Digital Tools for Hunters with the Epic Outdoors Staff. In this episode we talk about updates to our online tools for hunters. From drawing odds, to mapping, we have you covered. Most of us dream about our upcoming hunts all year long. Our online tools allow you to maximize your pre-hunt research and scouting efforts. Use our research tools to learn, look up drawing odds and info on state draws, read info from our print magazine in the e-mag. You can also use the point tracker to keep your points organized. Preparedness often proceeds success so make sure to take advantage of our online resources.
Disclaimer: this text was produced through an automated transcription service and likely contains errors. Please listen to the original audio for exact content.
00:00:02:08 –> 00:01:18:25
They should have constrained the tag numbers a little bit in relation to those dates. Knowing the take was gonna be that much greater on Big Deer, it breaks down the whole preference point. Draw what it’s taken to draw anything to do with Western Big Game. Welcome to the Epic Outdoors Podcast, powered by Under Armour. Hey everybody. Jason Carter. Adam Bronson. John Peterson. Chris Peterson coming at you from Southern Utah. It’s a dry southern Utah. Again, not a lot has changed in the last few days. Bronson, I’ve been looking for it to change. It’s a dry cold. Okay, I’ll take that. It’s that close to a dry cough. Dry instead of a dry heat. It’s a dry cold. It’s all, it’s all we’re doing. Right? It’s all dry. It’s dry. Whatever it is. It’s dry and it’s not good. I was thinking Covid. No, I’m tired of Covid and I haven’t even had it that I know of. Except for back at the expo time of last year, we were all sick as dogs. Have you had it Bronson? Yep. Probably gave it to you or vice versa. All right. Well they probably had it then. Didn’t even know it. Maybe had a slight headache for a morning and the monster fixed it. Who knows. We’ve often joked that monsters kill it. Definitely killing the Covid ’cause we’ve had no issues. Really. Yeah, huh. Anyway, and Wyatt’s the only one that has, he drinks water.
00:01:19:01 –> 00:02:39:07
Anyway, we wanted to kind of talk to you a bit about what we’ve got going on here at Epic Outdoors. We’ve got the January publication, January, 2021, if you can believe it. Already out in the mail. Getting a lot of should getting it any day. Yeah, I’ve been getting a lot of call calls from guys regarding the Wyoming moose, sheep, goat, bison, and Arizona Elk and antelope already. And probably most listeners by the time you’re listening to this, have got it in the mail. But we’re just gonna do a general overview of it here in a bit. But we also wanted to kind of talk about some of the new revamped, bigger and better ever research tools that we’ve upgraded on our website, which is all included in our Epic Outdoors membership. So in addition to the magazine that you get and the consultation that comes with that and talking with you, discussion strategy, helping to book tags, helping you find the hunts that match, what you’re looking for is through the draw strategy and process and all that. You’ve also got ability to, on your own home computer or smart di device or your phone. Phone to research from drawing ons to a whole lot of other information. Minimum points to draw maps, you know, private land, public land ownership stuff. Just a lot of different stuff. So we thought it’d probably be beneficial maybe for people that are already members that have been there before.
00:02:39:09 –> 00:03:47:06
But just to bring it to everybody’s attention, we got, we got some upgrades on there and that’s all included for members in the member section of our website. We always did have a portion of our website and John, you can kind of add in here ’cause you’ve been an instrumental in instrumental part of it, but we have had drawing odds and whatnot on there. We’ve just kind of done a whole new facelift and added a bunch of features for this upcoming year really is kind of, kind of the focus of, of the revamping of the Epic Outdoors website. Yep. And so let’s get Kurt on the line. Kurt’s the head of our web development team. And so Kurt and I worked together a lot on this type of thing. Kind of the look and feel and, and, and all of that and all the upgrades. So let’s, let’s get him on the line. Okay. Go through some of the new stuff before we get him on the line. We just wanna remind everybody that we do cover all the Western states from a non-resident perspective. We go through drawing ons, kill percentages, best units and whatnot. We crush it, put it out and print it for ’em. And then there’s not, you just can’t print everything. Can’t every, every single unit in the states sometimes. I mean, there’s a hundred antelope units in Wyoming.
00:03:47:10 –> 00:04:51:12
We probably only cover 50 of them in the magazine or 40, whatever it is. Every other one’s on our website. Too many maybe, I dunno That’s right. Maybe. Or Elk in Wyoming. I mean, there’s a lot in every state. We just don’t put every single thing. We oftentimes will do it every moose, sheep, and goat in, in almost every state. Open and non-resident. That’s not too many pages. But we, we simply, simply can’t publish a bible every month with every single deer, elk, antelope unit breakdown in, in every single mag. So we kind of hit some of the highlights and the rest of it’s on there. And the drawing odds, you can go there if you have a pet unit or you just wanna do minimum point queries in the states like Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, that set portions aside for maximum point holders. Type in your points. What could this get me? A lot of tools like that on there too. So pretty awesome. Yeah. And so anyway, with that a hundred dollars membership and it’s a hundred bucks a year, if I didn’t already say it. You do get the magazines, then you get to go online, just like what John’s talking about. You can log in with a username password about like anything in this life. That’s what you gotta have 14,000 of ’em in every other place.
00:04:51:16 –> 00:05:56:15
And including Instagram, by the way, which I tried to take off my phone won’t, but you can’t post, you can’t post or do much. It’s a very limited version. Right, Chris? Yeah. And the, and they’re saying that these apps have little spiders that go and see all your chats and do all your, and see all your contacts and just bothered me. Do your, your banking for you. Yeah. Do your banking for you and maybe write checks and things like that. And so anyway, I ended up having to put Instagram back on for a minute to, I’ll throw something up on our story about things we were doing here at Epic. But anyway, I guess my point of it all is, is all of this e stuff, this electronic scouting and different things, the odds and tools we’re up to speed. We’re, we’re cranking with everybody. ’cause that’s the way of the future and we’re pretty proud of it. We’ve got a lot going on on here on our website. When you log in, you’ll get to see guided Hunts, a point tracker, which is for you to keep track of your own information. It’s pretty tough. I’ve actually had spreadsheets from me, my kids wife, everybody else. And so anyway, you can now have a simple place to put it and it’s for you only you can see it in your account.
00:05:56:15 –> 00:07:14:04
And then there’s also the research tools that Adam and John have mentioned as well as access to the Emacs, which are basically these paper mags where you can flip through ’em electronically. And so we’re gonna dive in to what we’ve got going on here. That’s what John was mentioning. Get Kurt on the phone. He’s actually somewhat the brains behind it all. I would say. John, you’ve had an instrumental impact on that and and whatnot in helping Kurt and working with Kurt on this. Anything you wanna say to that? No, I think we’re ready to go. All right. Let’s give him holler. He writes the language. None of us understand that’s what Kurt does or wanna understand or, or care to understand. Just kinda like taxes. We tell him what he wants it to look. We want it to look like, kinda like, kinda like taxes. I don’t wanna pay a lot of them. Figure it out and tell me what I owe. All right, hold on. Here we, let’s get Kurt on Noow. How’s ice fishing? It’s been good. Well, which, which lakes not to spoil things. You can give us a one or two week delay of where you’ve been, just to kinda mask the, mask the, you know, freshness of what you’re doing. But that’s right. Strawberry? Or are we going somewhere else? Dear Chris. Flaming gorge. What are we doing? Strawberry. Strawberry. Strawberry. So does that mean I love that lake. Oh really?
00:07:14:04 –> 00:08:29:13
Now we go there all the time. Yeah. How big a fish are you catching? So Kinzie co A 24 and a half or just Wednesday. So geez, Ram rainbow cuts or cuts or what? It’s a, it’s a cut. So yeah, we just chase those big cuts up there. So we, I have snowmobiles so it doesn’t matter if people know where I fish ’cause I go away from everybody anyway. So what do you mean you’re on a lake? Like there’s not like back country when you’re on, it’s all the same elevation. You’re not in the back country, you’re on the same lake. What do you mean by that? Elaborate? Well, well there’s, you know, little honey holes no different than the mountains. We don’t know elaborate. I don’t, I mean, I it’s flat white ice. How can you get away? Seriously. So think about it, just like the mountains, right? You get away from everybody. You’re miles and miles away from everybody on the snowmobile. And then underneath you, you know, there’s contours and little holes and points and springs. And over the years we’ve just found some of those natural little spots where you can kind of go sit over the top of them and ice fish. So I got you. So you’re using GPS or Onyx or something that tells you where you’re at. Like when the people go out deep sea fishing and it’s Yep. Nothing. There’s no bear.
00:08:29:13 –> 00:09:40:17
There’s no, Hey, go to that ridge over there. It’s just flat water and flat. Yeah, right here. Put her down and hold on tight. So just like, I could sell access to my, say my Onyx account with all my way points and Bronson you could too. Kurt could sell his onyx for fishermen. That’s right. Yeah. And if you don’t know Kurt, they’re actually built right into my fish finder. So my fish finder has GPSI go go to the same spot. We actually use underwater cameras as well. I have two of them. And we point ’em back and forth. So not only do we know the fisher down there, we can see what’s working full HD color. So it’s awesome. Come on. And is that, that’s a remote camera. I’m lying. You don’t have a human tr underwater ice camera like Jason’s had to do. And he was a kid. You don’t throw a kid down there with goggles on and say, look, when I was a kid, I was a human trail camera. We moved past that nice fishing world. You guys good. It’s frowned upon. It’s frowned upon to build, to, you know, drill a bigger hole and dunk your kids under there. Yeah. Is it clear? Can you see a cutthroat? Can you look down there and go, wow. Yeah. That one’s freaking well. The winter I’ve, I’ve heard Yeah. Winter water’s cherry clear, isn’t it? Oh yeah.
00:09:40:17 –> 00:10:41:17
The other day we were fishing in 22 feet of water. You could look down your hole and see the fish and your jig at the very bottom. So Oh no. Because there’s just no wind to like turn the water up. Right. And the Yeah. The nutrient and all that stuff doesn’t get all cloudy. Yeah. And we shovel the snow off of where our holes are in my tent and it almost looks like you’re in like a, it’s kind of creepy. It’s like a glass bottom boat if you’ve ever been in one of those. Wow. ’cause ’cause all the snow’s gone and damn, the ice is super clear right now. And so literally you’ll see fish swim underneath you and it kind creeps you out. Why do you do that? Just for that effect for the fish under your feet effect or is there trying to kick, yeah. Why do you get rid of the snow? Well, ’cause when the snow’s on there, as your tent heats up, we have insulated tents and heaters. We literally put down like these pla those mats that you work out on those four mats, we literally make a floor. So you own the snow melts, creates own a yoga mat. It creates a little like lake. I literally own a yoga mat. Wow. I’ve never done a, I do the fishing pose. You haven’t done the fishing, you haven’t done the downward dog. The downward dog is stronger.
00:10:42:10 –> 00:11:47:07
No, that’s right. I do the, I do the dead fish pose. The dead fish dog pose. So when you have this lake, the, does the mat just kind of cover is over top of the lake of water that’s now melted because of your warm tent? Is that what’s going on? Yeah, well yeah. So if you, if the snow’s in there, it does melt, melt faster. The lake. Yeah. But if we, we shovel off all the snow, put the mats down that way it keeps your feet warm. You gotta remember I have my kids there and they get cold with everything. Right. So that way I just have a floor and heaters and it’s warm and it’s cozy and they stay there. We cook inside the tent. I mean, it’s not really a tent. Like, it’s more like a little cabin. Well I bought you, I bought an Eskimo tent the other day. I thought I was doing something. Now I gotta realize I got about $1,400 in cooking things. So you got mats, yoga mats, you got about three more grand and you’ll be up to speed. Then I gotta wait until I’m out there. So I gotta go buy a sled. Video cameras for under underneath the water. Kurt. This is, it’s embarrassing. So as you can tell, I’m sure there’s some listeners listening to this one. I thinking, boy, cars brought you to, you guys have never ice fished, have you?
00:11:47:07 –> 00:12:49:17
Which that’s almost true. Well, I’ve been ice fishing a lot. I’ve gone with people just out on my own. Yeah, that’s right. But we caught some big fish last week. Yeah, but I, you’re right. I don’t, I to that level, Kurt, if I ice fish, I stand in there and freeze out in the sun. I get wind burn, I get sunburn. And when it’s bad I leave. But I need to be able to think about it. Go to my garage in 15 minutes, drive away. Yeah. And, and not have, but when I was a kid and this, that sounds like what something your grandpa would say, but when I was a kid, we would drive up the lake of Monticello, Utah with the Wood splitting mall and that we would chop our holes into the ice on the lake. So we’d chop like a sobee. My gosh. That’s all you, that’s why you didn’t just chop. That’s you. We didn’t have augers. Hell, that was a luxury. Augers were what they moved grain heaven matter. Your grain trucks a load propane auger. And I got a propane auger that’s now not starting. So now I’ve gotta do the hand auger all and to get that you do do an electric auger. So, okay, all I can say is let’s think about hunting. Right? Like you got you guys. It’s in our personality. We don’t do anything 10%. Right?
00:12:49:19 –> 00:13:53:18
Like if you’re, if you’re in, you’re all in. So we have, yeah, I mean my gotcha my, my ice fishing sled costs probably as much as my, you know, my hunting pack and maybe even my golf bag. It’s embarrassing. Yeah. We won’t even want, we don’t even wanna talk about it. So if we’re gonna go, we go all in. It’s, and it’s about you look at your wife and say honey, for the memories, what, what’s the time with our kids’ worth to you? It’s priceless. Price. Price. That’s right. And you move right on and they say, yeah, okay, see ya. And anyway, I’m really interested in the videoing of the fish. I think that’s freaking awesome. Yeah, it’s kinda like car, you got car’s attention. He’s thinking trail cameras for fish down. Oh, Sarah see season. Yeah. Do they get ripped off? You can record it and everything. Well, but that’s a bonus. Can I keep my tent on the ice and just leave? Yeah. Kurt, could you leave a camera under the water? I know it’s gonna ice over the first night you leave. Yeah. But then since it’s GPS go back there, auger through, grab your camera and check the footage for the last five days. Or is not that sophist? Well, unfortunately no. He uses a cable, so you’d have to leave it out there. They don’t, they don’t have any cell service. You can record though.
00:13:53:21 –> 00:14:58:16
I could literally mean put my camera on record all night. But at the same time, it’s not like, yeah. So this big fish comes by and let’s call him Leroy. It’s not like we can go back and chase him. I mean, he might swim three miles away in the lake and we never see him again. So. Yeah, they’re not, yeah, they’re in the lake. Let’s, let’s move on to hunting just because it’s more important, but, but real quick, or how big a fish are in there. Like just how big a fish could you catch? Well, so, I mean, it has a slot for a reason. 15 to 22 inches. You can’t keep anything kinda like inside of that because they’re trying to grow big fish. Yep. Yeah. I mean you can catch some eight to 10 pound cuts through an ice hole, which is kind of crazy through an ice hole. Feel like carefully say through an ice hole. Yeah, that’s true. Yeah. I, all the jokes you can think of have been used. I mean, okay. So anyway, we did catch a big old fish and then it ended up, you know, I mean we tried to angle him up through the hole. It’s pretty hard angle him. Yeah, well he’s swimming by the hole and like, how do you get their head to come up through the hole then without ripping the hook outta their mouth? So Kurt, I need some help.
00:14:58:16 –> 00:16:08:16
But anyway, it ended up, he ended up bending the hook out and getting off and it just, ooh, there’s gotta be a giant fish. There’s gotta be a specific angler terminology for the P procedure to flip ’em outta the hole properly. What would that be? That’s some tricks. What would it be? I need some trick. A tougher hook. I need kids that are willing to reach down through the ice. I mean there’s, anyway, any, any trips and tricks real quick. Well, well we, we stick the pole down the hole so that, ’cause as they, the bigger fish is they go around in circles, they’ll try to cut your line, things like that. And we just let ’em take a lot of drag and tire ’em out. And then eventually once the, once the fish get their head up through, then they usually almost push themselves out. But yeah, those big fish, you have to, that’s a good tip. Like that’s a good tip because we’ve pull down the, the line, pull down the hole, run against the ice. So yeah, get it right to the tip and then just pull them up. Growing up I fished flaming gorge and I still go down there and you catch like 20, 30 pounders through the ice. You, you have to, you gotta wear them. What you to drill? Use our eight inch augers and drill triangle of three holes. That’s legal down there.
00:16:08:17 –> 00:17:12:16
I don’t think it’s legal in any other lakes. It’s too big of a hole. Okay. Because what do you Yeah. Is because they don’t want you to follow safety. The safety, illegal safety. You can only have a safety 10 inch is the biggest one. Okay. That’s like saying it’s illegal to not wear a seatbelt. Yeah, exactly. But anyway, those big, big drill the holes, those big fat lake drop out the gorge. They don’t, they can’t, the hole is not fair chase hole. But that’s the trick we learned down there is stick your pole down the hole, let ’em run for line forever, tire ’em out and then work ’em. Yep. Wear out. I use four, six or eight pounds, six or eight pound line. But my drag is wide open. So down at Flaming Gorge I don’t, but, okay. All right. For somebody that wanted to move on to hunting, Carter, you’ve asked a lot of follow up questions. Well I just, I’m good at mining information from people and I had a couple of questions that led to a couple more. Alright, Kurt. So we’ve, we’ve, we’ve opened this up already Yeah. For you and John, of course you guys, you know, worked our website over and we appreciate you for that. I just maybe thought it, Adam and I talked about it and we thought it was just best.
00:17:12:23 –> 00:18:11:00
I mean, coming from you guys, of course we use the drawing odds every single day, the minimum points query, things like that. But we thought coming from you guys, maybe you guys could tell us what, what’s really on the website. Yeah. What’s been updated and, and why. I mean, it’s really about ease, ease of use, but talk, you know, that’s kind of, we can tell you and John and what we want it to look like, what we think it’d have, but we you write the language nobody can understand. Yep, that’s right. And Kurt, maybe back up a little bit and talk about our, yeah, let’s philosophy’s talk about that first. Because I mean, on this, we all know there, you know, at Epic it’s all about the magazine and the consulting and providing, you know, all our members the tools to draw more tags. But online we wanted to kind of take a, take it that step further. We live in a digital age. We live in an age where it’s, you know, easy to pull up stuff on our phone. So kind of step one was, is well, hey, let’s get the magazine in the hands of the people wherever they are, right? Like, yeah, you’re at home and flip right through it. But if you want it on your phone or your iPad or online, you know, first step was get the emag out there.
00:18:11:06 –> 00:19:15:10
Then since then we’ve kind of really expanded it to get all those tools that when guys call in, or, I mean we, we’ve been doing this for a long time. I mean, especially you, you know, Jason and Adam, you guys have been doing this forever. You know, I mean, you guys know what questions these guys ask usually when they call. So we, we tried to set up our online tools with that in mind. So if a guy calls in, he says, Hey, you know what, I’m new to Mule deer. Wh where do I start? Well, we have a research by species section or Hey, you know what, my buddy goes to Colorado every year, unlike Jason, I’m too shy to ask him for more information. So I’m gonna jump out on, yeah, I know I’m gonna jump out on the Epic site and say, oh, I’m gonna click on Colorado and I get all the information about Colorado. We’ve got guys out there that, you know, maybe want to dig a little bit deeper. They’re kind of geeks like me or even you guys where we’re like, Hey, I wanna dive into the numbers of the drying odds. Not only do I wanna see what it takes to draw, say a Wyoming elk tag, I wanna know what it took over the last five years. I wanna see trends, I wanna see, you know, all these, what’s going on in these units.
00:19:15:12 –> 00:20:20:15
So we have that available to people as well. You know, so basically whether you’re just getting started or you’re kind of already geeked out, we’ve got that and everything in between. We also have our guided hunts out online. So if a guy’s like, Hey, you’re not gonna draw crap this year and I’m, I’m still looking for a tag, or right outta the gate, he is looking for maybe a guaranteed tag and hunt. I mean, he can go out there and search through ’em in his own time and look through all of ’em in the magazine. We probably only highlight, I don’t know what percentage you guys would know, but online, I mean, you know, if we, if we update a hunt tomorrow, it shows up out there. It’s immediate. So also too, the other nice thing about the online stuff is, you know, speaking of tomorrow, let’s say Wyoming decides to extend the deadline. Well one of the things we’ve added this year is kind of a latest news section. Literally as things change or as we release stuff, if you were to go out there right now, you kind of see that, you know, we just launched our Wyoming and Arizona and New Mexico odds. You know, we let everybody know when the EMAG is released. But let’s say something related to a application came up, you know, Wyoming extended it over a weekend or you know, they had some problems.
00:20:20:17 –> 00:21:27:15
Well we can go out there and post and let our members know that, hey, you can apply a little bit later now versus once the magazine’s printed, you know, we can’t do that. So I like that and I can see it. I mean, we’re following along again, we already know what’s out there and whatnot. But it’s, it’s, I like the ease of use. You go and click on, we got a little, you got your little tabs at the top. It’s Guided Hunt a, it says Jason, that’s kind of cool. And then it says Guided hunt’s point tracker research tools and Emacs and the research tools. There’s a research by state like you were talking about, which goes through how Colorado works, how the point system works, the hunter ed requirements, whatever, all those little tabs. And then there’s an, and then if you go, you know, if you, you can go back or whatever anyway and then you can go to straight to drawing odds and info. Maybe somebody doesn’t need to know that. They don’t wanna read about that, that’s fine. You can go straight to drawing odds or you can get to the drawing odds by when you’re in that state reading about the, about how they conduct the draw, whatever. And so I just like the ease of it. You can just navigate through a state, navigate to specific species or whatever bring very easily.
00:21:27:15 –> 00:22:24:10
And you bring up, you know, the navigation part is one of the big things that John and I overhauled and almost kinda launched a whole new version this year. It it for anybody that’s maybe tried it in the past, you know, get back out there and try it again. Or if you haven’t tried it, make sure you go out there. We tried to make it really easy to use. I mean you hover over research tools. I know you’re kind of listening right now, but you hover over research tools and in our menu all those things that Jason just talked about just pop up right in front of you. So it’s really easy to find them. You don’t have to sit and go, oh, where do I even begin? I mean, you, you log in land there, you’re, I mean immediately all the things we’re talking about are right in front of you. It’s real. Just click on the species or click on this or hover over research tools, hover over EAG and the latest magazines are right there for you. Super easy. You know that, that was a big emphasis for us, you know, on this kind of this new version was to really make it easy to get around, easy to find all this stuff. And Jason mentioned the point tracker. I wanted to emphasize that one more time.
00:22:24:12 –> 00:23:34:25
That’s a place where you can go in, add which states you’re applying in and keep track of your points. So you go in, you add Deere in Utah for se per for example. And you say, okay, I’ve got two points update that. It’ll keep track of it for you. The other cool thing is you can keep notes right in there. And so like, let’s say, let’s take Nevada for instance, and you do a bunch of research this year and, and you come up with the, the units that you wanna apply for and you come up with a couple more that you just wanna remember or keep track of. You can, you know, put in there, Hey look at a different unit next year or I’m applying for, for such and such unit this year and keep track of all those points. So every year you just have one main place to go back to. You can keep track of your state IDs right there. And so you can keep track of your passwords and your, your login if you want for each state. So really, really convenient way to keep track of everything. 1, 1, 1 reason. A lot of you guys may keep spreadsheets or things like that, which we all do and maybe we’re used to doing that, but we did get requests from some guys that don’t keep a spreadsheet to have a spot to put that.
00:23:34:27 –> 00:24:29:17
But the other thing that, the reason why we decided to add that is guys are often either on their phone or maybe they’re away from their computer where their spreadsheet’s at and they wanna pull up their phone and have that stuff ’cause they’re looking at the drawing odds while they’re on their phone and maybe they’re applying ’cause it’s towards the deadline and they needed a place to where they could put it. You know that hey, while I’m on there looking at the odds, okay that now I’m gonna go, you know, check my points real quick and have ’em right there so that it was easy. So we set, that’s pretty simple fix for us to add that for them. And if you keep it on a spreadsheet, great. If you wanna put it in there so that if you’re ever caught with your tablet or just your phone in your pocket and it’s time to apply, you gotta verify how many points you have, hurry and check a unit and some odds online and hurry and get applied. It’s all right there on our website. And Kurt, maybe go over the, the cool integration we’ve got. If you do check your points on here. Well, and one quick thing before that, if also if we do your apps, if, if you’re part of our license application service that’s integrated as well.
00:24:29:22 –> 00:25:38:21
So if you, you know, literally click on your profile and then click on license applications, you can see everything that we’ve applied you for. But also if we do your applications and we track your points for you, those, that’s all those points in all those states will show up there as well. So whether you do it on a spreadsheet, you do it on through our point tracker or we do it for you at any time. You can come out here and take a quick glance of where you sit in these different states. Really cool. Let’s use an example of that integration on the point tracker. Like John said, you know Wyoming milk, it’s kind of on our brain right now. Like the deadline’s here at the end of the month. I literally just applied earlier today. Yeah. You know, you know, you know me Dan, did you? Well let’s have it. Let’s have it. I could guess. I could probably guess with a 99.9% certainty that you, and you can say it all day long. You want us to say it on air? It, it’s a big secret. Go ahead Adam. What is it? General, regular. The only question special buddy outta Kansas. Okay. General Elk regular. Yes. Are you gonna take a shovel on that one If you, this whole story by that? I think we actually aired it out once. We probably did. I did.
00:25:38:25 –> 00:26:42:01
I mean you caped an antelope with a shovel, but hey we just, let’s just say that if it was done, it can be done. We wouldn’t recommend it. Easy ways to open fences and cape animals with shovels. No. So yeah, so let’s just, so anyway, so let’s just take it so you’re in, let’s just say, hey, I want to go out to Wyoming. I’m gonna look up Wyoming elk ’cause it’s on our brain. I go out there and I pick, I mean I’m gonna pick unit seven just because it’s one that we kind of cover in the magazine. It’s, you know, it’s a popular one there. I’m, I’m literally doing this as I’m talking through what I realize that’s not visual. But the bottom line is, is when I go out there and I pick unit seven, it’s a good example where you kind of see how we overhauled things for this year. And also you can see that immediate integration with the point tracker. So right at the very beginning it tells me how many points, you know, preference point draw, it breaks down the whole preference point, draw what it’s taken to draw unit seven over the last five years. You know, I happen to have two points in there. So for me personally, I would never draw unit seven, but at the same time, right off to the right, I can also see my random drawing odds real quick.
00:26:42:04 –> 00:27:51:25
So yeah, I’m not gonna necessarily draw it with points. Doesn’t look like I would, but hey, I’ve got a 2.4699999999999998% chance, or at least I did last year to draw a random tag. So one thing too, even though we’re talking about how that point tracker integrates in, one thing we’ve added this year in Wyoming is this projected kind of calculation. So I want all the members to know that this is just a math equation. This it, you know, this is just literally letting the computer go out there and say over the last five to six years, this has been the trend and this is what it’s take to draw on. So therefore, according to the math, so unit seven’s a good example according to like, like when you say that, you mean according to correct the, the number of tags that they’ve been giving here. If it stays roughly the same or exactly the same as last year. Yeah. And how just based on how many people are working up from the next point level up, this is who we think will draw Exactly. And how many points that will look like this year. No, yeah. This is not us giving a human, a human interpretation. Jason or I on the spot saying we think unit seven’s gonna take, you know, 58% with 10 points on the regulation. Exactly when you got five years. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
00:27:51:26 –> 00:29:02:23
This is an intense formula massaged by a couple of people. You, you and John. Yeah. When you have five outcomes will figure data and then all those allocations and those statistics, as long as they generally issue the same number. Like in unit seven for example, I mean it’s been 25, 27, 27, 26. Yeah. 27 tags in the regular draw over the last five years. So generally speaking, if that stays the same, you know, the last couple of years it’s taken in that 10 to 11 category this year probably gonna be right around 11. So again, it’s just another way, it’s just another tool we’ve added to try to help. It’s for the, it’s for the geeks like me to go in there and I really wanna look at the numbers, you know, if you kind of look at those units in that detail. A nice little tool that you can look at. Yeah. Anyway. Yep. Really cool. Really cool. I think it’s awesome. I think it, I think it’s well thought out and it’s well done and and whatnot. And so anyway, I think it’s super helpful. This is something I think what we want to convey to people is it’s something we use ourselves. Like it’s something that we need and when Adam and I feel like we need it or you guys feel like you need it, then we do it. And I think that’s Kurt, we haven’t talked a lot about your history.
00:29:03:09 –> 00:30:07:24
Back in the day you were programming odds for fun, you and Aaron, right? Which is Adam’s brother, you guys had a little company, you’re out there programming and you’re just doing it for fun. Yeah. I mean literally for fun and, but cranking with program, because you guys, you’re, you’re into that. And so that’s how we got to know you from our prior company. We bought you guys out, you know, we wanted you guys to come on board and program for us. And so anyway, that was kind of the beginning of our relationship. This isn’t new to you. You’ve been hunting many, even Wyatt watched your a hunt down there that we did there. Oh, that’s good time. Yeah, that was fun down in Arizona on that limited opportunity. Oh, he was rolling. But anyway, I’m just saying a, this is coming from a programmer, you and, and John, namely that are hunters, avid hunter that yeah, like you said geeks about the draw odds and all that, not just, yeah. Well tell me what you want and I’ll plug some stuff in write spreadsheet and spit it out. You know, I mean you have a, you have the hunter hat and hunter eyeglasses looking at this as you’re building.
00:30:07:25 –> 00:31:05:21
Yeah, no dick, it hunters, I mean I was looking at the other day like yeah, I mean that all sudden with pun odds if you guys, you know, hunt odds.com was the, and literally I looked the other day, it was hunt odds web web domains like 12 or 13 years old now. So yeah, it’s been, I mean we do, yeah of course we do. Who owns it? Oh yeah. Hey, it’s been my, just making sure I just did, it’s, it’s been my baby for years. I mean that’s, you guys hit the nail on the head. We’re we’re geeks that like to hunt, I mean yeah, Aaron and I, Adam’s brother. I mean years and years ago we thought there’s no, nobody out there has these in one nice place, let’s just build it. It was a hobby for us because we’re passionate about it. So I eat, sleep and drink these numbers. I mean it’s just, I’m a numbers guy and I happen to be a programmer that likes to hunt and fish and, and it just, it works out good. So. Yep. It’s awesome. Well, I want to talk a little bit about, and and I think we can talk to Aaron about this as well, but just real quick, briefly overview the epic scalp map. Yeah.
00:31:05:21 –> 00:32:04:07
So that’s the last thing out there that we haven’t really talked about is not only do we have maps that you can purchase, we still have those great waterproof, I, you know, bombproof maps. We also have the maps where you can literally, you know, go out on our, out on our little member tool area and all the different states like say for example Wyoming and you can, it’s got the topographic maps as well as all the layers that you can add on top. For example, you know, you wanna look at the elk units, the elk unit you’re in, and it just gives you a chance to go out there and kind of prec scout the unit, get a little bit of a lay of the land. It’s all part of the subscription that you already have, so you might as well be using it works really slick. So very, very helpful too. Especially if you’re researching, you know, some states like, you know, deer, elk or antelope that, you know, let’s say you’re a big public land self-guided guy, you know, and you, the biggest thing you need to factor in is, is there enough public land or is there too much private land? It’s like, well I, I’ve seen the minimum points query.
00:32:04:07 –> 00:33:15:24
Yeah I can draw this, that, and the other next step is if you know nothing about it is to go superimpose land ownership map and things like that along with maybe in some of the states, the game distribution map over it. So you’re like all right there, that’s, that’s why, or that’s antelope country and there’s a lot of BLMI can, I can do that, I can see that with my eyes versus just have to question or read it off the state’s website that there’s 42% public land. But when you see it and it’s all blocked up really good in this half over here and this half’s private, but this half’s got plenty of antelope in it. You feel comfortable? I can, yeah. I mean just the other day go figure it out. So I like that as well. The ba like, just, just like selecting a base map. You guys got everything from, you know, hybrid maps to, to topographic maps, to street maps, to National Geographic. I think there’s 24 Yeah on down to USA topo maps. I mean there’s 14 whatever layer, let’s call it 1400 options on there as well as the details. You can go, you know, click on the details and whatnot and then it overlays the unit boundaries like Adam’s saying and whatnot. And so man, you could, you could get lost in this and, and yet learn something about it.
00:33:16:00 –> 00:34:11:28
Especially if you’re, yeah, I mean just the other day I had a buddy that’s never been to Wyoming before, he, he just wants to go shoot an antelope and as you guys have talked about, I, I grew up in camera so we pulled up the, the units around camera and we overlaid that, you know, the, the boundary or the ownership and he was able to see, well this one unit’s pretty checkerboarded. And so even though we talk about it in the magazine and even on our online stuff about it being private, he’s visually could see, yeah, okay, well it looks like it might have a lot of public because it’s checkerboard, I’m gonna stay away from that versus the unit right next door has a whole big chunk of bl m land. That’s, that’s just real easy to go, you know, so immediately he knows that you can go above that unit, you know, he, he hits that visual to see where the public land is versus, you know, on paper, yeah, it’s 50%, but because it’s all checkerboarded and you know, in Wyoming that can be a pain to hunt that checkerboarded land. He, he avoided that one unit, went to a different unit and, and he used that for that very reason. It was pretty slick.
00:34:12:01 –> 00:35:22:23
So I did have a guy hit me up and he’s like, Hey, I was wondering if you could do the roads and just tell us if those are county access roads or if they’re a private road. Yeah. I’m like, well that’s next level. I’ve never heard that’s county recorder and you gotta read deeds on road. I mean it’s like, it’s not, there’s not, I don’t know anybody that does that, but hey Kurt, if you wanna make a killing I’ll take 10%. You you develop it. We’ll tell the world about it. How about that? Anyway, I had another guy that says, Hey, is there any way I can look at a map and tell how bumpy it is and how, how hard it’s gonna be on my vehicle? ’cause there were some of these roads that were really dark red lines and they were crap, you know, and I’m like, so he was pulling his cabinet trailer to a point of no return. He could turn around 30 footer. So anyway, that’s, that’s gonna happen. We laugh about it, but five years from now Kurt, you’ll figure it out and we’ll integrate it on our website. How about that? Yeah, they’ll have imagery and digital elevation models programmed into it over the imagery and figure out, no, better not take a, yep. You know, I could lower riding two wheel drive Toyota. That’s, that’s right. I could’ve used that in New Mexico.
00:35:23:09 –> 00:36:22:21
How many tires is this road gonna require? I would like to, yeah, exactly. I would like to point out though, there’s a, a few features out there that maybe some of our listeners have never or don’t realize it’s out there. I mean we’re talking about the roads and the topo maps and the unit boundaries and the public and private, but Colorado’s a good, another state where maybe just a quick highlight. We actually have the winter range out there. We have where mule deer concentrate, you know, straight from the biologists there in, you know, that’s a, a data layer that they track. So I mean in a state like Colorado, you can go even a little bit deeper. So not only can you see, okay, well let’s public private maybe, where am I gonna go in? You can actually kind of see the winter migration and, or sorry, the migration routes as well as like where they concentrate. So you might be able to kind of hit the ground running on one of those late season Colorado hunts when before you’re like, well I’ve never hunted say unit, I don’t even know 70 before and I wanna go out there and I drew a tag this year and where do I even begin? You can kind of look at some of those things. So just a little side note that there’s a little bit more data than just, you know, just the public and private and roads.
00:36:22:21 –> 00:37:31:03
And so we clicked on it. So we clicked on it Kurt. So for example, we’d go, you know, you’d go under say research tools and then underneath there’s over on the, on the right hand side of that, when it opens up, there’s a state map, you click on it and anyway, and then you can go over to say Colorado, we click on it and then over on the left hand side there’s under details, it’s catching up to me here. It takes a minute to load. But anyway you can go under details. Here it is. And then under content, click content on that. And then there, there they are, there’s the Colorado gmu of course roads, mountain goat, sheep, land ownership, whatever it is you need. There’s mule deer, winter range, mul deer concentration. I can click those, scroll in on a particular unit and then hey, for second, third, fourth seasons probably ought to go to where these mule deer winter ain winter. You know what I mean? Well I find myself consulting a lot if it’s an area that I haven’t been to personally, it’s fine to see or read how much public lands in a unit based just totally on a computer program factoring in public private ownership and spitting out a percentage.
00:37:31:18 –> 00:38:43:11
But if you then overlay, if say you’re looking at a third season and you overlay that over the land ownership on deer concentration and you realize, well all the summer rains is 99% public, but the winter range and the concentration areas is 90% private, you’re probably gonna have a problem finding access there. So you might need to look at a different unit where the winter concentration areas or the winter range and critical winter range has at least enough you’re, you’re gonna run into private land in Colorado and winter range, that’s where people settle, that’s where the water is, all that more to easier access areas. But you can definitely avoid some units that are like almost all private land and you’re gonna have a problem finding a place to hunt third, fourth season if you, you know, overlay those concentration areas on top of land ownership. And there’s plenty of others that have a lot of mixture, BLM, you know, you can have, you know, hunt, tear your heart’s content. I like it. I’ve been laying, I’m looking at stuff right now and I can see the land ownership. I changed my base map and anyway to the topo and I can see the land ownership and then I got to see all the mule deer winter range and whatnot. And so super easy it’s, anyway, again, all of this is for a hundred bucks.
00:38:43:19 –> 00:39:51:16
You get the publication, you get to be able to log in, you can track your points, you can go to all the Emacs, even prior years, you can go to the research tools and go check out online odds and how states work and all of these kind of things have a browser behind another browser so you can act like you’re working at work and then every once in a while you go click on Right, right John, come on. That’s right. That’s right. That’s what people do. Put some browse around, put some air pods in and listen to the podcast while you’re browsing around. There you go. That work on the clock. That’s right. Okay. Whatever you’re doing on the clock. Hey. And, and most of the people are doing it from home anyway ’cause of covid, so That’s right. They don’t even have to do it. They don’t have to hide it. I don’t understand this Kurt. They’re saying that people are more effective at home than they’ve ever been while actually going down the office. Do you believe that? Crap, I won’t comment on that. I personally, I personally march and I, I do know that there’s less distractions. I feel like I can kind of get a lot more done and set my thing, but, but I’m a social person, I miss people. So it’s been kind of brutal for me. But anyway, so Oh, but wow, I agree.
00:39:51:21 –> 00:40:48:07
If I had to zoom the crew every morning about, yeah, yeah. I wouldn’t function, not as fun function. I had to wear a mask mask for three straight hours the other day and I thought I was gonna die. Another good reason to work from home. I guess I, no, I’m with Bron and I can’t breathe. I had to go to back-to-back ball games and of course you gotta scan your QR code to get in, prove that you’re a parent, answer 15 challenge questions to prove that it’s your, your kid that you’re there to watch a retinal scan, open your mouth, look at your tonsils, and then have your tight fitting mask for three straight hours. It’s like, Jesus, I’m embellishing a little bit, I’m just, oh, it’s not too far away. Well I think one thing we didn’t, we covered a lot of the tools and the resources that our members have. I think one thing that really sets us apart is you do your research, you come up with three units that you’re looking at in Colorado for your point, you know, totals. And then you can call us and you can say, Hey, what’s your opinion on this unit versus the next unit?
00:40:48:08 –> 00:41:47:25
Yeah, a lot of guys can get a lot more in leading questions I guess when they call us because they’ve looked at their minimum points query, they’ve looked at some of these tools that we’ve talked about with land ownership, dear concentration, different things like that. And so when they call us they say, I think I can get unit X or Y, it looks like there’s plenty of public land, could you steer me away from that? Or is that a good idea? And, and, and it just allows you to be able to gain more confidence in the direction you’re kind of looking at using your points. Maybe bouncing id off this kinda last thing versus saying, Hey, there’s 102 deer units in Colorado, I got four points, what do you think? Which we get, we get questions like that and we, and we can give you our 2 cents, all that. But you know, you then have to start, you know, boiling down a lot of different things. What season, you know, you can hire a guide, you’re gonna do it self-guided, you know, I mean, so if you can look on this, you can weeded out a lot of that stuff. That’s right. That you know is not an option for what you’re looking for. You become prepared with, with, you know, real questions and, and whatnot. And of course we could vet some more out with you. But anyway, same, same kind of thing.
00:41:47:25 –> 00:42:49:17
We give ’em four options, they go back at home and start looking at those four options and really, yeah, work through process. Ratify it. Like you said, your, your buddy did Kurt, he can see unit X over here has 50 50 public and private, but it’s check reported the whole way. Unit Y next door is 50 50 private. Exactly. Very chunked heavy white private here, heavy BLM in the southern half. And available. And I other think too, lemme point out that he mentioned to me is, you know, we didn’t really talk about this specific, but just, just a second ago, Adam, you, you know, you mentioned your guys’ two, 2 cents on a unit. One thing that kind of sets us apart a little bit different is because we’re that, you know, we have the consultant piece and the co consultants, we take the consultant notes from the magazine and put them online with our research tool. So for example, I’m staring at that unit seven again, if I click on the unit profile, I get to, actually, I can read real quick the epic consultant notes that were in the magazine as well, and my buddy pointed that out with the, with the antelope unit that he was researching is he could go out there real quick and see what you guys wrote about them as well. And so that way, you know, he doesn’t have to flip back and forth to the magazine.
00:42:49:17 –> 00:43:53:10
He’s like, man, I can’t remember if these guys, what these guys thought about this unit. He can look right there online. It’s, it’s a cool little integration right there. And then, so not only have they done all the research, they’ve also gotten your guys’ take on the unit. Then when they call, they’re a little more educated, like you guys said, then they can go back to the website, dig a little bit deeper. We try to make all this information. I mean, the bottom line to everything we’ve been talking about today is just making it nice and easy to use. And combining all that between the consultant work, the online odds, statistics, information about the unit maps, everything that you wanna know about that unit. We’re trying to get that out there online to make it a little bit easier for you to either draw tags or do your research. I mean, that’s the goal, right? So that’s the goal. Okay. All right. Well, sounds good. I think it’s awesome. I did, I was thinking about some mapping, I was wondering if maybe like if we developed our own, let’s, I’m gonna just say Onyx, right? So let’s just develop the, the epic version of Onyx, but then we integrate all of people’s past, experience, experience and they can load in waypoints.
00:43:53:22 –> 00:44:51:07
And then when I load into Epic, I sign in, I’m gonna go hunt this unit, boom, I can prove I put in my tag number that would allow all these way points to load into my epic on next 200, 200, yeah, 200 was killed here. So and so saw this here by the way. He took a picture and uploaded it to this way point. Interesting. Anyway, I’m just saying Kurt, like I’ve got millions of millions of amazing ideas. Jason’s got plenty of distractions running through his head right now, it sounds like. And anyway, if you ever get some spare time, why, let’s work on that project. All right. Okay. It’s just, yeah, this, in summary, this, this world that we live in, you know, the paper magazine at home is nice. I still like those. I, I am, I’m not, I don’t think I’m that old, but I still like a paper mag. I love paper and, but I realize my phone is where I probably spend majority of my time and then on my other times in front of the computer. So it doesn’t matter where I’m at.
00:44:51:23 –> 00:45:57:10
I get a call, I get a message from somebody, I can pull something up on my phone or my computer here at work or if I’m at home, there’s a magazine and I, I have all those tools there to be able to jump in and answer questions or give a unit recommendation or things like that. It’s just for convenience of, of our members. And we haven’t added or increased our membership at all. A hundred bucks still gets everything we’ve always done. We’re just adding to it. This type of service has been a hundred bucks since the mid nineties and here we are. Look what look what it now includes. Yeah. It’s crazy what it now includes. I mean, guys aren’t needing to pay more than that if they don’t want to, it’s all here. Amber, give it a try. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed. Yeah. And ability to call and talk to us as well and add another layer of confidence, I guess, in picking a unit or getting a validation on your thoughts or research that you’re doing or things like that. That’s what that’s included. I think part of it is you’re not just, this doesn’t just happen. The research doesn’t just happen. We’re out doing it in the field as well. You can esc out so much, you can, you know, make so many phone calls, whatever, but we’re out doing it and, and then integrated with Kurt.
00:45:57:10 –> 00:47:08:05
Obviously what you and John are doing and whatnot, just think it’s a heck of a combination. Hard to be beat. So anyway, anybody that’s interested, give us a holler. 4 3 5 2 6 3 0 7 7 7. If you’re current member, go log in. There’s a lot there for you, ma. A lot more that’s been in been than has been in the past. Although we have had a lot of these features. It’s just, you’ve made a a heck of a stride there, Kurt, in making it very user friendly and John as well. Thank you. It’s been awesome. It’s great. We use it every day. So maybe just bring up, I mean, or odds. Odds, no matter where you see ’em or no matter where you, where you go to look at ’em. Is this information the same as, you know, some other XY, Z company can give you? Or, or what’s the difference? You know, what, what would be the advantage to a, a, a client to use our information versus somebody else’s? Well, I just think, and Adam you can, you, you chime in as well, but I just think being Adam and I have talked a lot, okay. ’cause we’re here early, we’re cranking through a publication. We get excited about whatever it is that we’re happen to be dive dived into at the moment. And I think a lot of it is interpreting changes of dates. What do it, what does, what does dates affect this unit?
00:47:08:15 –> 00:48:28:25
How, how does an early season deer hunt affect this unit? And I think we are old enough now and we’ve seen a lot that we can see what that, what kind of opportunities those are gonna create. We can almost see things that are, that happen before they happen. I would, I would agree with that. It’s the, we, we have to do certain judgment calls on some of these odds. Like some of the Arizona data, you know, of what it takes to be in the maximum point draw for a, a resident and a non-resident. The state’s not super clear about making an easy spit out thing that the whole world can interpret. Clearly. We make judgment calls based on how we know how the draw works there. And so we publish that in the magazine to another extent. Yeah, you can, you can look at things like season dates this year in Colorado. Alright, EE even our anticipated drawing odds, Kurt, based on the last two, three years or whatever in Colorado or a Wyoming or wherever is gonna use past the past two to five year trends. What, what is a burn? A change in management strategy that we’re aware of or monumental season date changes like Colorado’s gonna occur this year. You’ve gotta add the human element of intelligent, you know, researchers and consultants to be able to really say, yeah, you’ve got two points that that unit took.
00:48:28:25 –> 00:49:41:27
Two points last year, third season I wouldn’t plan on it. Everything’s gonna bump up. Or you know, a unit that has very low tag numbers, 30 total tag numbers, maybe eight to go to non-residents using a round number doesn’t take very many tags to make eight, eight total tags jump up by three to four points in one year by, by some, by some factor. Like a like the season dates or just a bunch of great reports coming off the winter range or a great hunt on that unit last year and a light winner that doesn’t, you know, have any of the big bucks get killed. So I guess the human consultant eyes that maybe we look through all the time, we dream about sleep, about, you know, whatever that, that’s just how we see this data. Yeah, we’re looking for angles for ourselves and so, but we don’t have the points that, you know, sometimes we use points we get back to zero, but we’re still, we look that way at this stuff and we’re looking for angles to get taxed. I think that’s a hundred percent right. And we’re also looking at things from a perspective of some of these units, Adam, these deer maybe migrate through and these late dates are actually too late. There’s that, that’s, that’s, and there’s a few of those units and we’re looking at ’em going, ah, you know, that was an awesome unit last year, these late dates.
00:49:41:27 –> 00:50:41:17
Yeah they’re gonna be running but they might be running in a different unit, maybe even a different state. And you know, and so we’re looking at things like that. We’re also looking at things like, for example, the New Mexico Unit two B youth, it offered a hundred offers, 150 tags, they were in October, now they’re at the end of November during Thanksgiving, they’re smoking giants. But what’s that do to the rest of the next year? The quality and the next year after three, four years next year to the whole unit. And so we’re looking at it going, well man, we were kind of half okay with them changing the dates. Take take advantage of it if you, but they could can draw, but they should have constrained the tag numbers a little bit in relation to those dates. Knowing the take was gonna be that much greater on Big Deer, on Old Deer. And so, but they didn’t, they overlooked it maybe even on purpose or whatever and, and so now you’re seeing big deer being taken, but we know it’s for a season. We know it may be for a couple seasons, whatever. And at some point you’re gonna see a decrease in overall quality in that unit. We’re constantly analyzing that kind of stuff.
00:50:41:26 –> 00:51:49:18
And I think that’s just being, from being out there and being in it and understanding it and and whatnot and just like what you’re saying, Adam, we’re we’re taking literally, I don’t know how many phone calls a day a piece, dozens and dozens and dozens of phone calls and we get a good feel for Yeah, that that unit took 16 points but it’s gonna jump to 20 by the way, there’s four non-resident tags and I know four guys over 20 that are applying. Yeah. And so it might jump five or six points. You know we’re That’s right. Just like last year. Five B North in Arizona. Okay. The Rio dates got shifted later because they had an early firearm season in five B South that rotates throughout the state. Yeah. But to keep it uniform, they just made five B North dates a little later as well. We knew before the end of the application period people that were put in it’s take 16, 17 points. Yeah. That were 15. We thought yeah, they’ll probably get it by the end of the application period. We told ’em you’re probably not gonna get it based on what we had heard and what we’d seen and they didn’t get it. But 15 and that jumped four, five points in one year. Oh yeah. And then my son happened to draw a random tag with 10 points, eight or something. 10. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:51:49:19 –> 00:53:07:23
Two a loyalty a hundred Edna and and his regular eight years and so anyway, but a hundred percent right. There’s a lot of interpreting odds and and effects on units and season dates and, and overall management strategies, practices, whatever we, Adam, there’s an archery desert option here in Utah. Gonna be in January in this particular unit. Your initial reaction, I’m not gonna guide somebody there. Okay. Wouldn’t even take money. Okay. 15 grand. No. Maybe dude, maybe Aaron will do that. Okay. Okay. My my point is, is, but on paper everybody’s going, well there’s a new opportunity. I’m super excited about this and I’m an archer. This seems like a natural and I just think there’s so much more that goes into just than what’s on paper. That’s what we’re here for. That’s what we write about. That’s what you’re gonna read about A either in a emac, either in a Paper, Mac or Kurt when you take our comments on these units and load ’em up on the website when they’re doing the, in the research tools. And so I think there’s just a lot to it and there’s just a ton on here. You can get lost in what we’ve got going on. Yeah. And I, the amount of information that’s published and I, and I would point out website or you know John to your question. Okay you can, anybody can go read a report and look at numbers.
00:53:07:26 –> 00:54:18:17
But I think Adam started to talk about it. Arizona is the prime example of where we take it that next step further. ’cause if, I mean I pulled up real quick unit 10 elk in Arizona, the early season rifle, if you just sort of glance at the tables, you’d say I got 24 points. I’m a non-resident I’m putting in, ’cause if I look at the thing, I mean they issued tags to people all the way down to 21, you know, with 21 points last year. But going into that next extra layer, peeling away the data and realizing that because of our quote up to 10%, really it took 26 points as a non-resident last year. And we have that information out there. So you know, at first glance you think, well I can draw that tag and you know, maybe I’m gonna plan on it. I’m already looking my vacation and I don’t apply for anything else the rest of the year when in reality, no, as a non-resident, you need to, you’re gonna need 27, 28 points going into next year. I mean that, that kind of level of detail, you can never get that from just staring at numbers. And so, yep. Just spitting a number out because it’s gonna show that the last maximum point tag went to a guy with 24 points. Okay? What that printout doesn’t tell you is that it skipped guys with 25 and some of 26 that didn’t draw.
00:54:18:26 –> 00:55:23:16
And so that tells you, well those 26 and 25 point guys that didn’t draw be were had to be non-residents because the quota got met by another guy with 26 or seven, the non-resident quota got met. And so it skipped the rest of the non-residents and started issuing tags in the max point guys with 24 and they had to be residents. And we’ve seen that in like in Colorado odds where you go in as a dual application, you go in with the lowest point total, your buddy has zero, you have four, you didn’t draw, but you should have drawn on paper. Why did that guy not draw? Because he was dual with his buddy who had zero. So there’s just a lot, a lot of in interpreting that goes on. I think part of this too is you get it from answering the freaking phone and, and anymore this day and age, people don’t want to answer the phone, they don’t wanna give customer service, they don’t wanna talk to people. We get a lot of that, you know, just from being willing to talk to people, answering the phone, going over things and, and then we also get to learn what they’ve been out doing, what they saw, where they hunted, what they killed. We’re also managing photos and stories and there’s just so much information. John, this place is like the information highway.
00:55:23:25 –> 00:56:23:27
Yeah, it is really for, for hunting, you know, and you can get your information in several places, but the quality of information you cannot get anywhere else. Yeah. So, well I’m a little biased but I a hundred percent agree with that. So anyway, I think, I think that’s about it Kurt. We were gonna possibly call Aaron, we give him a little grief. He’s of course got a, a huge background in mapping and you and him we’re partners on that hunt odds.com or whatever. But anyway, and kind of go over the mapping stuff. But we’ve been a little bit windy today and we don’t want to give him too much trouble about buying a new truck or trying to find a, a vehicle with four wheels and four wheel drive. You know what I mean? He did text me this week and said I got a VIN number. So means the frame has been stamped in Detroit or wherever it’s been mailed, mail made, he ordered one. He had to see if he takes possession of it. Alright, anything else? Do you wanna add anything else real quick Kurt? Or do you wanna go back to work? Do something, anything else to add, add? What do you think?
00:56:23:27 –> 00:57:32:17
Think, I think you hit it for me a minute ago when you said, hey, if you’ve, maybe if you’ve tried it in the past but you haven’t been back out there recently, you know, whether you’re a member or not, go try this stuff out. It’s a whole new look and feel. I think you’ll, I think guys will really like it. So, okay. Well I’ve learned a lot. I appreciate the ice, ice fishing tips as well. I’m gonna teach my kids and they’re gonna think I’m amazing and knowledgeable. You bet. And I appreciate that, Kurt. I owe it all to you. So thanks guys. See you. All right guy. Thanks. Have a great day. Thanks man. Appreciate it. Okay, well fellas, it’s unbelievable. Real quick, we just, let’s we’re, let’s, let’s finish this thing real quick. We did cover in the January issue Arizona elk and antelope. Adam, you, you mentioned it to begin with. Wyoming sheep, moose, goat, elk and bison. All the information is in there. There’s some changes you’ll wanna check it out. Deadline for, for Arizona is February nine. Yeah, elk and Wyoming is February 1st. The other deadlines are staggered. It’s one of those states that has deadlines that, you know, March 1st and March 31st for by March 1st for Sheep Misco, March 31st for bison. Of course the deer in the antelope we don’t cover in this issue because they’re due June 1st this year. And so we’ll cover that later in the May issue.
00:57:32:17 –> 00:58:50:01
The magazine that always allows us antelope and deer a little bit more susceptible to winter loss and things like that. So if you write something in December, January, it might be a whole lot different in the in May when you, you know, have the chance to, you know, evaluate the winners. Which sometimes this year we’re not in that situation yet, but sometimes Wyoming can be prone to bigger winners. So we put that off and do the antelope and deer a little bit later are a few changes that are definitely noteworthy. I guess probably most notable for Wyoming, if we were to start there in the past the, the point for moose and sheep has not been optional. If you choose to apply for them in the draw as a non-resident and apply for ’em, they will dinging you 150 bucks for those points outta your refund. That’s now an optional thing. I don’t know if they saw a mass exodus, people quitting, applying, missing out on that fees, whatever, or just being nice. I don’t know why. But now you can opt out of that. So for some of you that think that that extra $150 on top of, you know, the application fee, then the two and a half percent on top of what they take from you having to front the tag fees is too excessive and just wanna apply. You can consider doing that for moose and sheep.
00:58:50:08 –> 00:59:52:06
Just make sure you apply for a unit that has random tags. ’cause you’re gonna be in the random draw. If you don’t have enough points to be in the maximum point draw, don’t put in for a tag that has a low enough quota. You know, you gotta have at least four tags for non-residents to, for have one of ’em go in the random draw. So pay attention to that. It’s all spelled out in our tables. So there’s really not very many. Last year was only like four sheep units and five moose units that gave random tags. I’m going from memory but it’s very limited so pay attention to that. So while you mentioned that the elk deadline was February one, we also have the modified date of May 10th. So you can go in and plug and play a little bit and, and option, you know, cha change your op, change the unit selection that you init initiated your application with and whatnot. And so anyway, it gives you an option there as well. It changed that last year. You may remember it was like, yeah, quick turnaround we found out in February if you’re going hunting now you don’t, but if something changes between February 1st and early May and you draw something or your plans change, you can just go withdraw it and do points only in the summer. That’s right. You also gotta do points.
00:59:52:09 –> 01:00:56:23
Even if you apply for elk and deer and antelope right now, you have to remember to go back in the summer and buy your point. They just don’t give it to you like in the past. And that has thought, guys, we’ve heard some people national change and, and we knew it would happen. It’s a natural thing. It it did with, with change comes people who, you know, don’t keep up with the change and, and ended up forgetting to do it. Yeah, I had a max point guy now too, too behind. Yeah, he, he applied. He’s applied, but he didn’t go in the summer and buy his elk point or his deer point. Well he applied in his mind he should get a point. Well they’ve changed that a couple years. Right. So he used to be able to, you know, click the box, you know, pull price elk with preference point option or without and they don’t now you just apply now. But they make everybody go back again. This is for the, the deer and elk. They make everybody go back in later, so, so anyway, Arizona’s out as well. Elk and antelope we cover now we’ll do sheep and deer later. Their application will be due for sheep and deer would be second Tuesday in June. Generally speaking for the last, I don’t know, 20 plus years deadline is February 9th. You can go in and crank on an application there.
01:00:57:03 –> 01:02:02:15
They do have unit changes with regards to the early rifles and early muzzles and switching, rotating a few out to give all the units a little of so to speak and spread out the pressure a little bit there. Anyway, we cover all those things in the publication as well. One thing you’re probably gonna want to go to, you may have gotten an email, if you’re a past applicant of Arizona, you may have gotten an email in the last several weeks about your online username or password being changed and for their huh involuntarily just it was a mandatory change. Yeah. And they tell, they now tell you what your, your new customer ID number is. Yeah. And, and so you have to go, don’t get caught last minute and not be able to go log into your portal and all that. Want to go respond to that email, dig it up, look for, look for it. You may end up having to call ’em, but make sure you can get into your portal and have everything set up there. Part of the reason I bring that up is, or if you’ve never done that, go set up a portal. This is one of those years. Last year was, you know, a pretty good antler growth year for elk. Ended up being very tough during the hunting season.
01:02:02:15 –> 01:03:03:21
Very hot, dry, delayed rutt and all that this year we’re going into the winter fairly dry still too early to clearly tell if it’s a bail out of Arizona situation. We’re not saying that yet, but at least if you have your point guard in place and you apply by the February 9th deadline for elk and something becomes very clear by March, April, may, June, that this is a, this drought has a big grip on it, you’d have an option to pull out if you do, if you have a bunch of points you wanna protect. And we ourselves have used the point court option. Yeah. We just, because we didn’t want to go. Yeah. It wasn’t even necessarily due to antler growth. Yeah. Sometimes you end up drawing other tags, you get too busy, whatever, like Bronson’s saying. And so you do have that option one time and the next time your points will go to zero you no matter what. And so, well, let’s call it two. If you have the loyalty in hunter ed loyalty, meaning you applied for that species for five consecutive years or went down there and took an abbreviated hunter education course, you’ll get a permanent point for doing that for every species. Yeah. So anyway, we just wanted to breeze over that. We’re not gonna crank it out.
01:03:03:21 –> 01:04:11:13
That’s what the member benefits are of joining Epic Outdoors as far as going through unit by unit by unit and really vetting it out heavy. We did want to talk about our publication, we wanted to talk about our website and some of the changes there and then just let you know a few of the brief changes within the publications as well. And so anyways, we’re kind of finishing up here. We do want to throw a shout out to MOA rifles. Super good dudes over there. They know what they’re doing. They’re coming out with some amazing stuff and and whatnot. Dude, they’re awesome. Bronson. We’ve talked about it many times. You’ve got one of their rifles killed a lot of stuff with it. In fact, you even took a heavy gun on one of these hunts and we’re wishing you had o Sheila Kind. It did, yeah. It’s just when you’re packing a little six five PRC mountain type rifle, which I have from them. And then you pack one of your, our bigger guns, which we have, which are awesome. You just notice a difference. You really do. And I was missing it at times. You know, it, I gotta spread the love between the guns. I mean, I don’t know, I just kind of, I, I don’t like to see one of my guns sitting there unused if it’s a wazoo gun.
01:04:11:16 –> 01:05:27:03
I have guns collecting dust, don’t get me wrong, that are sentimental guns, early college days sitting in there I’m not gonna get rid of. But the guns I use a lot. I, I rotate a little bit based on the species or the hunt. But anyway, yeah, great. Make great guns. MOA rifles. Awesome. So anyway, I just ordered one of their bipods too. Did you? Yep. On their website. Easy to, easy to order. So they sell all kinds of different knickknack And that’s from, from Rugged Ridge Outdoors. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, m moa rifles.com go there, check ’em out. If you need a rifle, give ’em a holler. Another of a shout out we want to give is to Vortex Optics. They’re another one of our partners here at Epic Outdoors. We’re also optics dealers and Vortex is one of the brands that we are dealers for here at Epic Outdoors. Call us for pricing. If you’re looking for any optic, whether it be Vortex or anything else, call us before you purchase somewhere else for pricing. We’d be glad to give you an option there to consider it a great deal. But speaking specifically of Vortex, great partner of ours. We’ve actually got our cover winners for every cover that we get. Get a pair of 18 by 56 UHD vinyls as well. That’s right. The Razor UHD razors and appreciate Vortex being a partner of ours. You know, you can check ’em [email protected].
01:05:27:17 –> 01:06:45:06
A lot of guys will go on there ourselves as well as we’ll actually consult with optics buyers over the phone. They have a great, they’ve got all their makes and models. You can see all the different various rifle verticals, which are very helpful online. Compare the specifications, you know, height weights of scopes or different things like that. And, and then call us when you are, you know, a lot of guys will call us and say they know the scope they want by going to Vortex’s website. So check it [email protected]. So I like it. Good quality products right there. All right, anything else boys? We good? Let’s see, we do wanna throw a shout out to ourselves. How about that? Let’s give us a little love here. We do have our epic hunt giveaway. We’re cranking out some hunts, some of the best hunts that we can find. Adam and I and John specifically hand select these hunts. We’ve got Yukon Stone, we’ve got an Alaska doll, Nevada deer, including the Nevada 2 31 deer tag, the Akima Reservation, elk hunt. I mean these are hunts. You just can’t go out and buy necessarily Lion, incredible Lion hunt, Texas barbery sheep as well as a a wolf hunt for two guys. And then we’re giving away an incredible amount of optics. We’re talking $13,000. You can go to page 14 and 15 for more information in our January issue. You should have it any day.
01:06:45:06 –> 01:07:58:25
If you don’t have it already, it’s online as well. You can go log in epic outdoors.com, go check it out. You can also purchase tickets online, epic outdoors.com. You can call us, whatever. If you refer a new member, you’re gonna get a free ticket into one of these drawings for any hunt that you choose. The new member will get a ticket and you’ll get a ticket for referring them. So anyway, tell the world about us, especially if they’re good dudes. We like, we like hardcore hunters in the Epic outdoor service. And so anyway, tell your buddies about it and you’ll get a ticket into the giveaway. Yeah, and if you’re a podcast listener and like listening to us, but haven’t joined for whatever reason, it’s a great time to do it. You’ll get a ticket in the hat for one of those hunts if you do it right now, up until February 28th. That’s the deadline to enter this membership drive. And you know, great time to join too, because again, it’s application season, it’s kicking off. Get the first magazine of the year at the January magazine. You won’t miss State a state issue, which is the ones we published from January to June. So give us a call, either go [email protected] or give us a call at (435) 263-0777. We’re here Monday to Friday. Sometimes in between and early or really, really late. In John’s case, you set a ticket and a hat.
01:07:59:03 –> 01:08:24:07
And I just reminded me, we got a box of hats. We got a bot. We sell hats here at Epic Outdoors. If you need hats or decals for your truck or whatever, let’s tell the world about us. Throw a decal on there, huh? Yeah. Skull of a deer. What’s wrong with that? Yeah, that’s, that’s what I’m talking about. Anyway, you can call us for those too. So it’s all right, everybody have a good one. Enjoy the publication. Apply and draw. Let’s do this.
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