth hundred. Some units like that too. You got little mountains that what rise up 500 or a thousand feet max over off.
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That’s where the big animals are. I, I don’t know why. I just love it. I don’t know if it’s just the, I don’t know why, but they, that high desert, let’s just call it high desert, for lack of better terms, Nevada, Arizona, parts of Utah, New Mexico, they’re producing monsters.
00:20:43:05 –> 00:21:30:24
Well, part of the reason maybe and part of it is in, when they’re bugling obviously is a different story. They’re, that’s a, that’s a giveaway, but when it, when they’re not and it’s flat and it’s maybe a little bit harder to glass in some places, it’s harder to kill ’em. Yeah. You look at units nine and 10 in Arizona, when they’re not rutt hunts, they they can be tough. Yeah. You know, units like that. It’s not Big v giant v canyons or glass and shooting thousand yards long res across canyons. I mean, it’s not as conducive to that, you know, and when the masses of the tags are issued, and you guys are different down there, Scott, that, that you’re not, don’t have that many tags collectively anyway. But overall, right. Yeah. Just security, you got flat cedars, that’s, that’s a secure blanket for elk when, when they’re not bugling and rotten. So anyway. That’s right.
00:21:30:25 –> 00:21:56:07
And exactly. And I mean our, our late season hunts, once those bowls get into winter mode, they get into, we have some big deep rough mesa canyons that they drop off into. But during the rutt and the early season, you’re exactly right. You might have a couple hundred foot hill, you can get on and see some country, but a lot of times if they’re, if you’re down with them, you’re not gonna see ’em. So,
00:21:56:20 –> 00:22:14:07
So I was just wondering, Brons and I might want to come in December in one of the 10,000 foot areas that are very glassful where we could long range kill some giant, I mean, it’s possibility nowadays people are, people are learning how to hunt these bulls late season.
00:22:15:15 –> 00:22:43:22
Right. And we, we’ve killed some of our biggest bulls in the late season too. It does take a little bit of time to find a clean bull. Yeah. With our, our bowl numbers, the breaking finding a, a non broken bull in in December is pretty tough. And, and we actually, we do price our hunt lower in that late season to make sure that because of that broken bull thing, it takes a little bit longer to find that bull. Well,
00:22:44:03 –> 00:22:57:20
I’m sure. Yeah. Because if you, you’re not killing that many bulls, what’s your, I mean it maybe fluctuates some, what do you, what’s your bull cow ratio like on the res? I mean, it’s gotta be pretty high. It’s, and that’s contributing to the braking is I guess where I’m going with that.
00:22:58:05 –> 00:23:04:18
Exactly. So our overall bowled cow ratio this past winter was 73 bulls per a hundred cows.
00:23:04:29 –> 00:23:05:25
Jeez. Stupid.
00:23:06:02 –> 00:23:08:02
And that’s, that’s post hunt. So
00:23:08:09 –> 00:23:14:01
Now that’s a pretty staggering figure. But if you only had a hundred elk, that would be concerning. Yeah.
00:23:14:11 –> 00:23:15:08
Right, right. That’s
00:23:15:08 –> 00:23:21:11
True. You have an estimate of that. Do you do, I don’t know if you do any, it’s tougher because of the, your
00:23:21:13 –> 00:23:22:16
Overall population.
00:23:22:17 –> 00:23:30:20
Yeah. Site ability and flat. Yeah. Do you do aerial surveys and try to extrapolate? What do you anticipate or estimate you guys? Yeah, so,
00:23:31:01 –> 00:23:50:10
So the way we fly, we do more classification. So we’re really looking at population demographics and then trend data. But you know this, for example, this past winter we classified 755 elk. So our, at any given time we’re looking at about a thousand to 1500 elk on acma. That’s
00:23:50:27 –> 00:24:03:18
Wow. Yeah. Yeah. So within that sample size of a 7 55, you’re, you’re deriving that bocal ratio 73 and then your cow calf and, and looking at, you know, that year to year and how that, you figure how that trend looks. Yeah.
00:24:03:18 –> 00:24:18:29
Those cows have, you know, half of ’em are bulls, half are cows, you know, as far as their calves. And then, you know, you’ve got a natural mortality rate. But I mean, overall you’re very conservative. It appears from the outside looking in on your tag numbers.
00:24:19:14 –> 00:25:08:02
Yeah. We’re, we’re about as conservative as you can get. I mean we were, you know, we’re looking at that 73 bowls per hundred cow. But, you know, we break it down to, you know, we consider a a, a shootable trophy bowl to be 350 inches or bigger. And that’s an age age, I’m just gonna, geez. An age class thing. So really we’ve determined that at age seven is when the majority of our bulls are hitting three 50. So we’re trying to shoot bulls seven years or older. Our peak antler growth is about 10. And we 10 plus 10 year old bulls are older, is very common. And since I’ve been there, we’ve cut at least one bull that was 14 or 15, either by a client or a tribal member every
00:25:08:02 –> 00:25:26:24
Year. So, and with genetics and feed, are you finding that the bulls, you’re killing it are 10 plus? I mean, are you finding they’re big bulls or do you feel like they’re, do you, is there a need for management hunts and things like that to take out a gene, a specific genetic, or are you feeling like most everything is reaching that three 50 plus mark?
00:25:27:20 –> 00:25:48:29
So there’s a little bit of management that we’re gonna have to look at in the future. Really the past five years has been trying to get the bowled cal ratios ’cause so, you know, we’re at 73 now, but when I started my first flight, you know, our bowled cal ratio is like 130 bowls per cow. Oh, come on cow.
00:25:48:29 –> 00:25:52:06
Which is, so you’re wanting to go back to 130, right? Where are we at? No, no.
00:25:52:26 –> 00:25:55:11
So you’re half as good as you used to be. Is that about what we’re
00:25:55:15 –> 00:26:01:03
No, we’re we’re gonna have be with where we’re not as good as that once was that, that’s impressive. But that,
00:26:01:18 –> 00:26:07:05
The reason it was so high though, is because of our cow population. So we’ve really been working on our cow, getting our cow numbers up
00:26:07:06 –> 00:26:20:29
And and is that true? Becoming healthier And that’s, is that and I, are you reducing most of those would be probably tribal member harvest on atler animals. Have you reduced that, that harvest over the years to let more cows survive? Or what, what does it, what
00:26:20:29 –> 00:26:46:22
Does it Yeah, so we, we essentially dropped all of our non-tribal cow tags. We’re giving about a hundred of those a year and we all tribal member hunts were either sex tags and we went to mature bowl tags on most of those. And it’s, you know, a temporary fix just trying to get yeah. Get the demographics how we want it.
00:26:47:01 –> 00:26:47:25
Yeah, I gotcha.
00:26:47:29 –> 00:26:52:17
What’s the definition of mature bowl? What are you guys regulating on that?
00:26:52:17 –> 00:27:00:22
So when we fly, or for a tribal member, it has to be a five by five or bigger, essentially as a mature bowl. Yeah.
00:27:01:01 –> 00:27:01:10
Not a,
00:27:01:16 –> 00:27:02:06
So we’re not cheese spikes,
00:27:02:06 –> 00:27:04:19
Not a nots, A rag, not a rag horn with a devil tying up front.
00:27:05:11 –> 00:27:49:07
Right. No rag horns, no, no spikes. Nothing like that. No. But numbers have come up and our bold to cal ratios kind of got down to where we want be. You know, our management plan is we want it to be at least 50 bowls per hundred cow, but we’d like to see it about 75. So we’re sitting about right where we wanna wanna be right now. But when we stopped our cow hunts or essentially shut shut our cow hunts down five years ago, when we’re flying now, our five-year-old, four to six year old bulls, the population coming up is, is in, you know, it’s insane how many bulls are, are in that age class. Wow.
00:27:49:11 –> 00:28:03:22
Because you’ve Yeah. You let, yeah, you’re adding a big core, right. Big cohorts coming up in the next few years as your cow base has grown and you’re dumping more calves obviously, and half of those being bull calves every year then Yeah.
00:28:03:22 –> 00:28:08:17
Mature bull designation. I mean there’s probably a number of factors that are helping with that.
00:28:09:06 –> 00:28:49:22
Exactly. I mean there’s all sorts of factors that go in, but limiting the cow harvest and antlerless harvest limits our calf bull harvest and it’s just helped, helped bring the H class structure right. Where we kind of wanna see. Gotcha. So for example, with, you know, back to the bowl, the cow ratios, you know, we break down to say a five by five or bigger, but not over three 50. So not a trophy bowl but a mature bowl. We’re sitting at about 33 bulls per hundred cows for that. And then when we’re looking at rag horns, we’re sitting about 25 rag horns per hundred cows. So we’re stacked up exactly how we wanna see it.
00:28:49:26 –> 00:29:02:07
And so you’re, you’re taking the 73 and then splitting it out on, okay. Of those, this is a certain number of rag horns or less five to five or less. And then, and then your trophy bulls. So you’re taking a percentage of that.
00:29:03:05 –> 00:29:14:19
Well we actually, when we’re flying, we’re looking right at it. So if we’re classifying, we’ll break down the classification. We’re not, we just won’t put bull, you know, we’ll put trophy bowl five by five, geez rag horn, that
00:29:14:19 –> 00:29:23:20
Sort of thing. That’s awesome. That’s awesome. So you’re not just saying here’s yeah, we have 73 to a hundred. That seems good. You’re actually taking and having sub goals within that goal. 30,
00:29:24:01 –> 00:29:30:23
You said that number is like 30 30% or 30 something bulls per hundred are five mature.
00:29:31:03 –> 00:29:33:13
Yeah. Sense rags are 25.
00:29:34:02 –> 00:29:43:20
Right. So about 33, 5 by five are bigger but not trophy. And then we’re sitting about five on a typical year, five to 6, 3 50 plus bulls per hundred cows.
00:29:44:03 –> 00:29:47:01
Wow. And that’s your goal, that’s what you’re wanting,
00:29:47:18 –> 00:29:48:12
Right? That that’s,
00:29:48:12 –> 00:29:50:08
And that’s post-season, we’re talking post-season, right?
00:29:50:10 –> 00:29:51:29
Yes. This is post hunt surveys.
00:29:51:29 –> 00:30:19:19
Yes. Yeah. So they’ve killed, you know, all, I mean your lu non-tribal members or are killing maybe some of those bigger bulls are coming there, they’re expecting that they’re paying the money to do that. I’m sure your tribal members are gonna kill some of those too. But what of the, of the number would you say the average bulls, and I realize this is a hard number to pin down, but, but number of three 40 or three 50 plus bulls killed. How do those by people of the trophy bull hunter? Yeah, we’re calling that of all weapons.
00:30:19:23 –> 00:30:24:08
Out of those 40 or half of them going away, going home with, with something special. Yeah.
00:30:24:26 –> 00:30:49:00
So with our limitation, you know, our strict harvest of older mature bulls, we’re looking at about 50% success rate. And the majority of those that are not successful are the, are archery hunters. Just because of our bowled cow ratios. Trying to weeded through the satellite bulls gets be tough a daunting at times.
00:30:49:11 –> 00:30:53:19
It’d be tough. That’s the one downside to having high bowled cow ratios is your
00:30:54:09 –> 00:30:55:12
Don’t blow a cow call.
00:30:56:02 –> 00:31:10:20
Exactly. It, it can get a little crazy. We had a, we had a muzzle loader hunter pass seven bulls in the first 15 minutes of his hunt this year, year on just gotten a pot of pot of elk and the ru or the rutted popped and it was, it was crazy.
00:31:11:02 –> 00:31:26:13
When, when, when, let’s call it the, when, when do you generally find peak rut there? I mean obviously we’re seeing in Arizona and New Mexico and we hunt in Mexico quite a bit, but it just depends on the year a lot. And I, I totally get that, but what are you saying rough, rough dates for that?
00:31:26:24 –> 00:31:35:05
It’s usually the end of the second week of September into the third week of September is usually when we see that peak hit.
00:31:36:13 –> 00:31:42:11
And is that still the end of your last archery hunt then kind of, or designated archery week? Yeah,
00:31:42:11 –> 00:31:51:14
So, so the end of the last archery hunt will get the beginning of it and then a lot of times the muzzle loader hunt is really when it
00:31:51:14 –> 00:31:55:17
Pops and that and that follows your or your archery and then you got rifle right after that.
00:31:56:09 –> 00:32:13:18
Right. So they’ll still be bugling and, and all that pretty hard in the rifle tag or the rifle per weeks. But that, that third week of September seems to really be the year after year kind of when we really start stacking up antlers in camp. Hmm.
00:32:13:29 –> 00:32:14:07
Yeah.
00:32:15:08 –> 00:32:22:24
Pretty awesome. This is getting me fired up to hunt elk and I’ve already got too many elk kinds. How about you Adam? Yeah, well
00:32:22:24 –> 00:32:30:11
Yeah, I’ve got enough. But yeah, you’re talking about elk and popping stuff. Popping and antlers stacking up in camp. I’ve heard a lot of
00:32:30:11 –> 00:32:49:10
Terms. Oh, bolded cow ratios and the sizes and I think there’s just so much going for, for the reservation, you guys, you know, and I, I haven’t been following the double H today. It’s nice to have neighbors that have a great management program as well. I mean, it seems like you’re just in the perfect location. Always have been. Tell us a little bit about that.
00:32:50:05 –> 00:33:57:06
Yeah, so really on, for the unit surrounding us and where our, our animals kind of go, we, we really only have three sides. ’cause we, our northern borders, the unit boundary, so on our southern side we have the double eight trench, which is more conservative than us on harvest. There’s a couple owners of that and they, they’ve only take a couple bulls a year off off their land. Wow. And then to our east is the Laguna reservation. So there’s another reservation that borders us and they’re pretty conservative with their, their harvest as well. The only difference with that is there’s about a 400 foot cliff GRI rock that separates the two reservations all the way around or you know, all the way down that side. So there’s not a ton of movement between those. But you know, our neighbors are very conservative as well. So, and then even unit 13, the unit surrounding us is a primitive weapon unit in New Mexico. So it’s archery and muzzle loader only. So there’s no rifle tags in there
00:33:57:06 –> 00:34:06:24
At all. Yeah, we, and we’ve got, we, we sell some of those tags and we’ve had, even Bronson, we had a cover bull come off 13 that was an absolute monster drought
00:34:06:24 –> 00:34:08:16
Year. It a be monster. Yeah,
00:34:09:19 –> 00:34:11:00
Yeah. This 400. Yeah.
00:34:11:02 –> 00:34:13:02
And it was the drought year of 18, wasn’t it?
00:34:13:06 –> 00:34:25:04
Yeah. Yeah. So I’m just, I mean it’s just crazy, you know, the potential, the genetics, I mean, you’re in some of the best country down there, you know? Right. And like you said, no rifle hunting in
00:34:25:10 –> 00:34:40:16
And it is, it is. There’s a little trade off. You know, the densities are definitely not as high as you’ll see in say Northern New Mexico, but the, the genetics for size is there and we, we happily trade that off. So. Yeah.
00:34:41:07 –> 00:35:01:20
Well I know you guys have a lot of repeat clients. What’s the chances for guys to get in? How would they, is it, do you have an application process? Maybe talk just a little bit about that and then, you know, I wanna draw some comparisons to other hunting opportunities across the West. Bronson we’re selling tags in Nevada. Like there’s tags going for 30,000 tag
00:35:01:20 –> 00:35:03:19
Only landowner tag, not guided hunts. Yeah.
00:35:03:23 –> 00:35:06:25
For 30,000 are Utah conservation tags in
00:35:07:23 –> 00:35:33:05
Crazy. Yeah. So yeah, let’s talk about that. In terms of you, you alluded earlier there’s a little bit differences based on the week you’re looking at coming, whether it’s the first archery hunt versus the muzzle that might be in the peak of the RU versus October early, early October rifle or December rifle. Give us kind of the spectrum of where you’re looking at in terms of how do you, how do you go about securing a spot? What are you looking at? Price range and waiting lists or however that,
00:35:34:11 –> 00:36:15:22
So how we do it is a, it’s first come first serve with the caveat that our return clients have an option to return prior to us opening up sales. Okay. So if you, if you get in, you wanna be there, we give you the option to come back before anybody else has the opportunity to buy that, that tag. Okay. And then usually we wait until after we do our annual flights to even start selling tags again. So that’s gonna be at trade shows. So we go to the Safari Club trade show and then we’re gonna start going to the Western hunting expo this upcoming year. Awesome. So that’s really when we start selling the available tags.
00:36:15:22 –> 00:36:17:01
What you got Okay. In
00:36:17:01 –> 00:36:17:29
The past and then act
00:36:18:03 –> 00:36:26:13
Yeah. In the past, what is that looking like? How many of them are gobbled by repeats and how many are on the open market year to year roughly?
00:36:26:21 –> 00:36:37:02
So, so out of that 40, usually we have about 10 or 12 available on a a given year just for anybody that wants to come. Then
00:36:37:02 –> 00:36:38:22
Once you get in, you’re in, if
00:36:38:22 –> 00:36:42:19
You want to, you have your option the next year to pass or come back or rebook or whatever.
00:36:43:09 –> 00:37:01:10
Right. And we also give our clients the opportunity if say you came this year and you know, in, in 2021 you have a say an Alaska hunt, you’re not gonna be able to make it. You can deposit up for 2022. So keep your spot. It’s not that you have to go, you don’t have to continuously come to keep your spot. Okay.
00:37:01:10 –> 00:37:05:19
As long as you rebook it for the following year, you’re still got your foot in the door. Yeah,
00:37:06:00 –> 00:38:09:26
Exactly. So, you know, we sell out pretty quickly around the trade shows. We actually, just with the current covid situation, we actually just had one hunt come available, which is pretty rare. And so that hunt is going to either be, somebody could choose between the second archery week, which would be September 7th through 12th, or the first or the second rifle week, which would be October 5th through ninth. So somebody, if somebody is interested, we do have one trophy elk hunt available. First come, first serve. Geez. And then when you’re talking pricing, our late season hunt is about 10,500 for the late season. And then our archery tags are 13 five. Our muzzle loader tags are 15 five. And then our rifle tags are about 18 five.
00:38:10:25 –> 00:38:12:00
That includes guide fee,
00:38:12:20 –> 00:38:18:22
That includes everything. So you’re, that’s everything but gratuity, meat processing, post hunt things.
00:38:18:29 –> 00:38:19:26
How can we sign up?
00:38:21:01 –> 00:38:22:03
You can give us a call.
00:38:23:05 –> 00:38:25:05
No, like me, me and Adam, I, I
00:38:25:05 –> 00:38:27:28
Heard you just say a minute ago you already had too many outtakes. Well,
00:38:27:28 –> 00:38:34:24
Not at this price, right? I mean, honestly I just wanna put this in. Well, I mean to put it in pers put it in perspective. Yeah,
00:38:34:25 –> 00:38:52:20
No, that, that’s what we’re saying. We’re talking about a incredibly controlled hunting situation. Half a million acres. How many hunters do you have there during a hunt? Of those 40, you’re probably talking about four to five a week. Or maybe it’s a little more than that. A couple of ’em. I’m just trying to do mass over six or seven. We keep
00:38:52:24 –> 00:39:09:19
Hunts. Yeah. We keep our first week and our last week pretty small. So in a typical week, the maximum we’re gonna get is seven. Yeah. Every once in a while we’ll do eight. If there’s a, a group coming in on a archery hunt or something like that, we can get up to eight. But, so yeah. Eight hunters max.
00:39:11:03 –> 00:39:52:18
Well it’s just an, I guess I’m just astounded. I, you know, but a lot of it reasonable comes backable. A lot of it comes back to the history back in the Ross Johnson days. I mean, you guys were putting him out and, and, and kind of started that whole giant bull era, so to speak. You know, it was just one of those, the, the timing and, and people were just learning how to score bulls and you guys were putting ’em out like crazy. And, and I think it was just, you know, and you continued on with that. Obviously you have a lot of repeat clients. There’s kind of hard to get in really. I mean, if you’re only having 10 to 12 spots total amongst all the seasons, you know, it’s, it’s quite a premium experience obviously. It’s
00:39:52:18 –> 00:40:38:25
Only, yeah. It’s only one or two openings per season. But you gotta realize some of those, you have none because the maybe the muzzle and the first rifle where Yeah, a lot of the repeat guys wanna stick. I’m just guessing, Scott, that’s probably where probably a lot of the muzzle and first rifle is where a lot of the repeats, the heart of the deep September hunts, maybe the third archery, 30 archery. There need to be another one like that as well. So Yeah. But compared to the west wide opportunities, very reasonable pricing for what you’re getting on half a million acres. Exclusivity and the quality of bulls, you’re averaging what, eight or nine year old bulls? I don’t know what your average harvest is, but you know, if you’re killing 14 year old bulls every year or 14 year old plus bull, you’ve
00:40:38:25 –> 00:40:40:11
Got all bulls and then plenty of 10 plus. Yeah.
00:40:40:16 –> 00:40:49:01
I mean that’s, that’s very unique. I mean, Utah’s best units right now, the, the best units in Utah average seven and a half, seven to eight, eight and a half.
00:40:49:02 –> 00:40:49:25
Yeah. Seven to
00:40:49:25 –> 00:41:03:13
Eight. The San Juan, the beaver, the boulder. And those are great. We’re, it’s a little bit different situation. You’re talking about public land hunting and you know, you’re not guiding, everybody’s not guided, everybody’s not, you know, you’re not
00:41:04:07 –> 00:41:06:04
Discouraged. There’s, there’s definite differences.
00:41:06:07 –> 00:41:08:12
Yeah. But, but still, I mean, just give an idea,
00:41:08:12 –> 00:41:22:11
Which is kind, kind of what we brought up, like the age class versus size. We have, we have 3 20, 3 30 bulls that are eight years old or nine years old that never get bigger. That never get bigger. Yeah. I don’t see that as much, you know, down there. Just
00:41:22:11 –> 00:41:48:17
So Right. We, we do have a couple bulls. You know, if we’re, if a hunter’s coming in, we’re seeing a, say a three 40 class bowl and he’s looking old and mature, you know, the, the age class we’re looking at, you know, we’ll sit down and you know, myself as a biologist, our head guide and the the client’s guide and if they have photos of it and you know, we, we determined that it’s an old bull, we’ll we’ll let the client shoot that 3 42. ’cause really it’s not the number we’re looking at. It’s that,
00:41:49:25 –> 00:42:12:17
Geez. Well, it kind of fires me up. I I just can’t believe the value. I just can’t believe the value. I guess I just, what on this giant bull killed last year and I’m a specific bull buck kind of guy. But anyway, I think you said he went four 13, but like what, if you don’t mind me asking, what season was he killed on? Did you guys age him? You
00:42:12:17 –> 00:42:31:24
Know, so he was, the first week he actually archery, actually he was a rifle tag. Oh. ’cause the, our auction, we, so we auction off a, a couple hunts a year. And one of our auction hunters got him the first week and he ended up, he was an 11 year old bull.
00:42:31:26 –> 00:42:35:15
When you say first week, you mean first week rifle, is that around October 1st
00:42:35:24 –> 00:42:38:20
Or so? No, first first week actually. You mean
00:42:38:29 –> 00:42:55:11
September? Like they can hunt September, they can hunt. I don’t know. Did your auction, and we’ll get to your raffle tag, I know you raffle one off too. Did they get more days in, in addition, what is your standard week is a five day, seven day hunt when you buy and book, what do you get for that versus that
00:42:55:25 –> 00:42:57:20
Auction? So the, the
00:42:58:06 –> 00:42:59:24
Lots of questions, Scott, we’ve got a lot
00:42:59:24 –> 00:43:25:28
Of questions. No, no, it’s, it’s great. Our, our typical rifle season is five days. So the way we do it is our, all the hunters come in on a Sunday, go, come up to camp, get everything settled. Then we start hunting Monday morning. So we’ll do Monday, Monday through Friday for the rifle guys and muzzle loader guys. And then our archery hunts are Monday through Saturday. So a six day hunt.
00:43:26:08 –> 00:43:26:17
Okay,
00:43:26:17 –> 00:43:30:27
Gotcha. The auction hunter gets essentially the first two weeks
00:43:31:20 –> 00:43:32:27
Of the, of September.
00:43:33:14 –> 00:43:34:20
Of September. Yes. So they’re there,
00:43:34:29 –> 00:43:40:28
They’re in conjunction with archery hunters, but again, one guy on a half a million acres with a gun and the rest of ’em both. Yeah. Gotcha.
00:43:41:01 –> 00:43:52:10
Exactly. And, and the, the other thing that the auction hunter gets is essentially any area that’s not designated for tribal member hunts, you can kind of jump around.
00:43:52:23 –> 00:43:56:05
So do you have areas that are only available to tribal?
00:43:57:16 –> 00:44:01:19
Yes, there’s a few areas that we only allow tribal members in during that time of year.
00:44:02:05 –> 00:44:03:22
Yeah. And what were
00:44:04:09 –> 00:44:09:13
For trophy reasons for them or more cultural or sacred reasons on the rest, what type?
00:44:09:25 –> 00:44:32:01
So it’s more just trying to give opportunity to everybody during the, the rutt same time to give Yeah. Yeah. So that way, that way we’re not putting our non-tribal members ahead of our tribal members. You know, we’re trying to allow, you know, a a archery hunt for tribal members is the whole month of September and they can hunt, you know, that their areas, these
00:44:32:07 –> 00:44:32:22
District Yeah,
00:44:33:02 –> 00:44:33:11
Yeah.
00:44:33:20 –> 00:44:43:02
What’s your muzzle order restrictions? Are you just, do you kind of mimic what New Mexico game and fish does? Which basically, you know, any scope in any scopes. Yeah. Inlines and scopes, no problem. Or
00:44:43:21 –> 00:44:47:24
As long as you push that bullet down the, the muzzle, it’s, it’s very fair.
00:44:47:26 –> 00:44:49:14
You could even do smokeless in
00:44:49:17 –> 00:44:58:01
That. So you can, you can do ultimate muzzle loaders and line scopes, whatever you would like. As long as, as long as you’re pushing it down the muzzle,
00:44:58:15 –> 00:45:03:13
We could push the very limits. Right. The technology would allow us to do you exactly.
00:45:03:17 –> 00:45:07:06
Wouldn’t have to use your open sight. Pete, we talked about last week I
00:45:07:06 –> 00:45:15:22
Did, Hey Utah, I killed a bull. I did it with open sites and it was back in our scope days, but I don’t know, I just didn’t have time to work on it.
00:45:16:01 –> 00:45:21:26
So in all, in all honesty though, you know, guys might bring an ultimate muzzle loader and then they’re shooting their bull within a hundred yards.
00:45:21:29 –> 00:45:22:07
Yeah.
00:45:23:05 –> 00:45:23:16
Close.
00:45:23:20 –> 00:45:23:29
Yeah.
00:45:24:05 –> 00:45:26:18
That, that time of year with the red activity
00:45:27:05 –> 00:45:29:14
Blow a cow call and they’re just shooting ’em in self-defense.
00:45:30:06 –> 00:45:33:11
Exactly. At times it seems just like that. Wow.
00:45:33:11 –> 00:45:40:17
Awesome. Tell us, all right, so we talked about the auction real quick, which is sounds like one tag and then one raffle tag. Is that how it works?
00:45:42:03 –> 00:46:10:25
Yes. So the other option we have is our raffle and it’s, we call it our dream hunt raffle. And so we use this as a way essentially to raise money for conservation efforts. So habitat work, g p s callers, that sort of thing is what this money’s earmarked for. Okay. And that hunt is October 5th through ninth. So it’s the last week of our hunts
00:46:12:03 –> 00:46:14:19
With any weapon rifle I assume. Yeah. Any, any
00:46:14:19 –> 00:46:31:02
Weapon. Yeah. It’s weapon of your choice. But you know, we’re gonna recommend you bring a rifle and that’s a, we were gonna sell 200 tickets maximum and they’re $200 a ticket. Okay. And you can buy as, you can buy as many tickets as you would like.
00:46:31:10 –> 00:46:35:01
Do you normally sell out of tickets or are there some years the odds are better than that?
00:46:35:22 –> 00:46:36:06
Or do you
00:46:36:09 –> 00:46:37:25
Some years the odds are definitely better.
00:46:38:17 –> 00:46:49:26
Or do you Yeah. You normally sell out or is this the structure, what you’ve been doing and, and is that that’s the way it’s gonna go this year and yeah, what’s the details of when and how and deadlines to buy?
00:46:50:14 –> 00:48:04:25
So right now we’re, our deadline to buy a raffle ticket is next Tuesday, or no, sorry, two Tuesdays. So June 30th is the deadline to buy your raffle ticket. And then we, we will hold the drawing on our Instagram page, on Instagram live. We’ll do it that Wednesday, July 1st we’ll draw, so if you want to buy a ticket or multiple tickets, you can give us a call at our office, which is 5 0 5 5 5 2 9 8 6 6. Okay. And then we can take payment and then we’ll mail out your, your receipt ticket receipt to you receipt. Or if you buy it late, you know, we’ll, we’ll still mail it out your ticket and your receipt, but we’ll let you know what number you are and all that, that sort of stuff. So essentially, if you’re the lucky winner, the winner last year bought one ticket and he won on his one ticket. Hmm. You get a $18,000 rifle tag and you have no additional cost, you know, besides travel, taxidermy, gratuity, things like that. Everything
00:48:04:25 –> 00:48:08:28
Else is included. Food, lodging, guide, tag, everything like that.
00:48:09:14 –> 00:48:42:18
Exactly. Pretty awesome. And the thing with that hunt too is, you know, we have that three 50 minimum for our trophy hunters. So we’re trying to get the, the, the winner to shoot a three 50 bowl just to go with our management plan, but we’re also treating it a little bit separate. So if we really want this person to have a hun of a lifetime and go home with a bowl, so we’re, we’re willing to drop down to, you know, 3, 3 20, 3 30 bowl even if we need to, to make sure that this, that the winter goes home happy. Yeah.
00:48:43:19 –> 00:49:03:29
Well that’s awesome. So there’s an opportunity out there guys, anybody out there that’s looking to have a hunt got a little bit of an open schedule, you might give the akima a try. They’ve got, they’re selling 200 tickets, right? It’s got 200 tickets up to 200 some, you know, a lot of times it sounds like you’re just, you’re you’re under that. So the odds could be just incredible.
00:49:04:14 –> 00:49:08:17
Right? I I think last year we sold 175, so
00:49:08:20 –> 00:49:15:23
75 tickets, you buy two or three or four tickets pretty soon you got better odds than any of these states, huh? Wow. Right.
00:49:15:24 –> 00:49:18:11
It’s, it’s a pretty good, pretty good odds.
00:49:18:25 –> 00:49:27:20
And it’s, it’s the time of year that you’ve either known, a lot of people are hungry for, they don’t have enough Carter’s got elk tags, it sounds like left and right, but
00:49:28:01 –> 00:49:41:18
Well, my kid’s got the Yeah. Between me and my family, you know. Yeah, you do. I don’t know. You got kids, Scott. I mean these kids are just killing us. They need optics. They know, they just don’t want normal optics. They want the best they Exactly.
00:49:41:20 –> 00:49:48:07
No, I, I don’t have kids right now. I have, I have a couple nieces and yeah, they’re fun to hang out with but get I give ’em back to my brother, so,
00:49:49:05 –> 00:49:49:24
All right. We
00:49:50:08 –> 00:49:52:01
Spoil ’em and send ’em home. That’s right.
00:49:52:01 –> 00:49:52:26
Yeah, exactly. That’s right.
00:49:53:14 –> 00:50:14:19
What a great, so tell us a little bit, I mean, you’ve got our interest, we’re definitely, we’re probably gonna be booking a couple hunts, so, but let’s talk a little bit about more. So you alluded to some other non-tribal species hunts that are out there that guys can come and take part in the reservation and, and you know, I don’t know, spring hunting, different things like that.
00:50:15:23 –> 00:50:38:12
Right. So historically we’ve had pronghorn hunts as well, but we’re giving our population kind of a, a breed there. We’ve shut down all hunting on our pronghorn just to get our population up and our, our bucks time to, to mature. So the next couple years we’re probably gonna open up the non-tribal pronghorn hunts again the year. But for now, that
00:50:38:12 –> 00:50:42:07
Shut the, the year you open that we want to be in. Okay. Alright,
00:50:42:07 –> 00:50:43:07
We’ll, we’ll let you know
00:50:45:09 –> 00:50:50:23
If you haven’t heard this is Carter’s year of his antelope year, but it could extend into the future years as well.
00:50:50:28 –> 00:50:55:06
Oh, it’ll extend for something like this. Hey, you’re gonna have 90 inch plus bucks, don’t you think?
00:50:56:08 –> 00:51:07:11
Huh? Yeah, we’re, we’re, we produce about, you know, mid eighties to nineties. Doable. I mean, part of, part of the reservation is in Socorro County where the world record came out of.
00:51:07:16 –> 00:51:13:22
But think about it. No take, no take no take. How long is it gonna be closed if you, you know, by, I mean it
00:51:13:22 –> 00:51:16:29
Is, it has been closed now for four years.
00:51:17:20 –> 00:51:18:05
Okay. Yeah.
00:51:18:19 –> 00:51:26:08
So we’ll probably what we’ll probably do is open it up very limited to tribal members for a couple years and then we’ll open it up to non, I
00:51:26:08 –> 00:51:27:20
Thought you guys guys were trying to be fair.
00:51:30:01 –> 00:51:30:23
We try, we try.
00:51:30:23 –> 00:51:31:02
You’ve
00:51:31:02 –> 00:51:32:24
Gotta keep your job though too, right? Does not,
00:51:33:11 –> 00:51:34:06
It does not seem fair.
00:51:34:08 –> 00:51:36:05
They can’t run you outta the place. No, my,
00:51:36:15 –> 00:51:38:26
My first, my first priority is definitely tribal members.
00:51:39:26 –> 00:51:47:11
You gotta keep your job, treat them well. This when the, when the time comes, you’ve got our number. Okay. How’s that?
00:51:47:11 –> 00:51:48:08
All right. For sure.
00:51:48:16 –> 00:52:25:08
All right, so, so, so that’ll come up available again and then we do barren lion hunts. So hound pursuit hunts. We actually use Wade Lemon out of Utah there. Yeah, he outfits our spring bear and then our winter lion hunts. And then we usually run about five spring bear hunts a year. And on, since I’ve been there, he’s had a hundred percent success rate on, on that. And we have a lot of color phase black bears. Last year they shot a all time dude, Crockett bear a really, really big chocolate bear out there. So
00:52:25:08 –> 00:52:28:11
That’s 20%, 20% kill rate on Boers. Now
00:52:28:20 –> 00:52:34:02
Guys, guys are interested in buying or booking one of those. Do they contact you? Do they contact Wade Lemon Direct?
00:52:34:14 –> 00:52:38:04
So they’ll actually contact Wade directly. Okay.
00:52:39:14 –> 00:52:45:10
Alright. And then, yeah, so probably not a lot of openings there. I, I don’t know, we’d have to visit with Wade,
00:52:46:03 –> 00:53:24:14
Right? He, he usually sells those out pretty quick. And then this year just with the covid situation, we did not hold those hunts. So he’s rolling all those hunts over till next year. So it’d be a couple years to get in for bears. And then I guess our, our elk hunters can add on a bear lion tag as well. And the way we do that is it’s a, a feed, a purchase, a permit and have it in your pocket. ’cause obviously you’re there for elk hunting, but if a bear or a lion happens to come in, say when you’re sitting water as an archer or something like that, then you can go ahead and harvest it and then there’s a kill fee that you would add onto that.
00:53:26:29 –> 00:53:29:26
Wow. Well, anything we haven’t, my head’s spinning covered
00:53:29:26 –> 00:53:31:13
There, Turkey. Is there any, what else?
00:53:31:13 –> 00:53:32:14
He said there were tribal members,
00:53:32:14 –> 00:53:36:14
Right? Tribal. Okay. So for Turkey turkeys tribal for Turkey and mule deer are tribal only.
00:53:37:05 –> 00:53:50:08
Right. All right. And then the only other way to hunt akima is we do two predator calling contests a year. So November and February for anybody likes coyote calling, we do that.
00:53:50:19 –> 00:53:53:26
Do you guys put that on yourselves? Sponsor the event or whatever?
00:53:55:01 –> 00:54:07:01
Yeah, the game and fish sponsors it and just a hundred dollars buy-in per two man team. And we, we don’t keep much of the proceeds, you know, it’s just a way for us to supplement our, our
00:54:07:07 –> 00:54:08:16
Predator, kill predator. Yeah,
00:54:08:27 –> 00:54:11:22
Exactly. Help our deer and antelope out as much as possible.
00:54:12:23 –> 00:54:23:00
Keep going back to these tribal mul deer hunts. Like let’s just talk about the, what constitutes the tribal members. He’s not gonna, so for the, some of these young bucks coming up through the ranks, you’re wasting your time. Carter, what if you marry a tribal member
00:54:23:09 –> 00:54:30:17
Can? No, that’s not gonna work for you. Unfortunately. You have to be a registered Ackman tribal member. Alright,
00:54:31:17 –> 00:54:33:02
There’s, this
00:54:33:02 –> 00:54:35:14
Is a, there’s definitely a very high demand for mul deer hunt.
00:54:36:01 –> 00:54:38:20
Is there, is there, is there quite a high demand down there?
00:54:39:26 –> 00:54:42:01
Yeah. For the tribal members, but we, you know,
00:54:42:01 –> 00:54:45:04
Do you do those by a draw for them though? A a draw? We do,
00:54:45:05 –> 00:55:03:06
Yeah, we do a, a draw for tribal members and we actually, right now we only give 17 total deer tax a year. Okay, wow. Yeah, and there’s, we just started a waiting period. So if you draw a deer hunt, you have to wait one more year before you’re eligible to apply.
00:55:03:07 –> 00:55:05:10
Dang. And what about elk? No waiting period.
00:55:06:22 –> 00:55:12:24
No. No waiting period. If you wanna hunt, elk is a tribal member. You can pretty much be guaranteed to tag every year. No way.
00:55:13:01 –> 00:55:15:04
Wow. Even with that few tags.
00:55:15:29 –> 00:55:16:29
Right. Oh,
00:55:17:14 –> 00:55:35:07
Well pretty awesome. Great summary. I’ve learned a lot today. Is there anything we’re not highlighting you think is noteworthy that we should be about how you run things there? A lot of great information, very conservative, huge giant reservation. Anything,
00:55:35:14 –> 00:56:30:07
I’ll give you a little, give a little information on maybe the camp Yeah. Itself. I think we kinda started down that road and kind of didn’t get there, but, so we hung out of canvas wall tents. We have like essentially located wall tent camp, so it’s, we do carpeted tents and then we have cots for sleeping, you know, gear cots. We give lounge, camp lounge chairs in there. We bring in a trailer that has indoor hot showers and toilet facilities. And then we actually bring in a chef that works at one of the main hotels at the tows ski valley up in Northern New Mexico. So it’s one of, it’s probably one of the only elk hunts that you might have a chance of gaining weight on. You might be walking all day long, but the food, the food we eat, it’s hard not to gain weight, so.
00:56:30:24 –> 00:56:43:24
Well that’s awesome. Well that’s great. Did you, I mean, have you, are you a hunter yourself? You, you killed some, any, you know, noteworthy critters on the akima, are they just, do you to hunt pretty well
00:56:43:28 –> 00:56:46:22
Being an employee? Do you get to hunt or is that still not
00:56:47:02 –> 00:56:52:12
No, no. I’m, wow. I do not come on get, I get to manage and, and they don’t let
00:56:52:20 –> 00:56:54:22
’em, they don’t let you hunt or you not hunt by choice?
00:56:55:19 –> 00:57:00:04
I, they don’t let me hunt, hunt on there. I would jump on that opportunity in know heartbeat
00:57:00:04 –> 00:57:05:02
Trick. That wasn’t a perk of the job, I would think. No. Maybe it would be naturally, but be like
00:57:05:02 –> 00:57:05:28
Going to work for
00:57:06:00 –> 00:57:06:07
A private
00:57:06:08 –> 00:57:07:12
Rent. Yeah. I wish. Wow.
00:57:08:08 –> 00:57:17:19
Yeah. But no, I, I, I hunt myself and I get got an archery antelope tag coming up in about a month and a half. So do you I’ll be here before we know it.
00:57:17:24 –> 00:57:23:06
Where, well, I mean now you don’t tell me exactly where, but like New Mexico, where are you hunting? Yeah. New Mexico archery antelope.
00:57:23:18 –> 00:57:29:23
Yeah, I got out in Eastern New Mexico archery antelope. That starts August 4th.
00:57:30:20 –> 00:57:32:11
Wow. So that’s great. They ought
00:57:32:11 –> 00:57:34:24
To be needing water about twice a day right then.
00:57:35:19 –> 00:57:36:05
Yeah, it’s
00:57:37:01 –> 00:57:40:13
Sit water or flag ’em in or what do you, you got any plans decoy?
00:57:41:06 –> 00:57:48:20
I think I’m gonna try to spot and stocking decoy early in the hunt and if after I get my butt kicked a couple times I’ll probably move over to water
00:57:49:28 –> 00:57:51:10
Share a blind with a snake or two.
00:57:51:27 –> 00:57:52:12
Right? Yeah,
00:57:52:12 –> 00:57:57:08
That’s right too. Geez. New Mexico and August and the popup blinds. Not ideal.
00:57:58:23 –> 00:58:02:29
All right, well let’s see. First come, first serve and, and then
00:58:02:29 –> 00:58:06:29
Also, so you have the one, you do have the one hunt that you said is open if our
00:58:06:29 –> 00:58:07:25
Listeners trophy hunt
00:58:08:02 –> 00:58:17:20
And that is right, what would the price on that one be? You said you had the two options. That’s reiterate that once again ’cause that’s for 2020. The only thing left to buy other than the raffle ticket,
00:58:18:05 –> 00:58:52:08
Exactly the only guaranteed option. It would be our second week archery, which will be September 7th through 12th and that would be 13,500 all in and or you would’ve the option for a rifle tag October 5th through ninth and that would be about 18,500. Okay. And that’s your guaranteed. And then if you are luckier than me, I would highly recommend a raffle ticket. And those are $200. If you’re lucky to win, you’re all in at 200 bucks. Yeah.
00:58:52:09 –> 00:58:59:14
Okay, perfect. Anybody interested, give the akima call 5 0 5 5 5 2 9 8 6 6
00:59:00:14 –> 00:59:16:05
And then you can visit us on akima big game hunts.com or Instagram, oma game and Fish. You can see our past harvest and I try to, you know, show what our antler grows looking like and all that throughout the year. So
00:59:16:12 –> 00:59:21:06
Do you That’s awesome. Great. That’s awesome. I can’t think of anything else.
00:59:21:17 –> 00:59:25:24
No, it was all great wrap up, very informative. I thought I learned something.
00:59:26:19 –> 00:59:30:00
Well, we learned that we need to be hunting the Yakima. That’s what we’ve learned
00:59:30:16 –> 00:59:36:07
All I can hear 10 to 14 year old bulls alive somewhere that you had me at that,
00:59:37:11 –> 00:59:54:22
If you’re looking for that three 50 to 365 bowl, you know, that’s kind of our bread and butter. And then the chance for 400, 3 80, you know, it’s, they’re not around, they’re not behind every tree. We’re not gonna lie to you, but, you know, yeah, any, any given year, there’s gonna be something like that pop up.
00:59:54:22 –> 01:00:08:16
Well, and I think each of, each of the reservations have strengths. Yours is obviously elk, you know, hickory, they’re, they’re known for giant deer and then they’ve got a good elk population as well. But man, you guys are strong in the elk world.
01:00:08:29 –> 01:00:12:27
Yeah. And we’re kind of a hidden gem right now, but hopefully that doesn’t stay that way too long.
01:00:14:05 –> 01:00:31:03
Well, you know, it’s, yeah, it’s not going to, and, and I don’t know, I think where you got such a great repeat clientele, obviously they know what they’ve got and, and the prices are, they’re affordable nowadays this day and age. I mean, they’re affordable. It’s, that’s the bottom line for what
01:00:31:03 –> 01:00:50:06
You’re providing. It is. I mean, you, you put it on par with a lot of landowner tags in other states or just even, let’s just look at unit wide landowner tags and neighboring units of 15 or 17 or 13 in New Mexico. By the time you buy a landowner tag and guided hunt, you’re not much different. No, really. Right. For unit wide tag and a, and a guided five day, you take
01:00:50:12 –> 01:00:59:06
Mz, a guided hunt on unit 15 archery, you’re 85 for the tag and you’re 65 for the guide fee. It’s very, it just adds up. Just so pretty,
01:00:59:06 –> 01:01:00:06
Pretty comparable. So what
01:01:00:06 –> 01:01:01:10
A great opportunity it
01:01:01:10 –> 01:01:15:22
Is. Yeah. Appreciate your time, Scott. Thanks a lot. And just keep us posted to how we can help you, and you’ve done a lot of it today. We’ll try to get the word out. Obviously you got a, what is that, two weeks left roughly on this raffle entry, so yeah, cool opportunity, right?
01:01:16:02 –> 01:01:19:18
Yeah, thanks for having me and it’d be nice to be back on.
01:01:20:06 –> 01:01:21:18
Okay, sounds good, Scott. Thank you.
01:01:22:07 –> 01:01:23:12
All right. Have a good one. Okay, bye.
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