Chasing Tags and Antelope. This week we spent some time in Nevada chasing antelope with members of the Epic Outdoors Staff. Wyatt Bowles and Devin Archibald both took 80″+ antelope. Although we have downplayed the difficulty of antelope hunts in the past the hunts werent without their challenges. As hunters we learn to roll with the punches, adapt, and adjust to circumstances. That is exactly what we had to do in these situations. When all was said and done we came home with two great bucks. Devin is in the office and shares his story with us all.
Disclaimer: this text was produced through an automated transcription service and likely contains errors. Please listen to the original audio for exact content.
00:00:01:12 –> 00:01:12:09
The only thing that kept going through my mind is Jason saying, these are track chasers. Track chasers. I’m like, no, they’re not. I’m looking at something. Yeah. And Chris is like, what the heck is that? And it’s an antelope bed in the road. Anything to do with Western big games. Welcome to the Epic Outdoors Podcast, powered by Under Armour. Hey everybody. Jason Carter. Adam Bronson and Devon. Devon, how are you? Good. Pretty good. Hey, you’ve been in the field and killing shits, smashing blood on the hand. A smash. Do crash and grab. We got a text saying, I’m headed home. And then two hours later there’s a dead antelope. Right. Wasn’t there a text saying you guys gave up? Oh no. We found this a couple hours later. No. That he said, I’m gonna pull it up. Yeah. Something weird happened with the text. I asked him about that. I says, yeah, the texts weren’t quite right. He missed a buck earlier in the day. We passed a buck that we called Mad Cow. Mad Cow. Yes. We passed up Mad Cow. And a couple hours later you found a traditional looking, great looking buck. Awesome. I said it was a good thing we passed that one. ’cause yeah, we found another one a couple hours later. Well, first off, I guess we wanna apologize a little bit too, because it’s been a couple weeks and we know that we’ve tried. It’s not ill intended.
00:01:12:13 –> 00:02:23:29
We haven’t really been killing a bunch of stuff everywhere, you know? And so too busy to do a podcast. It’s just been things. Well, Carter like what? Couple big, we had it on the schedule. We did last week on Wednesday, I believe. And then the rains came when Carter and the, the floods came, came when Carter started, came up. The rain came, came and the floods came up. Carter’s home at his house hitting SOS on his in reach, dude. So yeah. So Jana, luckily at my camp trailer, I get a little cell service and at four 20 my time am Yeah, she’s on the phone. Get here now. The window well’s full of water. And I’m like, are you crapping me? It’s dry. It’s not even raining in town. No’s. It’s not even raining in town. Not, yeah. Even, even, it didn’t even rain at your house. Didn’t even rain at your house basically. No, no, no. But it rained on the mountain. Five or six inches. Yeah, it rained on the mountain. And so I got here and then pretty soon she’s like, there’s nothing you can do to go back to hunting. That’s a good, good gal right there. And I’m like, no, I’m not going back hunting. And sure enough, what, 10 o’clock, we got another deluge giant, whatever. And it ends up that what? Coal creek, all these canal systems that divert split. Right.
00:02:23:29 –> 00:03:40:03
We, Cedar Valley is, is a floodplain, let’s just say it. Cedar Valley’s a floodplain. And we have big creative canals to take the water away from houses and in and around houses, through the through town. My canal took on all the water ’cause the other canal was plugged, plugged up. And then it broke. And then it broke by my house. And there’s people, there’s, there’s one set of houses between me and the canal. And they took, they became the creek. And my dirt ber along my house became the creek, the side of the creek. And it was three, four feet deep running like a river with pine trees in it, pine trees, lots of them. Hundreds of them logs everywhere. And, and then I get it in the yard. We, what do we, what do we have? Bronson you helped, you put, helped put the sandbags. Four or five, maybe five sandbags tall. And that creek came to the bottom of the top. Sandbag about three, two and a half, three feet. That’s against your window. Well, the window wells have three feet of sandbags above them. And they dang near didn’t hold it out. Yeah. I don’t know how they did. And I’m pumping from wind, from window well to window. Well keep anyway, somehow didn’t get any water in the basement. I don’t know how it left a creek bed in my yard. Yard and everybody else’s yard three feet deep of sludge.
00:03:40:10 –> 00:04:55:15
And it’s nasty crap. They said at one point there was 500,000 gallons per minute coming down. Coal Creek. Yeah. It looked at, it was a raging, raging mess underneath Main Street. You know, Brad’s, did you guys know Conex boxes float? No, I did not. Yeah, they do. Those rail car. Yeah, the rail car boxes. They float. So people that have ’em, they were floating. And then, you know, our, our buddy Jerry had built like a, she a little lean too over it, over it and it with doors on the end. So I mean it’s, it looks like a shed. Yeah. And it floated and freaking roofed the roof freak, tweaked it, you know, with all his tools and everything in it. Big heavy stuff. It’s floating inside a shed. Yeah. Banging against the walls. That’s right. That’s right. And so were cars, cars were floating, hammering other cars. Like these guys around me, you have collectible cars and race engines and, and it was a CNC machine. Like it’s, it’s, it was serious. And it’s, it didn’t seem like, I mean the water’s a problem, but it’s like, what is it? Half water, half silt. Oh. But it’s, if water came and went, everybody’s happy. Right. Nobody likes it. But it’s, what it left was a creek bed. It was just unbelievable mud that just rattlesnakes fish. What about rattlesnakes and your fish in your yard? Carter rattles. So there was fish. Fish float fish.
00:04:55:21 –> 00:06:10:01
So we have a live, there’s a pond next to me, another gal guy have a, have a pond with thousands thousand, I don’t know. And they’re like the, the gold big giant goldfish. And then they’ve got all kinds of like little stuff, you know, perch and little stuff that’s now throughout, proliferating throughout Cedar Valley. Oh dude. It was, they swam by our boots in my driveway. I mean, literally in the mud swimming. I’m there in Crocs and barefoot and they’re snakes. Yeah. And then you found a rattlesnake. No, you, you just showed me a dead. Well, anyway, yeah, guy found it stuck in the mud and heading all like nobody had even smashed it. And here we are, we got it in my trash can a rattlesnake. And we don’t have rattle. Didn’t know how far away it came from. Yeah, it came down the river. It floated down the river. So anyway, guys, a big curve. That’s what I’ve been dealing with. Like, so I even archery hunting. I went from archery hunting a nice buck against to damage control. Good significant hunters that are out in the field to letting them have the buck to themselves. And I’ve just been running a skid steer and trying to muck out. So great. Anyway, it, that’s what I’ve been dealing with. Bronson, what do you, what have you guys been doing? Devin, Bronson? Nothing that extreme I can tell you that.
00:06:10:01 –> 00:07:19:13
No, but like you’ve, your kid boys had a tag. Yeah. You guys have been out. We did go out on the archery general last week in Utah. Had a fun time and had one of those classic six or seven hour weights in the thick trees oak where you see a butt go in, you know, he is better than a 40, 50 yard circle. But after six or seven hours he blows out and your boy finds out that’s, that’s bow hunting. And luckily he’s can’t wait to go back. I mean, you can go either way in a situation like that. Anyway. Did pick him up leftover, turn back, whatever you wanna call him. Antelope tag in Nevada. We’ll be going out there this weekend. Now first come first step program. First come f Yeah, it works. It works. Yeah. Archibald Archibald. You, you pick. Tell us how, tell us how it works. Well, you’ve gotta be quick on, quick on the click, that’s for sure. Quick on the click. I like it. Hey, that’s a tongue twister. You came off well though. If you want a smash and grab, you gotta be quick on the click. I was lucky you find a few, but you hadn’t even looked in your unit. Keep that in mind. You hadn’t even just one afternoon, you got your tag like two or three days before the hunt started. I don’t remember the day before. Yeah, I got it the day before.
00:07:20:00 –> 00:08:25:00
But yeah. Anyway, we just went over there and looked over a bunch of bucks. Yeah, you and Chris got a good clean kill went that time and then Yep. Were there a day and a half, right? Yeah, a day and a half. We, we stayed a day and a half. Spent the night out there. Yeah. In our trucks. Oh, I skipped, I mean, covered a lot of it. You didn’t kill at that point. No, we covered a lot of it. Rolled, rolled up on a truck on fire. Yeah. Is that the time when that happened? Yeah. We rolled up on a truck and they doors were open, the hood was open and we asked ’em if they were okay. Smelled like gasoline spew and fueled bad. And the guys smelled to put the gas lines back together. I’m thinking I’m running out through the brush. Yeah. Well it, they had, they had just driven on those roads that were overgrown, I guess. And they, the weeds caught on fire. The weeds and sage up under your weeds got stuck between the probably the the skid plate. Skid plate and up underneath your diff and has all that pocket probably. We get talking to him and I’m thinking he, I told wife guy Chris, I said, we probably booked him on this one Epic outdoors member. Sure enough. We did. We did. We did. Yeah. He’s a good, good bread. Shared a kipper snack on the tailgate.
00:08:25:04 –> 00:09:28:19
Yep. Pepper snack. They are amazing in the hills service. God, they’re terrible at home. I’ve never ate one at home. Oysters. No. Oh, dude, I’ve, they’re amazing. Out in the hills are amazing. We tried to cook ’em a desert dog all oysters. But they were, they were going to Ely so well. But anyway, then you came back, went to work for a day or a minute and then went back and Yep. Went back, hit Buck. Me and Chris saw a buck that had a, he went up and then straight out and he was on one saw only one side. I don’t know if bugs were biting him or what. That’s when we tried the decoy. We walked like a, we think this thing’s like 1200 yards walked. Remember we went to the craft yards. I remember you went to the craft store to get the ru kind of some wooden dolls. Wooden dolls for for the decoy, right? Yeah. It didn’t work. Joanne’s Joanne’s crafts. Yeah. Named him Mad Cow. Yeah, he was. I don’t, because it’s crazy bugs were biting him or what. But he was like jumping around like, like spinning. Anyways, he runs 10 miles. I mean, he saw us and the cat, the decoy and he’s gone. Literally, he, I’ve never seen an antelope do it. He, he ran and ran and ran. We can see 10 miles Wow. Of flats.
00:09:28:28 –> 00:10:28:25
And he just, we watched run until he was outta sight all they’re all doing that. Anyways, so we go back. You guys are getting me spooked for this weekend. Well boy, sounds like it makes sound a little punt. Sound hard. The only thing that kept going through my mind is Jason saying, these are truck chasers. Truck chasers. I’m like, no they’re not. These ones are not chasing your truck. They’re not chasing our truck. I wish they would. It just depends. That same goat later on, Mike Chase your truck. You’d never know. The same goat later on bed at 150 yards in the road. We’re we’re going along and I’m like looking at this black thing and you can tell because it’s got a lopp more. What the heck is that? We, we, we should tell the story. We should tell the story of how we got to that point. ’cause it’s kind of funny. So we come back yesterday. Oh yeah. And we’re, we decided we’re gonna sit on water in the morning. If we don’t, if we don’t get ’em, we’re gonna sit on water. Don’t come. So we get in there and we actually see a really nice buck and he runs, like, runs, runs off kind of toward the water. So we’re thinking, all right, let’s go sit the water. So we sit there for, what was it, 27 minutes? 27 minutes. We’re like, we can’t do this.
00:10:29:01 –> 00:11:32:00
But we could see the buck way out there in a mirage running all over. Yeah. Just running Just a mirage though. Look 10 feet tall. It’s like, Chris, what are we doing here? This is a snake infested. Like, and it’s hot. No shape. Yeah. Yeah. So we went and got in the truck. We, you know, and, and then we’re I, well I’m thinking let’s just, instead of sitting here and melting, let’s just drive around. We can see ’em for miles. So we might as well just go chase ’em around and see if we can get lucky. And we’re coming down this road and you can now you, there’s mad cow. I’m looking at something. Yeah. And Chris is like, what the heck is that? And it’s an antelope beded in the road and it’s the mad cow one. And he’s, he’s not as big as we thought. Really? Yeah. He’s just unique. He’s cool. Yeah. He goes up and goes straight. Right. Like a kicker. And I’m thinking he’s got a kicker, you know, he’s got a kicker. Yeah. So his whole horn is folded over onto one side. Side on one side. Yeah. He’s probably diseased. ’cause he, and he let right up to him. Yeah. 200 yards. The same one that yesterday ran for 10 or last week. Oh yeah. Like we had shot 20 shots at him. Yeah. Just running. But it was just funny. It was funny.
00:11:32:05 –> 00:12:30:22
I was, when we rolled up, I, I, I’m thinking this can’t be an antelope sitting there because that, that same antelope had seen us from 2000 yards and ran. Geez. But now he’s just sitting in there, in, in the road with his head, literally in the middle of the road. He is just sitting looking at us. And so we, we went to another area where there’s some actual hills in broken country instead of like a flat valley. Yeah. And it worked out. We were there for 20 minutes. We’re down. Yeah. Kill a buck, kill a great, I blasted him up. He’s feeding alone, watching these group of dos in another buck and maybe, maybe a Buckhead. We’ll see he was, the key was you saw him before he saw you, right? Yeah. We were able to walk down a wash cut instead of being out on the flats. Walk down a wash, hop up, pop up on a hill. A perfectly little noob. Smashed him 411 yards laser beam. And you know what’s funny? I shoot, I mean it’s, I had to hold for wind a little bit, but it’s like perfect 12 inches. And I shoot and there’s just poof, you should see the dust. I mean, and it’s only a tight, it’s a tiny bullet. So I was surprised.
00:12:30:22 –> 00:13:33:12
Bullet pass, pass through, he thought, and I’m thinking, and I look and the thing runs over and then he slows up and he just poop tips over dead. But Chris couldn’t see it. He ran outta my field of view and I’m thinking, oh no, here we go. He turned around and look at Chris. 12 miles, here we go. And his face, you could tell he was like, here we go. When you’re on a camera, that first shot is like, you get set up, you get everything. It gets perfect. But you hit record. Perfect focus. No, no jiggle nothing. If there’s a miss, it’s then the pressure pressure’s on ’cause they’re running and you have to follow ’em. If they stop, you have to stop. You have to be on the right one if there’s other animals. And so it’s, that’s what, that’s what makes you you irreplaceable, Chris. You want that first shot to hit. Because if you don’t, it’s, and you, and you, you want to make sure you hit chord so you get the, the shot. Oh, you missed that, right? I missed that part. Yeah. On your own. I stopped the video, went to start it again and I apparently didn’t stop. So you would’ve had two angles or whatever. Phone scope versus regular video. Yeah. Now I just have it in my Bronson. We missed all the fun. We some fun. Yeah, we did. We did.
00:13:33:13 –> 00:14:50:21
But hopefully we’re having a little bit of our own here coming up. So you’ve got your boys picked up a turned backer, you’re gonna maybe home with him on 31, you know, just, you know, minimum points. Why not? But he’s got a full-time job and I’m, so he is kind of weekends now and Yeah. Yeah. Well the weekends coming. We got some stuff to do this weekend. Hopefully we have, we’ll have a good time. Some more stories next week. Well, we mentioned a minute ago. I’m gonna give him another shout out because it’s that time here. If you’re out hunting for yourself or a buddy, make sure you got a phone scope. ’cause if you don’t video it didn’t happen. That’s right. Just gotta hit record. Hit hit record. But check ’em out at www.phoneskope.com. Phone scope with a k.com. Check out the input, whatever optic, whatever spotting scope you got as well as phone. Yeah. A little adapter for that. Yeah. Little adapter also, your phone phone cases are all different. So Janet tells me, Janet tells me, I bought a phone scope yesterday for herself. She bought a phone scope, she went online, went online, bought a phone scope. She’s got all her own gear, backpack, all tripod, tripod, everything. She decided she needed a phone scope. And so anyway, I, I haven’t asked her what adapter she got. Yeah. I don’t know what spotting scope it.
00:14:50:21 –> 00:16:02:00
Well it’s probably, it’s probably the SRO 95. I I, you know, with, I don’t know. Well find out. 30 to 70 par might, I might be looking for my spotter. Well anyway, get a full scope. Next one. Give a quick shout out to Triple S Polaris here in Cedar City, Utah, Southern Utah. But they are willing to talk with you, put something together for you whether you want a factory or stock version of a four-wheeler, side by side, whatever. Or if you wanna put a little bit of thought and into something that you want to customize, we’ve done one of those for, for the Epic crew. And if you wanna put that together, you can put, get another $250 off your next purchase and $250 credit toward epic optics. And in-store credit, I have to call them for details at Triple S. Polaris 4 3 5 8 6 5 0 1 0 0. Colton Francis, and the guys ready to super good. Get to work. Put something together for a machine for y’all. Colton’s a good dude. And they specialize in customizing vehicles. Yeah, that’s what they do. That’s what they do best. I went over there other, the other day just to see what they had. And it’s, don’t go as big as you want to go. There’s one, they had this, oh, just that one drill into our parking lot. That stick, that machine was out front.
00:16:02:02 –> 00:17:14:11
And I swear that thing is like five feet off the ground and it has, it had 39 inch, 39 inch tires on a razor. Looked like a miniature monster truck. Yeah, it did. Yeah. Pretty, pretty fun. But they can I say that because they can literally do whatever you want. Yeah. So if you want it to, you can dream it. Specialize for hunting ice cream. It, they can set it up for you. Yeah. Col. And, and the guys, they know what they’re doing. Of course, our epic rig rig has been seen everywhere. Bronson, it’s, John’s had it all over Cedar Mountain. I I’ve had it out in the desert and it, it runs, I mean, this sucker runs, but anyway, and John knows that John’s, I don’t know how many miles that thing has on now, but it wouldn’t surprise me. He’s got a few Yeah. Up on Pengu up here on top. So anyway, he’s been, he’s been looking around. He’s got for some elk, he’s got a great elk tag. So anyway, also wanna throw a shout out to St. James Sporting properties. Super good guy. Blaine St. James. He does a great job at finding properties and also selling properties. He’s a hunter himself. So he specializes in, of course he’d sell to anybody. But anyway, sells to hunters and knows what he’s looking for, knows the landowner tag systems, knows how to, knows what people are looking for.
00:17:14:12 –> 00:18:32:27
And so if you’re, if you’re a hunter and you’re looking for a hunting property, Blaine’s the first guy I’d call. So anyway, give him a holler 8 7 7 3 5 4 7 2 4 7 or you can email him info at sj sj sporting properties.com. That’s the best way to write it. [email protected]. And you can obviously go to sj sporting properties.com to see what’s available. So anyway, super good guy, Adam and I, we, we’ve known him for years, forever. Years and years and years. Forever. Yeah. I saw him do a post on his Instagram the other night. I think he killed a Roosevelt Bull in California, wasn’t it? Yeah. And that’s 28 of 29 of his North American 29. So he’s, I think he’s needs, I think he said a sick of tel, was it it was his last one. Yep. Yeah, he, so he is gonna go up there and he text me right in the middle of when I had water in the window. Well, and I I did he text him back? Yeah. Any I left you out. Anybody just give a little bit of a break. But anyway, at at least you have an excuse. Yeah. Some people don’t, sometimes I don’t Also throw a shout out to MOA rifles, super good people [email protected]. Bob Beck, he’s of course he’s been killing stuff left and right. Killed an absolute monster buck up there in Oregon. Congratulations. Bob knows what he’s doing again. Bronson, you’ve got one of his rifles.
00:18:32:27 –> 00:19:49:00
Yeah, we’re gonna take that out this weekend. My boy’s antelope. Little Sheila’s gonna get a chance to shine. So another Nevada antelope going down. It’s awesome. He he got that tag turn back on. A turn back. Yeah. How cool is that? That’s good. What a great opportunity. These, these antelope tags are not easy to get, dude. We’re talking after 15 years, you got a one or 2% shot depending on the unit. And you know, you can’t always predict good antelope years, but by most accounts this year, Nevada’s growing some great bucks. There’s a lot of great bucks. Hit the ground in Nevada for antelope this year. The deer or an deer. Deer suck antelope for the most part. Southern end especially. Well northern end will be all right. Yeah, yeah. But anyway, so yeah, hopefully we’ve got another quick report like first of next week. Anyway, MOA rifles.com 5 4 1 5 2 6 18 20 half inch. MOA guaranteed. Alright, let’s talk real quick. We’ve got, just to give an optics plug. We’ve got BTX, binos rifle scopes, spotting scopes, everything in stock that you could want. We, we’ve had a busy couple weeks. A lot of people, obviously the hunts are becoming front and center for a lot of people and a lot of people, I guess until you start thinking about packing your gear a week before your hunt or two weeks before your hunt, you’re like, ah, I need a new pair of ubs.
00:19:49:00 –> 00:21:06:28
Well, if you do give us a call, we’ve got a lot of stuff in stock. We’ve, with Coronavirus doing a lot of disruption and supply chains. We, we aren’t perfect. We don’t have a perfect inventory, but we’ve gotten very aggressive to do, to big orders to anticipate those last minute calls that people have. Hey, I need a new pair of range. Find a buyouts. I ran over my spot in scope with my side by side. I need something. Whatever it is, we’ve heard everything. Trust us. And so give us a call 4 3 5 2 6 3 0 7 7 7 if you need something. Either in a pinch or if you’re just ready to, you know, bite it off. If you’ve got Biden bucks that you’re coming to show up in your mailbox. We take those. We do. We take the Biden bucks. There’s credit cards out there. Biden’s name on ’em. There is no, yeah, there is. Wow. Well probably Kamala got her name on a few. All right. So anyway, there is, we do sell a lot of optics here at Epic Outdoors. We appreciate everybody’s support. We also have the best pricing. So give us a holler because we sell a lot of optics. We also ha have a lot in inventory. So, you know, we sold some 3,200 dot coms this morning. Bronson, I mean we’ve, there’s better’s, Riflescope, ht, Riflescope, vortex. It’s ro just a busy time of year. It was that guy’s third scope. Same one really.
00:21:07:05 –> 00:22:08:19
He’s liking them. Yeah. He loves it. Sold the fu We sold a bunch of fusions. Got them out the door today. I mean there’s just, there’s a lot going on here. Of course we’ve, we’re here to, we’re out in the field a lot, but we also have a great staff here. Somebody’s here to help you. Yeah. Sometimes. Not always on a Friday. We’re still kind of in the summer. Mow give our ladies, you know, a lot of, some of their time off in the, in the summer, even though school’s getting going again, that’ll change here in the next month or so. But just keep that in mind. Monday through Thursday for the, for the time being here the next month or so. It’s probably that that’s all what it’s gonna look like. Yep. I I it, i i it, I I can’t wait to hear the stories after next week. We got a lot Bronson, you and I are slammed. Yeah. It’s almost like the, the acquisition of tags is more than half the kill for me. I love having tags, getting a tag and then Yeah, then you gotta make good on ’em. Yeah, that’s right. In sometimes tough conditions, you know? Yeah. Especially in some of the deer in the southern state. Our Utah general. Not as exciting as it was a year ago. Just not in dry year. Hard to get excited and you know, we got plenty of seasons.
00:22:08:19 –> 00:23:13:07
Some of us got dedicated hunter or you know, kids that got rifle tags that count on every season. So they go on and on and on. And sometimes you want ’em to end. But I like those short seasons. ’cause you have to quit I bet. Until you can’t even feel guilty. You don’t even feel guilty. Dedicated a hunter. I got till October 31st. Yeah. And you feel guilty every day. You’re not out there. It’s true. This morning I thought about it. Yeah. But, but New Mexico has the five day seasons. When the fifth, sixth day you’re done, kind of just go hunt your guts out. You could do anything for five days. You can. Well, pretty much. Yeah. Pretty much. Pretty much. You could. I don’t know if I could to chase that antelope for five days. Yeah, that’s pushing it. Oh. Oh, it was a good story. I love it. That’s great. Buck. You guys did good. Congratulations. Turnback tags work. Anybody that’s looking for something, there’s an over the counter in Colorado, there’s some turnbacks in Colorado. You’re gonna see turn backs and Nevada all fall along if it’s, you know, within 14 days of a season opening, they just throw ’em on the web. It’s a highly competitive process from not, and just like Colorado now, they announce when they go, they announce the day before. Here’s the tags. The next day they go on sell roughly around 11:00 AM on a Wednesday.
00:23:14:02 –> 00:23:55:07
And it, there’s a lot of luck involved, but, but there’s tags. And as other hunts get within that 30 day window and pass, you’re gonna see more of the muzz loader and rifle tags come available in Colorado. The stunt gets closer. So if you have a desk job or have the ability to sit and watch a computer on some of those key days, you might get lucky. Quick on the click quick. I can’t say that. I’m not gonna click on the click, do a smash and grab. That’s all right everybody. Let us know what you’re doing out there, what you’re killing. We got [email protected]. We wanna see we’re getting loaded daily with that, with a lot of archery antelope and deer hunters. So elk hunter’s starting too. So good luck to everybody out there and see you in the field.
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