Hunting a New Unit For The First Time. In this episode of the Epic Outdoors Podcast we talk about hunting a new unit for the first time. There is a lot that we can do to increase our chances for success before the hunt and as we arrive in a new area. Time is critical so anything we can do to gain knowledge beforehand is beneficial. We talk about the details of learning a unit before you get there and then what we personally do when we arrive. From E scouting to glassing we talk about it all. We also call Adam Bronson in the field and get his opinion on the subject.
Disclaimer: this text was produced through an automated transcription service and likely contains errors. Please listen to the original audio for exact content.
00:00:00:22 –> 00:01:16:12
Going to brand new units is scary. And then once you come out here, how do you do it? You’re moving, you’re, you’re checking out new things. You’re gonna learn a lot in five days. A lot of deer migrations are that way. Just there’s something in their brain that tells ’em to leave. Anything to do with Western big Games. Welcome to the Epic Outdoors Podcast. Powered by Under Armour. Hey everybody. Jason Carter. Adam Bronson is not here. Where are you Adam? I think he’s in Idaho, but probably doesn’t want us to tell everybody anyway. John, Josh, this is gonna Chris one. Oh, we come in for one day and you guys hook up the mic. What’s the deal? Chris? You can never lay off. No, I keep getting all these messages that people wanting to hear from you so well, anyway, we wanna thank Under Armour. We appreciate their support. All they do for us here at Epic Outdoors, they support us in everything we do. So anyway, go to ua.com, check out some of their stuff. I’ve been wearing some of their new boots. How about Josh? We even got the insulated ones today. Yeah. Tried those on. I actually used ’em in New Mexico. And pretty good uninsulated though, on uninsulated. Yeah, I did like that other one that, that one we got. It’s a little more stiffer. Feels a little more secure around your ankle and stuff. On you’re hiking Charger Raider. Yeah. Yeah, that’s right.
00:01:16:29 –> 00:02:33:15
Charged rate with the, well these new ones have the 600 grams in ’em. So anyway, it’d be pretty cool to check ’em out. They do feel better. They’ve, they feel great. There’s a lot of support there and stability. So they’re putting new product on their website all the time. So keep checking back if you’re after something’s in particular, keep checking and it’ll show up. I like it. All right. Well let’s see. John, what do we’ve been talking about? Maybe we’re gonna be at the Hunt Expo. Yeah, how about that? Yeah, hunt expo.com. Be at the Hunt Expo. Get your, get your hotel rooms. Now we even had a little bit of a concern that Covid might, you know, cause it not to happen, but we’ve been assured pretty much it’s gonna happen. It’s a go. Yeah. So here in Utah we don’t put up with government overreach, right? That’s right. In fact, even if we have to wear 14 masks, we’re gonna put on this show today. My wife just called and she’s at it at the store and she’s like, some lady from California’s in front of me in the line and she’s just complaining like, I can’t believe all you people are, are not wearing masks and you’re not considerate of other people. And she said, don’t leave California. She said it. You’re what? So, alright, so this is Jim. Yes. So Gin’s French and they’re very frank.
00:02:34:03 –> 00:03:43:01
Remember Jen was explaining, she’s like in France, like, if you’re fat, we say you’re fat. Or if that outfit doesn’t look good on you, we say, you know, that outfit doesn’t look good on you. Yeah. They’re very direct. If you’re America, you guys are fake. You’ll tell somebody it looks good on you, even when it doesn’t. So picture gin, a French gal telling a gal to go back to California. Yeah. Or to stay in California. Pretty funny. It is. It is funny. And she comes from a socialist country, which you’d think she’d be, she’s the opposite. She’s so, she doesn’t believe in it. Conservative. Oh really? Oh my gosh. She’s, she’s more conservative than I’m, is it because of the health? She’s She was involved in the healthcare. Yeah. And just everything, everything there. She just, you know, she’s like, socialism sucks. Really? Yeah. And people who have really actually lived it and then don’t have to live it anymore, realize, wow, this is a better life. Well we know a lot of Canadians that are, I mean, you get in a year long waiting list to have a surgery procedure done or something. So they just come to the States. Yep. Kind of crazy. Everything’s covered, but it’s crappy service, you know. So Jim in a fridge accent, accent saying, tells her to go back to California. Go back to ca. My favorite. Do you have any other fun stories?
00:03:43:11 –> 00:04:56:05
’cause she’s, she’s full of up. Oh yeah, she’s pretty fi She’s pretty f she’s any nothing else. She’s fiery. She says it just like, just, just like it is. So, hey. Gotta like it. All right. Well Josh, you talked about elk in New Mexico and that was a brand new unit. And I kind of think, you know, Chris, you came up with this subject is, and, and it’s ’cause you deal with our Instagram and social media, by the way, epic. Epic outdoors, epic hunt, epic optics, whatever is run by Chris. We appreciate that Chris. And so anything you see out there is posted by Chris. And of course he’ll get to you with your questions and things. And he also gets the request for the podcasts. And so Chris mentioned, well, and, and it’s this, this time of year we’re all getting ready and we’re all on the verge of going our separate ways for a while. We’re gonna go second, third, fourth season, Colorado. We’ve got Idaho tags going right now. And so I just thought it would be helpful if we talked about going to a unit that you’ve never been to before, how you approach it, how you get started, and then what you do once you get there. And I figured it’d be great, especially since Jason, you’re hunting multiple units that I know nothing about, you know, nothing about as far as far as having that.
00:04:56:05 –> 00:06:03:13
And I complain why I never kill the biggest animal in the I and I do complain about it. I’m tired of it. I want the biggest stuff and, and it’s hard when you’re going to a brand new unit. But I think part of, you know, going to brand new units is scary. The bottom line, it there, there’s a lot of apprehension in the world of, you know, especially we talk to guys about Colorado every year. Hey, you know, you can go on this zero or one point unit or whatever. I talked to a guy just barely and you can hear it in their voice just like, okay, but you know, they wanna know more. And, and so people are attracted to units that we’ve hunted personally or or whatever. And we also have the member experience program of a list of guys who’ve hunted the places that you’re gonna be going. But I guess I was just growing up learning new units. I just grew up with it. So it’s kind of second nature. But maybe we talk about some of these, it’s, you know, Chris, you’ve been a new unit. We all here in the room have been to new units and what all that entails here in the west. Just going west for Easterners is nerve wracking. And then once you come out here, how do you do it right? How do you do it start to finish?
00:06:04:15 –> 00:07:07:18
Josh kind of was starting in on yours, picking on you a little bit, but New Mexico, you went and hunt a brand new elk unit. You only have five days to make it happen. You don’t have an extra five days to Prec scout or, and and Jana loves it when I use the word prec. So I’ve just threw it in there because she just like, no scouting means prec. You don’t say prec scout, but I don’t care. We prec scout around here so you don’t have, you know, a whole month to devote to it, so to speak. So what do you do? Yeah. And especially with that hunt, you know, I have big aspirations to get out there early. You’re gonna go two days early, take at least one whole day. Because I feel like when you go to a new unit, it takes at least a day. Because we were talking earlier, you can look at it on map all you want. You can sit and angle it to see the 3D version all you want. But really, until you physically see on Google Earth, yeah, Google Earth or on X, whatever, but until you physically get there and see it, it, you know, you just kinda have to wrap your brain around it. Okay, where does this road go? How does this go? You can look at, on a map and say, okay, here’s our boundary.
00:07:07:18 –> 00:08:13:12
And it runs up this big ridge around that in New Mexico and, and just eyeballing, I’m like, okay, the boundary runs up there. Well look at all that good country. Well we hiked up in there. Yeah, all that good country was in the other unit. And so we kind of wasted a little bit of time hiking up in there. There wasn’t as much to hunt up in there as we thought. Half of what you thought. Yeah. And, and part of that too was my fault. I learned a lesson to sometimes when I get on an OnX or something like that, I’ll, I’ll leave it on a satellite, satellite mode and I’m like, if I would’ve just thrown that sucker into topo just to to topo mode, I could have seen like that, that it wouldn’t have been in there the boundary. So yeah, it would’ve, it makes much more sense. So learn to read that kind of information first because you think it’s gonna be all in there. But anyway, you just have to almost take a whole day just to kind of wrap your brain around where this road goes, what direction it is, how it looks, that kind of thing. And then once you get there, that’s the thing that changes so much is the conditions when you get there. You can’t tell what the feed looks like in a map. Right. And what that feed looks like from last year to five years ago.
00:08:13:12 –> 00:09:23:06
Maybe you hunted it even five years ago. Whatever the amount of information that can change from year to year, you almost have to go there and just physically see it and figure it out. And, and unfortunately sometimes we find ourselves into a situation where you’re spending multiple days doing that. Unfortunately, you know, I know when we went to Nevada earlier this year, you get all the information you can, you hit some spots and, and I learned a valuable lesson there as to those deer would rather eat weeds than eat bitter brush. You know, the most beautiful bitter brush country in the world. And it’s, it’s no deer. Oh, they no deer because dump a coyote. Remember Josh? How far was it? Eight 15. That’s right. Alright, keep going. But I just remember, I, I went to the place where there was weeds. I didn’t see a lot of deer at first, but I’m just like, there, there’s chuckers out here, you know? Yeah. What am I doing here? So then, and I didn’t see a lot of deer, so I moved over and then I took in a lot of information. You talk to locals and the locals all say, you gotta go here, you gotta go high, you gotta, you know. Yeah. Well some of their experience I actually found out was old information, you know? Yeah. Kind of information maybe they used growing up and they just kind of went there.
00:09:23:24 –> 00:10:24:21
But I switched and went over and I was like, oh, this is the ticket, you know, bitter brush to your armpits. And if it was in Utah, it looks exactly like where the deer in Utah would just be a mecca. And I spent two days in there and literally saw about five deer. And, and then I showed up and showed Jet Giant within what? No, I’m just tell go ahead Josh. Six minutes John. I, I was too busy trying to hold down the tent to survive that storm, but there was a storm that moved in. So I, I went in and just went to the desert, you know? And I know Josh is on the mountain. That’s your home. Yeah. So I’m like, I’m gonna go to the desert. You’re the desert. Not the window of the truck. I video a gorgeous whatever, hundred nineties buck. And I’m like, I don’t know what Josh is doing. He’s ready to go home, but here’s a buck. Maybe we wanna hunt. I was so stoked. ’cause I saw a 3.2. I was so excited. He was Can’t wait time. Tell Jason self service. He’s just, yeah. Anyway, I’m like, did you get all his text messages? No. Well look at this. This a good one. He’s like, I’m so just, anyway, but it was just, it was luck on my part and going to a different part of the unit.
00:10:24:21 –> 00:11:18:22
And I think, like you’re talking about the country you were in is the most gorgeous, amazing deer country there is. And I’m grateful you spent time there. So I, ’cause I didn’t have to. Yeah. You know what I mean? And that’s part of it is, is, is as much as the good country is in a unit, where’s all the bad country? W what’s not what’s doesn’t have deer in it. I wanna know that. So I don’t ever have to go there. And that Xed off, what, 65% of the unit? Yeah. We wrote, we wrote it off. And, and there’ll be a giant there. I mean Oh yeah. Somebody will kill a big dealer. Oh, there is. And I, and I guarantee you there is, but, and it’s big country and I couldn’t see all of it, you know, but, but once we’ve unlocked a little bit of, of the piece of the puzzle Yeah. That’s where all the, and the locals are like, oh, what are you doing here? Yeah. I don’t think they liked it. They didn’t like it. I didn’t like it. We told you to go high. Yeah. Like why, why, what, what, how, how do you know? What are you doing here? Yeah. You know what I mean? And so anyway, but no, and nobody teaches you that.
00:11:18:22 –> 00:12:21:01
That’s the one thing I think member draw our member draw experiences a little bit different where these tags are the tough tags to draw. People are willing to share info. Yeah. The stuff that they’re gonna hunt year after year, the general stuff, whatever, that type of tag, a little bit more reserved with the info because they’re not gonna be hunting it all the time. Right. And that’s a natural, we all expect that. But I think part of it, for me, like hunting a new unit is like, I want to get that paper map first. And we have a map center on our website, epic outdoors.com. We have the map center. I wanna see it like, I gotta wrap my arms. I’m old school, John, you’ve seen my map, my map drawers, several filing comments. Disgusting, disgusting amount of maps. Yeah. And, and I told Jana, keep that. ’cause I, I can say I, I had, I ledger a journal my whole life. Yeah. ’cause there’s a lot of notes on there, you know what I mean? And places I’ve been, and that’s my journal. And your kids will be selling the notes off that. I said, yeah, I’ll roll over my grave if those maps leave our family. So anyway, but I’m still attached to that. I’m old school. I like to grab that paper map.
00:12:21:02 –> 00:13:33:03
And then like Josh says, using, let’s call it Onyx, whatever base maps, whatever you use, go hunt as a mapping system. But you can, you know, you learn how to use it. Like what is, what is that? It’s one thing to have it, it’s another thing to know what layers. There’s different layers. So there’s options. You go on to Onyx, for example. I’m, I’m not pushing Onyx. Nobody’s paying us for this stuff. But, and, and so anyway, whatever system you use, there’s, there’s layers and you can add and subtract ’em, right? You can add the units like, like Wyoming. You can say, I want all the deer units, I want all the elk units, or I want the sheep units. And they don’t all overlay at the same time. And so you wanna overlay, if you’re going deer hunting, overlay them deer units. Okay. Got that done. Then go through and they’ve got different access points. The trails trail access. Yes. Programs like, like in Idaho or whatever, there’s, there’s those overlays as well. Then there’s burn overlays and, and it charts the years of the burn and different things. And that’ll teach you, you know, this was burned last year. This was burned within the last three years. This could be an amazing burn. Like, I need to go check that. Or this was a 20-year-old burn or, or whatever. And so anyway, I like to just familiarize myself with that. Look at it.
00:13:33:19 –> 00:14:34:27
And, and, but, but it’s one thing to have the mapping, but it’s another thing to know what it’s saying, what it’s telling you. You know what I mean? Yeah. Well, and, and like you were saying, having that paper map, it, it’s kind of the same way, like I was saying, it’s turning it to a topo view. When you’re sitting here on your phone, you can see 5.7 inches of a unit at a time. And when you lay out the whole map, it’s almost like when you get there in person and you can actually comprehend scale better. Yeah. I feel like, and size and shape, looking at a paper map still has a lot of value to it. It gives you just a different eye for that area. Well there’s a lost art to reading maps. Yeah. Like my kids, you know, the only thing they know is their phone. The only thing, the only maps. And they live by on Onyx based system and they look at it and they always use to the aerial view. Yep. I’m like, and you can’t, they don’t even know how to Interesting. They don’t even comprehend the top of you. And I’m always in the top of view. And you can’t tell, you can’t, you can’t see on an aerial. Is that a canyon or is that a ridge? I can’t, you can’t, can’t tell. I can’t see it. I can’t see it. Yep.
00:14:35:04 –> 00:15:30:05
I mean, you can kind of, and supposedly with some of the 3D options and here and whatnot, you can, there’s a hybrid. You could throw some lines. I do hybrid most of the time. Do you? And that does help. Yeah. That’s what I do too. But I love, but, but I’m old school, so I’m, I’m usually on the topo and I’m looking at the topo and of course lines that are close together, steep, far apart or flat, flatter country and Yeah. And then the springs and mountaintops and all valleys and all of these things. I, I can just read it because I was taught to read it when I was a little kid. And that was a long, long time ago. And you know what I mean, like the layers, like you’re talking, you know, it seems like most of us and just me anyway, when I think about, I draw a unit, the first thing I go look for is like springs and water. You know, first thing just because it’s a, I’m used to hunting desert ish type terrain. And that’s what things are thirsty. Well, when you go to hunt third season in Colorado, you probably don’t need to worry too much about where the springs are. I never have looked for a spring. You probably need to have your migration layer on, you know, and that might be obvious on the migration layer. Yeah.
00:15:30:12 –> 00:16:28:25
Now what if you don’t even know that layer’s available. There’s a lot of guys listening to this, don’t even know it’s available. And there’s a winter range you can throw on milder winter range for third and fourth season, second, third, and fourth season. That’s pretty important. Yeah. That’s telling you where to go. And you can say, okay, here’s the probably the lowest they’re gonna be, here’s the direction they’re gonna be coming from. So if you get down and say there hasn’t been a snow storm that’s pushed ’em down or something, then you can work your way back up. But it’s probably wise to throw that on. And what do you mean, probably wise that first, you know, that in and of itself has killed a freaking ton of deer in Colorado. Yeah. They don’t have the migration layer like in Utah. That I know of. No, no, no. There’s, there’s not, not every state has it. And you, you, you know it ’cause you’re a biologist. Why don’t you guys give that up? That’s ours. I think because a lot of it, they don’t, you know of it. A lot of it’s, there’s g whiz they kind of move through here, but most of it, you know, they’re still building that layer through GPS stuff. It wouldn’t surprise me if it’s, it’s all gonna come out at some point It will, but will come out. But, and I, and it’s, and it’s not top secret information.
00:16:28:25 –> 00:17:37:01
This comes through the racks and boards and in packets and Oh yeah. And it’s available. It’s just not as refined as Colorado is pretty darn refined. And that is a huge help in Colorado. That is, you don’t get that on a paper map. Yeah. We used to draw it on, you go to Colorado’s website and 1400 layers deep, you finally find the migrations. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. Of whatever animal you’ve clicked on. And then we used to manually Chris, I mean John, Chris and I, you manually draw ’em on paper maps, all the migration. That’s the first year I went over there. I, I got, I printed out the map, but I put in on the, in the, in the computer, all the migration routes by hand. Printed it out and, and without even talking to anybody, you are kind of ready to go. Yeah. Yeah. Like that, that in and of itself, you’re ready to go ev And you could do summer ranges. So if you’re archery hunting or muzzle or hunting, great. There’s summer ranges. Okay. Which yeah. Naturally go high. Right. But there are places that are, have more congregation than others. And those are on there. So the layers be familiar with the layers. Every state has different layers. Yeah, they do. I mean some Nevada has a guzzler layer probably go see the guzzlers. ’cause Nevada’s a dry state and deer like water.
00:17:38:04 –> 00:18:39:04
Having said that, Utah doesn’t have that land. No. They kind of don’t want you to know anyway. No. You know, but just to try, help protect the wildlife. Wildlife and give them a little bit of a buffer so that you’re not, you know, I mean it’s not like they’re hiding anything. You can find ’em. But, but yeah, they kind of try and do that to respect day after day on Google Earth searching, all of a sudden there’s a little saucer. Yep. If it’s a saucer, it’s probably not working. Yeah, exactly. There’s some old saucers that are crap. Oh yeah. But anyway, I, so I think learn the different layers. Play around with your systems. ’cause you, you got huge tool in your hand of, of, you know, your phone and all the layers and mapping available to you. If you don’t have it turned on and tuned up, you know, you’re missing out. Help you a ton. You know what I mean? That’s what I think. Just think about your hunt in particular, what those animals are gonna be doing. Whether it’s a summertime pattern, whether it’s rutt or whether it’s winter range, something, you know, it, it’s not a blanket for all of ’em. Just try and focus in on what your hunt’s gonna be. And then you need to learn that part of it.
00:18:39:06 –> 00:19:42:29
So, so Josh, you know, brings me to the next point is, so we were hunting a unit in Nevada or gonna hunt a unit in Nevada. And you know, I said, Hey, maybe call member draw or call the biologist. And your point to me was, okay, lemme get the maps. And I’m like, okay, well I’ve already ordered ’em by the way. Here’s some maps. And you’re like, Hey, I’m gonna go home, get familiarize myself with Onyx or whatever system, Google Earth along with the maps. And then I’m gonna call. Yeah. Why did you do it that way versus just jump on the phone? Because I’ve been on the other end of it trying to describe to a guy what Mount Dutton looks like. And he’s coming from West Virginia and he’s like Mount Deton. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I, I was this Dutton Mountain there, you know, and you’re trying to explain something that looks like Lord of the Rings to someone. Yeah. You know, something out of a movie. Yeah. That they don’t, you know, someone from Florida that doesn’t, oh, we got some hills or some canyons around here. You know, and it’s like, no, this, it’s pretty unreal and Cooley. Yeah, exactly. And so I guess come after being on a biologist, a game warden side of it, it’s almost frustrating as well.
00:19:43:13 –> 00:20:45:25
I would often tell people, go get some maps, go look or go do a little bit of research first, then call me back and then call me back and then we can talk. Well, I think another thing is if a guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about, you’re giving him the three basic mountain ranges and a and a place to stay. Yeah. And honestly, you know, he can’t even absorb anymore. No, no. So you’re as a biologist, you’re holding back just saying, I could tell this guy everything. And he doesn’t even get it. He can’t even absorb it, so he’s not ready for it. But if you’re ready for it and you’re like, okay, I’ve got it. I’m thinking about this, I’m thinking about this. I see there’s a burn here, whatever. Then the biologist is like, Hey, okay. He’s ready to visit. Yeah. And even write some stuff down that you learn or come up with a few questions. Having a few questions whether you really know or whether you, they’re just a question, debate the biologist in whatever it is, you’re gonna learn something, ask him, Hey, what about this particular Kenya? Hey, I noticed this part of the unit, there’s this corner that does this. You know, look at some of those things and build some questions as well. And that’s gonna help, even if nothing else build a rapport, you can talk with them that way. Yeah.
00:20:45:25 –> 00:21:49:27
And it just makes it a little bit easier and a little bit better to do that. And, and when they’re spouting off some of these kind of things where this road goes or whatever, you’ll also have an idea. So you won’t have to write that down as much. You can say, okay, he’s talking, you know, have your map out in front of you while he’s talking to you as well. You know, even pull it up and start pulling around and looking, zooming in, whatever. Even if you don’t tell him or you don’t know, you know, be prepared when you do it. Don’t just call while you’re trying to pick your kids up from school. You know? Right. Take the time, do some research and do it. And, and you will get a better response. I can, I can guarantee you that even personally from me calling biologists from other places, game wardens, whatever, you’ll get a better response and better information. But on the other hand too, at the same time, it’s not like these biologists or these guys have a lot of hidden information that they’re going to hide from you or they have a lot of special things. Obviously they’re gonna know their units really well, but the information that they’re going to give you as fairly general type information and it’s general information that goes from year to year to year. This was one thing that I almost ran into in New Mexico.
00:21:52:10 –> 00:22:59:00
There were some changes I felt like in the habitat that didn’t cause the elk to do what they normally do eight outta 10 years. You know, you, you, you could run into a situation where, like this year on some of our elk units up here, that grass, John, you saw it, I mean knee deep and then it greened up early and then it reg greened up again. And so those elk are weather and conditions, timing changes. A whole unit can change a whole unit. You have the burn that went through there. I mean a, a giant large scale fire, 70, 80,000 acre fire completely changed that unit to where when Adam was a biologist, the information he was telling guys is completely irrelevant to what the biologist is telling guys now because those elk have completely changed their habitats and, and changed their, what they’re doing, how they use that habitat. A lot of them don’t ever leave 8,000, 9,000 feet now because the grass is so tall. Whereas in October they were all down in this sagebrush, in the mahogany, all that kind of stuff because there was, it was all just thick timber up there that they couldn’t use. No grass ever grew. Well now the grass is knee, knee deep and they can dig through the snow. They really don’t have to leave.
00:22:59:18 –> 00:24:02:23
So keep in mind those kind of situations, if you have a unit that you’ve even hunted for 20 years and there’s a large scale fire, something you probably need to do a little bit of, you’re gonna have to change up what you’re gonna be doing. But yeah, just getting that information from the biologist, that’s what I ran into in New Mexico was there was a lot of green feet up high. There was nothing to push them out. There were some bulls that just out of habit left. And you’ll, and you’ll see that there’ll be some elk that still leave and head to winter range just because in their brains and their timing, they know that they’re gonna leave. A lot of deer migrations are that way. Just there’s something in their brain that tells ’em to leave. But you could run into a situation in some areas, I’ve seen it here in Utah when I was the biologist, that a migration can get stalled if they run into say, an oak belt that’s full of acorns. They know. But some of, we don’t have any acorns. Yeah. The food source that they know. So you’ll see a, a deer, their migration route or their trails, they’ll get held up for 10 extra days, two weeks if they get there. You’ll see it on telemetry. Yeah. They’ll physically stop and they’ll just stay there for two weeks a week. They’re like, wow. Yeah. There’s acorns this year. Yeah.
00:24:02:24 –> 00:25:06:27
And people are down hunting on the desert. Where’s all the deer? They’re not here. And they don’t think to go maybe up and check that kind of stuff. So you’re really part of your scouting needs to be checking in on some of those feed conditions. Something like that, that may change. Or these early snowstorms we had here in Utah. Right, right. All of a sudden we had early, early snow and everybody’s fired up about it. Yeah. Yeah. And so anyway, those are some things that you, that unit can change from year to year. Well, and a little plug for the New Mexico biologist, I think they treated you well. Oh, a hundred percent. A hundred percent. When we talked to one or two in Nevada. And Yeah. You know, little vague. We got, we got the, the spill, you know, we did, we we got the normal bio spiel. Yeah, we did. But some biologists are, are not super passionate hunters necessarily. Right. They do the aerial, they do their job well, they do the aerial counts. They know what their game are roughly doing, but they’re not, they don’t like wake up wondering where the next giant is or Yeah. Why is this mountain range producing a little better than this mountain range? They, they know it, they just aren’t, it’s just not on the top of their head. It’s not the forefront of their mind.
00:25:06:29 –> 00:26:01:25
When I was a biologist and, and a game warden, both, there was a game warden there that would give information out that I’m just like, he would give out the basic information for all the units about one unit. They’d say, well, there’s snow, so they’re gonna be down. Well, no, it’s the same thing that’s happening now on the penguin unit. The Dutton, those elks, those elk winter at 9,000 feet. ’cause it’s a black rock. The sun burns off of those south slopes and those elks stay up there. Yeah. They actually don live in three feet of snow if they want. Yeah. They don’t go down to the valley. ’cause the, all the cold wa or air settles in the valley, it’s actually warmer. There’s this little thermal belt where it’s warmer for to stay. It’s in the middle at 8,500 feet. Well, and you’re taught, like you don’t, if you’re lost and you are scared you’re gonna die of hypothermia, be in the middle of the mountain. Yeah. Not on top. Not on the bottom. Yeah. Right. Exactly. I mean, there’s, you go to set up your camp, don’t set it. If there’s a little bit of a ridge or something, set it up on that little ridge. Don’t go down in the hole. That’s right. Or you’re gonna freeze and you’re gonna walk up 10 feet to go to the bathroom in the morning. You’re like, oh, that’s so much warmer. That’s what happens.
00:26:02:00 –> 00:27:09:17
10 feet up, you know, in the winter range. That’s what happens. And so he was telling everybody, well, you gotta go away to the valley. That’s where the all the elk are. Well no, they’re not. You know, and that’s just that. So you need to, to do that. But yeah, the, the biologist, the game warden that I talked to in Mexico was phenomenal. Yeah. Like, I don’t, I wouldn’t even have been able to know where to begin. He saved me weeks of time. Yeah. Really. With the information that he gave me, it was very beneficial. Chris, did you have something you wanted to, I’m just through all this, you see that there’s no replacement for physically being there. Right. So you can do all the pres scouting, the, the esc scouting, the calling, the biologists, calling people who’ve hunted it before. And that’s all great. And that will put you ahead. But being there in person is what really lets, you know okay, what’s going on right now? ’cause I’ve had areas here that I, I’ve hunted for 10 years and year to year the deer are in different places just because of what you’re talking about. Feed conditions change every year. Yeah. Some years there’s grass lower and they’re down low or feed lower or, or they’re up in the acorns. It just depends on the year. So you’ve, you’ve kind of, if you can go earlier to a unit, I would say go early.
00:27:09:24 –> 00:28:09:03
Yeah. And some of these units, like I love to pick on Nevada, but like when they have a drought, sometimes those very arid desert country, I mean, sometimes they’ll produce giants on good wet years and then the next year there’s not, it is not even worth the gas money to drive down there. And you can tell that by, by the, you know, spring and summer, early summer rains. Yeah. You can tell if you like, I didn’t even make a trip down there. I didn’t even go down there. I already know there’s not gonna be a big deer down there. And from all the reports. Yeah. There’s no big deer down there. And so, you know, there, you know, that changes from year to year. So if you were to call somebody that’s on you, you know, 2016 and say, Hey, you know, where did you hunt and was it good? They might send you the desert saying the biggest freaking deer in the unit or down there. I’d be down there in three seconds, you know? Yeah. Well, on a drought year, there is nothing good down there. Yep. You want to go up where they got a little bit more rain and any, even if they didn’t get rain, it’s, it’s cooler conditions, a little higher elevation and the, there was some vegetation, you know what I mean? Yeah.
00:28:09:06 –> 00:29:12:18
And it’s something you may want to consider, even if you’ve never gone on a guided hunt or had an outfitter in your life, if you wait 18 years for an elk tag, you don’t wanna go spend five days trying to learn a unit. Well, what I, what, you know, really frustrates me and I sh I wanna swear by we, I push down a podcast. So, but is when you walk away from a unit wishing you knew at the start of the hunt, but you know, at the very end of the hunt. Yeah. I, I had that Arizona elk tag a couple years ago and I went down there and I spent day after day after day, and it was a, a severe drought year. And so everything everybody was telling me was irrelevant because the elk were not in the same spots that they usually were. Yeah. And so I just pounded my head against the wall and I relied a lot on what people were telling me who had been there before. And so I wasted and they’re like, what do you mean you can’t see anything? Are you even glassing? Exactly. They’re like, it doesn’t sound like you’re in the same unit. I have never even been to that knob. Yeah. And not seen it out. Exactly. I usually glass 30 bulls off that and, and now it’s, you know, Chris Peterson’s out there hadn’t even seen a bull.
00:29:13:14 –> 00:30:30:11
So, so I, I wasted the first three quarters of the hunt Yeah. Trying to find bulls in these areas that everybody else had told me were good. And it was it different. Then finally, finally, the second to last day, you found the mother to work, finally found where the bulls were. And it was a matter of we ran outta time be because we found the bulls too late. And had we gone earlier or, or whatever and not paid so much attention to what everybody else was saying and gone and hunted differently. Might’ve worked out, but Yeah, it’s true. And and had you known that earlier and maybe 10 days of scouting, prec scouting would’ve helped you. You know what I mean? Oh yeah. But in that particular situation, however, that one is, that season is sandwiched. That’s a tough season. It was tough, but what what we’ve, what we’ve figured out toward the end, and had I on this, you have an early archery, which is a late archery prior to your hunt. Yeah. I can’t remember. Yeah, yeah. You were sandwiched in between a ar a late archery and a late rifle and in a muzz or hunt. But like you were saying, had we known what we knew at the end of the hunt, I definitely would’ve killed a bull. If I had one more day I would’ve killed a bull. Yeah.
00:30:30:25 –> 00:31:37:12
Anyway, and I don’t know if you ever get past that, honestly, when you, we all walk away from a unit going, all right, I’m ready. Yeah. Gimme another tag. Yeah. I need another 18 points, John. Yeah. And I think Josh made a good point about the 18 points or the 20 points that it takes to draw that type of tag. There’s different classes of tags, I think in Colorado. Those that didn’t, you know, never spent their points and they’ve got 15 and don’t know what to do with it. Now that’s different. But the, the guys that are spending three to five points, that’s a different type of tag than 18, 20 years and Well, and it might Oh yeah. And I think if, if you don’t have the time here in Utah, I drew a unit that’s close to home. I knew I could put in the, the time before the hunt. And so I, I did it myself and didn’t get an outfitter now somewhere else. Did Jen have any Frank French words for you during this scouting? Prec scouting time? No. No. This one, she was really supportive. It was, it was great. You guys never had any french battles. No, no, no. And, and I took the trailer up and she stayed in the trailer and we had wifi. I made sure we camped where we had wifi smart, she was happy, happy camper.
00:31:37:26 –> 00:32:46:23
So anyway, but, but back to my point, if it’s somewhere I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t be afraid to, if it’s one of those once in a lifetime type tags or, or rare, rare tags to, to hire an outfitter, just to not waste that, you know, that that type of a tag. It’s different if you’re going to Colorado and you can go over and over. I think sometimes, I don’t know, sometimes you gotta do it, do it enough that you can go into a unit and you know what you’re looking at. You know, what you’re looking at. You know, it’s hard to know. Like it’s one thing a guy can drive around in a unit if he doesn’t know what he’s looking for. He just kinda learning where the gas stations are and you know what I mean? Yeah. But you gotta know what you’re looking at. Like what a deer like, like Josh was saying, well I’m using prior past experience tells me deer like bitter brush. But there was a lot of yellow stubble and, and forage kosher type country. Yeah, yeah. You know, like a tumbleweed looking forage kosher. And there was a lot of deer in real crappy environment. Yeah. A real crappy environment. But it really, if you think about it, it was an old, I don’t know how when some of that stuff, it looked like it had been burned in the last few years. Yeah.
00:32:46:23 –> 00:33:58:19
But it, it had some pretty, and some of those little Forbes like that for deer, it’s actually more nutritious or just nutritious as, as bitter brush for ’em. So, and they can hammer that stuff and there’s no reason for ’em to touch this stuff that they normally are gonna be eating because there’s all this new fresh growth and depending on, you know, weather and moisture, things like that, that stuff could be more plentiful on some years. Well, and I’ve been hunting some country just recently and because of snow, rain, whatever, and now sun up, you know, good fun sunny conditions. There’s like green shoots of grass everywhere. Yeah. And these deer are sucking onto it hard. Yep. And so there’s just, you know, which, that may not happen on another year. Another year. It’s, you know, October dry and different. Yeah. You know, can, can be tough. And so things change. But anyway, so just, I think part of this, I’m taking away from what y’all are telling us. I’m just taking away be be willing to adapt, not just take for, I mean, past member experience is great. Biologists member experience is great and words of wisdom and whatnot. But go into it with an open mind. ’cause this is a new year, right? It’s not 2020, it’s not 2019, it’s not 2018. It’s not 2017. I wish it was 2016. You know what I mean? Yeah.
00:33:58:28 –> 00:35:08:18
And just, so I think just go into it with an open bind and be able to move and change. And I think that’s one thing I’m good at is pedal to the metal. And I’m not afraid to fill up that gas tank. And I run a truck hard to wrap my arms around the whole unit. I, I, from one end the other, got the middle of it, whatever, and then start putting the pieces together. You know what I mean? And I try to, I try to do that as fast as I can. So. So that being said, so you show up in a unit, what’s the first thing that you’re gonna do on the first day of hunting when you get there? Physically, what are you gonna do? What are you gonna look for? What’s your strategy? I don’t know. I, I mean the gas station, I need to know where the gas station is. I need to know where they sell Monster. I have Pepsi and Ice and, and then I just, I usually run hard. So I’ll, I usually have the places in mind that I wanna see top to bottom. Right. And so I go to these places first and just look at ’em, look at ’em, look at ’em, look at ’em, look at ’em. But there was some of this country prior experience. Not one person told me to look in a river bottom, but we’ve hunted river bottoms, Chris.
00:35:08:20 –> 00:36:23:06
Oh yeah. Yeah. But back in the day, we’ve hunted river bottoms and there’s always something there. And so I’m like, so I’m running through it and I’m like in the very end of it, you know, our, our first stint, I’m like, Josh, there’s river bottoms, like, and I’m driving up the main pavement and there’s doze down the river bottom. And nobody said anything about the river bottom. So I called the bio and was like, Hey, tell me about the river bottom, you know? And he kind of was caught off guard. ’cause nobody’s asking about the river bottom. But yeah, there’s some, well there’s doughs bucks, like to breed doze and, and Bucks will walk many miles. They’ll walk 10 miles overnight for, for dough. You would too. I know, I know. When we went, John, absolutely. You know, when we went to Nevada, I kind of made a plan, you know, I’d never been there. So you’d have to start somewhere, you know, and, and had a plan made, go to the three main mount ranges, whatever. I made this plan and said, okay, here’s where I’m gonna set up and here’s where I’m going to go. And what is it? A box? Mike Tyson I think says something about everybody has a plan until, wasn’t punched in voice. So go ahead. Anyway. I’ll send you say that, say that again. I didn’t, I didn’t catch what the quote was. Yeah.
00:36:23:20 –> 00:37:18:03
Like everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth, you know, and it’s Mike Tyson, if you get punched in the mouth by Mike Tyson and your plan’s probably out the window or biting your ear off or whatever. But definitely chewing on it. But that’s what I felt like, I have this great plan, all these big aspirations, I’m gonna go up there and just see all these deer. And then you get punched in the mouth and it’s like, okay, now reset. Yeah. Now I gotta do something else. And so go in with a plan. I mean, you, it’s not like all this stuff we’ve talked about hurts at all. You know, you gotta start somewhere, but you’ve also gotta realize that that may be the worst plan that you ever came up with in your life. And you just need to adjust from it. And there’s still room to do that. And try and just be optimistic. I think that was one thing that I’ve tried to do better is just say is, you know, this is all new. Take it in day to day. You never know what’s gonna be around the next corner. It may be the worst hunt you ever went on in your life. And you’re never gonna go back there again. That, that may be a reality of it.
00:37:18:08 –> 00:38:28:13
Well Josh, when you and I were gotten, got started in this unit, we’re talking about, I mean we, I I was like, had I not known, and this is the one thing I think we don’t put enough value on is history in a unit. Yeah. So when you, if you know the history, this buck was killed here. This buck was killed here, this buck was killed here. Or these x amount of giants have come from this unit. I hate this place. I think this place sucks. And I haven’t seen any deer. I’m ready to go home. If you didn’t know the history, we’d have gone home. Never went back. But we knew the histories. Yeah. Not exact locations, but you know, we’re missing something. This unit has more to offer than what we’re finding. And so we’re gonna freaking stay here and figured out like there, there’s something to this country. Yeah. I don’t know exactly what it is yet. And so far I hate it, but we’re gonna keep after it. Yeah. ’cause you know the history and we know the history. Like it’s, it’s good. What, what is our problem? And I think the more time we spent then, then things started to work out and things started to come together and you’re like, okay, okay, okay. And it’s one foot in front of the other.
00:38:29:03 –> 00:39:27:22
But if we didn’t know the history and, and that’s what keeps ’em going in some of these units that we know in the prior, you know, and we’ve killed a lot of, you know, good animals and is, well we know this buck was killed here, this buck was killed. You gotta just keep going. You gotta keep going. ’cause this unit’s amazing. We just doesn’t feel amazing today. Yeah. You know, and it enough that, you know, I spent as many days as I could there, and eventually you just have to call it quits. You have other things going on, maybe other hunts, work obligations, whatever, and you gotta come home family stuff. But I mean, I think we’re both trying to scratch out a piece in a schedule to get back there for a couple days, even if we can, you know, so the one thing I like to do too is I like to find these areas that are hard to get to. They always say, you know, it’s hunting up in some of the high country in Wyoming and you know, if you can go two year, you know, two ridges beyond the road, you’re gonna be in animals. And I found that to be true. Like, you could go just a little bit deeper than the average guy and all of a sudden you’re in game. Josh, you and I went on a hundred mile freaking trek.
00:39:27:22 –> 00:40:32:24
Thankfully it was in your machine, although it broke down the next day. It’s all good now. I don’t some of the stupid seatbelt thing. Yeah, I know. It was the seatbelt thing and it would chug, chug. Like the governor wouldn’t let you go on telling you to get buckled. Yep. Anyway, it’s completely, I think it was the six inches of dust that were inside the seatbelt component that it needed a good flush. It did. So anyway, but I, but we went on that trek, you know, and the one thing we, we were looking for a is water, but we’re, as we’re going along, we’re looking for track. Yeah. How many tracks did we see? Horse tracks really rough. Rough, right antelope. Yeah. And we knew, I mean, just the way the, the shape of the hoof, but I mean, it was just, it was brutal. And we never had to go back. We never had to go back. No. We thought, although the country we ended up accessing kind of brought it all together and it all started to make sense. Yeah. Right. So it’s good. And what else, what else were we supposed to be doing? I mean, we went and spent the morning when, the prime time when the deer started beding down, we didn’t have a buck to chase or anything like that. So it’s like, you can go back something camp and have a nap for four hours Right.
00:40:32:24 –> 00:41:38:07
Until it’s good again. Or we just jumped to the side by side and said, let’s either cross this off the list or find a gold mine. And we crossed it off the list. I’ve said this before, I, I mentioned this story and it’s embarrassing, but when I was young, you know, 21 years ago I had a client and he, and we would, in Nevada, you, you got a half hour in the morning or an hour and, and a half hour at night. And when it’s in the summertime or it’s hot and dry and miserable, there’s nothing else going on. And so we’d go back to the trailer and screw off and do whatever and, you know what I mean? And he’s like, let’s go hunting. Like let’s go hunting. I’m like, no, you don’t understand this in Nevada. This place sucks in the middle of the day. You don’t do anything in the middle of the day. We didn’t have truck cameras. Right. It’s pre, pre trochem. And finally I’m like, fine, get in the truck, let’s go. And we went and just started learning country a little bit. And I’m guiding it, but I, and I know it, I think I know it, but you don’t, there’s always something you, you don’t know everything. You never know everything. No matter how many years you’ve been in a unit. And we went into this new area and, and outside the window there was a buck track.
00:41:38:13 –> 00:42:39:17
I was just like, that’s a freaking giant. That’s a freaking giant track. This is the middle of the day. That night we set up, didn’t see anything. The next morning we set up right there, it was on a, it was a little ravine, there was a little ravine below us in a ridge we could glass off. And dude, this 34 inch, or excuse me, 31 inch nine by six comes under under us and we pile driving That came from driving around at noon just wasting gas. Yeah. And I think that’s, you know, we were looking for something tra we didn’t know what we were looking for. We were looking for a big deer. We didn’t really know. But that taught me a huge lesson. You know, just go do something even if it’s wrong. Yeah. And make sure you’re in prime times. You’re where you should be learning stuff on a ridge glass and doing whatever, but doing something where, where you feel good about in the middle of the day, just do something. Just do something. And it’s, it’s easier when, when there’s 22 hours a daylight in the middle of summer, that’s hard to spend that many days or that much time out. No, you can two or three monsters. Yeah, that’s true. And get away with it. Yeah. Because there’s enough time that your body can work through it all. Yeah.
00:42:40:08 –> 00:43:32:28
But, but when you’re into eight hours a daylight on a fourth season in Colorado, I mean, you’re gonna have time change and there’s not much time really, by the time you get out and hunt your four hours in the morning, it’s like, ooh, the sun’s already, it’s already getting low again. The shadows are starting to come out. That’s right. There’s no reason to really go back and do something, you know, if you have to move or something, that’s okay. But, but there’s, you know, there’s times in the day and times of the year where it’s easier to stay out all day and just time. Or even if you have to take a nap, have a nap while you’re out there on the hill, nothing else. Right. I mean, you’re already there, but That’s right. Yep. I like it. Yeah. I think all those things are good. So, you know, and you don’t know how to quantify what you’re looking for. For a guy that’s back east listening to the podcast, I don’t know how to tell you what we’re looking for when we’re out in the hills, but bitter brush, deer looking country. But once you do it a few times, you start to pick up on it. And what looks good to me may not look good to another guy. And maybe he finds a giant for some reason.
00:43:32:29 –> 00:44:41:16
I don’t know that, I mean, you never know why deer are where they are, especially in the rutt. I mean, all their, all they care about’s doughs, they and the doughs care about eating. And so wherever you find a bunch of dough, we keep track of where those are and then we go back and check ’em. And you know, they’ll bring in bucks from, I mean, even even we have a buddy of ours in Nevada hunting. He, I mean, over the course of the first summer, all time, all, all summertime, and the first archery muzzle and the first part of the rifle was terrible. Would never go back, never buy a landowner tag. There again, not nothing, nothing. And then all of a sudden, then I talked to him two weeks after that and he’s like, dude, this place has changed. I don’t know where these bucks are coming from. You know what I mean? Yeah. And the tempo changed, his attitude changed. And so anyway, sometimes it’s just timing. Even if you are from back east, you spend five days and during the middle of the day, you’re driving, learning country, learning country. In the morning, you’re, you’re moving, you’re, you’re checking out new things. You’re gonna learn a lot in five days. You’re gonna see where the deer are. You’re gonna pick up doze, even in the middle of the day. Sometimes you’ll see doze, you’ll, you’ll find out where they are.
00:44:41:24 –> 00:45:55:29
You’re gonna learn a ton. Well, and a lot of, I think too, talk, stop and talk to people, like, people like to visit, right? Humans like to visit, except for Chris. Chris, tell us about every time when somebody comes up on your glassy knob and starts talking to you. I don’t know. Chris won’t even acknowledge the presence. Oh, I’ll say hello. I don’t think so. I don’t, but he won’t. He won’t. But anyway, and I don’t blame him. But having said that, generally speaking, people visit you stop in camp or what, Hey, how’s things going? And some of them may lie to you, right? That’s hunting, right? But then a lot of them are like, yeah, we haven’t seen anything for X amount of days, and we’ve been here and here and here and here. And you start to get a feel. They know what they’re talking about. They have good glass and they’re not seeing anything. I, and I haven’t seen anything for two days here. I’m taking off. Yeah. I’m not, I’m not. And so visiting, you know, Josh is good. He’s a people person. I, I hate it. I hate it. I, I put on my mask, I double mask up. I look like a liberal. I go in and grab every, you know, gas pump and walk in and put my shades on. And I, I don’t, I’m not that guy, but, but I always tell Josh, Josh, go talk to them.
00:45:55:29 –> 00:46:54:07
Looks like, but you, you never know what information you can get from a cowboy on a horse following three cows through the middle of the desert. I mean, if nothing else’s. Kind of same with a biologist. Ask him, Hey, do you know where this road goes? Or just whatever. And one little conversation leads to another, what are you doing here? You know, I saw a buck up there and some of it may not be anything. There’s no BS here until January and wasting your time. But those are, those guys have probably better knowledge of some areas than an outfitter. I mean, they’re out there all summer, all winter, all you know, they’re out there with their cows. Whatever. You never, you never know what, what information you can get from someone to just check something off or they can tell you how to access an area. You know, that was part of the reason we were trying to figure out those roads that day was like, this is an area we want to figure out. It’s landlocked by private on this end. You can’t get into it. And to just look at it on a map, you could be like, oh yeah, it’s, you know, it’s not worth getting into. And you can zoom in and zoom in and zoom in and zoom in on Onyx all you want or whatever, Google Earth. And that kinda looks like a road or whatever.
00:46:54:12 –> 00:48:04:11
Just go drive it, you know? Go look at it. And, and we found a way that we figured was totally impossible to get around. Yeah. It was like six hours long to get in there, but, but at least we knew, hey, you know, scared for gas, scared for locked gates. Stopping every now and then counting Uncrustables. See how many we have left. We’re two for Josh, one for me. Okay. Two for me, one for Josh. We’re gonna have to share this last one. I get the jelly, you get the peanut butter. And, and what was nerve wracking? It’s like, are do we, if we have to turn around, we won’t make it. Yeah. We got to that point. We seriously stopped and, and it was like, okay, it’s closer to go this way, but we don’t know what we’re gonna find this way. And we got even got down to the point of, Hey, even if we are this way, it’s closer to walk back to the truck. Yeah. And it wasn’t, and it wasn’t when we got to the main road and we drove for like 30 minutes at 30 miles an hour. And I’m like, yeah, we weren’t walking back to the truck. Right. Absolutely. And I was scared the whole time, but no, you know, you just kind of have to do that. And, and by doing that we, we learned a lot. Yeah. We learned a lot. So anyway. Yeah.
00:48:04:16 –> 00:49:07:03
I just think, I think talk to people. People are willing to, you know, and worst case scenario, they do what Chris does and shuns you or whatever makes you feel bad, go to the next guy. He’ll be nice to you. And well, and I think in, in Colorado’s a good example, it looks like, let’s say you’re hunting deer. Looks like you’ve, in your mind, everyone’s hunting deer, but half of ’em are hunting elk. Yes. And they’re willing to spill information. Oh. You know, or vice versa. Vice versa. If you know we’re a cow where you saw a cow elk, they’re gonna tell you where’re and then they love you 35 inch, eight by eight triple a guard to pipe fast. What were you gonna say, Chris? Well, I was just gonna say, in my defense, there is no defense, Chris. Sometimes I like to go just figure it out on my own. And yeah. Part of that is, how many times have you gone out and somebody’s told you something and have you wasted three days Cho chasing a ghosts? I know, right? Right. So there’s the opposite side to all this. Or, or you spend three days and then you find this three by four and realize their giant was a three by four. Right. So take what other people tell you with a grain of salt. Yeah. But you gotta, but you gotta learn how to read people. Yeah, yeah. Yep.
00:49:07:18 –> 00:50:18:22
The guy’s got swirls a 95 with BT X’s. He’s gonna lie to me. He is gonna lie to me. So do exactly the opposite. But the guy at the, and he’s there glassing for a reason. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and that’s how, you know, I had to go run into town just to get some coolant before it was the day before you got there, you know, just from my side by side. And I didn’t know what, what was that? It was low. You have a, why would a, why would a bike be low on coolant? I have no idea. I was just, I literally, this bike needs to go, I literally opened it up, don’t a seatbelt. I opened it up, I opened it up to knock the air filter out so it could breathe and you saw it and I was just like, I was like, oh, it’s just kind of low, you know? So I just didn’t want to be stuck out there 40 miles. Okay. This is a brand new bike, John. It’s a brand new bike. Oh. It’s, they never trust other people’s stuff off brand Kawasaki. Not, not a lot. It’s a Kawasaki. Yeah. But my wife taught me that kaki. Oh, her brothers Kawasaki. They’re not all sucky. Yeah. But anyway, but just even then, I just went in and, and the guy, well what are you, you know, where are you from?
00:50:18:22 –> 00:51:26:17
And I told him, well, what the heck you doing here? And, and he told me. And it was kinda like what Chris is saying, well go up there to such and such a peak go on Horse Mountain up there. I saw a big buck this summer, you know, and kinda like, okay, I’m trying to gauge, you know, that guy. They did not go. Yeah, you’ve never been Horse Mountain since 1983 when you graduated high school. That’s the last time you were at Horse Mountain. I could tell. ’cause you couldn’t even get on a horse to get up to Horse Mountain. And so you have to take it for what it’s worth. But, but at least, you know, you could, there could be something to it. I I guess gauge it on how much time you’ve got to burn. Exactly. If you have something better to go on, well maybe go on something better. But yeah, sometimes it’s worth chasing, so, oh, it is. I, yeah, anyway, you just take it and you never know what is gonna be the key to unlock something. But a lot of it could be false, but, well, there’s a lot. I mean, I, we got even more things to talk about, but let’s call Bronson real quick. Let’s just see if he’s available in service. He’s learning new units left and right. I think he’s a bit frustrated some days.
00:51:27:05 –> 00:52:47:21
Like we all get, let’s just see what he does to learn a new unit, see what he has to say. Hello. Hey, you’re in the wind, you’re on the, you’re on, are you on horse mountain? It sounds windy, but I’m in somewhere where there’s lots of sage brush rocks. Well, we were talking the, the, the Chris Chris kind of made us do this podcast on how to learn new units. And since you’ve learned a few of them and they get to be frustrating at times and, and we’ve talked about our frustrations, learning new units, what steps are you going through up there to learn some stuff? There’s a lot of trial and error. Like wonder where this two track goes, oh, it went for two miles and did end at a lava flow. Now I gotta turn right around and turn around and go right back. There’s a lot of that. You’re gonna replace ball joints every other day. Yeah, I think of that every day. I’m like, what? Wonder, what’s, wonder what the next thing to go wrong? My truck’s gonna be, but you know, I just, you got the extended warranty. You got the extended warranty. Yeah, I got that. But I don’t know, there’s probably stuff gonna happen that is not covered by that. But anyway, you can’t think about that.
00:52:47:21 –> 00:54:05:10
You just gotta drive it and go, do you ever think about what the price of gas or you just keep filling out No many times as you can. Yeah, I like a full tank. So I just top it off every night and you know, what do you do? I mean, what do you do? It’s, well, we’ve talked, we’ve talked about onyx and learning how to use it and those base maps or whatever you use, learning all the layers, the burns, grab your paper maps from, from the epic map center and then calling the biles co member draw and then physically seeing the units and, and, and reading the country desert versus high, you know, high country, all the migrations. And, and then what are you looking for right now? You’re in thick age, like how do you know you’re in good country or bad country and, and what do, what are you doing to learn some of the crazy country you’re in? You know, well this time of year we’re in late October and we just got done crushing there’s, you know, to the north of here, 10, 20 miles. They got 18 to 24 inches of snow. So what we’re an I’m anticipating is that that’s enough to start having more deer show up in some of the high desert areas where I’m at now. Because to go hunt the high country, a you can’t hardly get to some of that country anymore.
00:54:06:24 –> 00:55:19:16
So I’m just, I’m waiting in hunting areas where deer should be showing up. So it’s kind of that transition period to their winter ranges. And it’s, yeah, some places I’m seeing tons of deer and some, there’s none showing up here, even within the same unit and the same elevational plane. So that’s probably a lot of like, local knowledge would’ve saved me some of that. But hey, the way I look about it, I’m one corner in the road from staring at a buck that’s gonna make me jump out, grab my gun and, and all of a sudden I’m calling you guys with a little bit different story. And that’s, that’s honestly what we’re doing right now. But yeah, so a lot of historical data from talking to biologists and other hunters where deer, where deer show up to, and this may be, can translate to Colorado on that too, with some of their coverages that they have on the maps that we sell and things like that of where’s your milder concentration area and critical winter ranges and things like that. And if you’re there at the right time that all the environmental factors have come into play to make the deer want and go and be there, then you’re probably gonna be in a pretty decent spot. Now if it’s too hot, too dry and all that, you’re probably, you know, barking up the wrong tree.
00:55:20:06 –> 00:56:26:23
So, but I’m, I’m hunting the last five days here and of this season, five or six days in areas that are, you know, high, high, you know, lava, rock fields, sage, sage and bitter brush. It’s endless glassing. I mean, you just can’t glass like a hundred miles, like a hundred miles. You just can’t glass at all. So you gotta, you’ve gotta kind of go faster than I’m normally going. Like if I was in this area and I knew a buck was summering and living here, we would sit there from daylight till 10 in the morning and glass and then, alright, we’ll be back in the morning or the evening. This just not, I, you don’t have enough time to do all that in this country to hit it that, that strong detailed, you know. Yeah, no you don’t. You gotta, you gotta move country find where there aren’t and where they are and where they are. You know, Idaho is a little bit like northern Nevada and places like, I’ve seen a lot of, a lot of bug nose and dos curling dose already. He’s early as the 2020 1st of October and the last four or five days. So that’s a good sign. It’s just, you know, I’ve gotta see if buck up where shooting so well’s, let’s just say maybe you do finish up, up there.
00:56:26:28 –> 00:57:28:28
I wonder if you could, would you maybe wanna swing down through Nevada for a couple days and just use your glass? Josh needs help. Josh wants help. Awesome. Possibly possible. You finish up in the next 24 to 48 hours. Josh needs help. You, you guys gotta realize by the time I finish up here, I’ve been gone for 13 days up here. So like, like no, you’re coming back, you’ll coming to Southern Utah, we’ll get 15% outta your day out of you then, is what you’re saying. I do that, I do have to go the office to make sure you guys haven’t packed my stuff up and my name plates still on my desk and all that. No, nobody wants your desk boss. That that work stays right there. Okay. So are you guys on the way to Nevada? I thought you guys we’re just trying to, in the truck trying, trying to decide, trying to bolster up the, trying to bolster When does a guy, when does a guy go and how, and you, you only have so much energy in your soul and you wanna make sure, this is what I run up against is, let’s say there’s a, let’s say Bronson, there’s a lot of these in Nevada.
00:57:29:03 –> 00:58:44:28
You got October 5th to November 5th, whatever, you can burn up all the energy in your soul the first 10 days when really the last 10 days are the best if you don’t have a buck Prec scouted. Yes, that’s right. And so, you know, and and same thing with the Utah general. We have some big bucks occasionally here you’ve got a, you know, an X amount of season, let’s call it a nine day season. You can burn up all the energy in your soul and the last day’s the best day and, and you’re freaking done. You’re spent and done and then, and then you’re supposed to, after you’re spent, you’re then supposed to go and give it your all in Nevada for another four or five days. And then you’re spent, and then you’re supposed to drive to Colorado and give it your all for another nine days, second, third and fourth and turn around and have the patients to take your kids. That’s, I’ve got kids, wives, children, physical, you should say the word wife, not wife Wife, I mean wife. We live in Utah, but it is a wife, just a wife. One wife, ah wife. So, so yeah, just trying to get a lucky break, you know, that’s basically it. You’re seeing good numbers of deer. I think in parts of the unit we’re seeing, I’m seeing the first deer that are showing up into this lower elevation maybe just today.
00:58:45:16 –> 00:59:52:06
And you know, it did have a crushing rain for about 48 hours up here. So it was really not a couple of days that was you, you know, good migration. So they’re coming, you could, they’re coming only stay on good roads. You couldn’t get off the main good gravel roads and all that for a couple days. It was just sloppy and it’s, you know, it’s gonna gradually get better from that standpoint. We’re out in the middle of it right now. I’m out in the middle of it. Is there, is there any orange left on the truck? Oh yeah, there’s plenty but there’s plenty of brown over it. Yeah, I gave it there more. You got in my truck the other day when we went, went to lunch and you’re like, oh geez, this one’s been worked. I just, I gave up on keeping the paint, you know? Yeah. And there’s more, there’s more, there’s more mud every road. Yeah. It’s, you know, so, well what I think’s interesting is that country you’re in, there’s a lot of country that there’s not a single deer in in five miles. There’s not even a single deer. And why does that happen? It doesn’t look any different than, than it doesn’t look a whole lot different. Yeah. I was up here this week, my boy had an elk tag. He drew an elk tag and you know, so we’re somewhat overlapping in areas.
00:59:52:12 –> 01:01:04:03
I mean, in all honesty, we could suit either, either, either or where we were hunting either elk or deer. But we were seeing way more deer there than we were elk. And, and I don’t, it’s just what, whatever reason we did, you know, he had a four day weekend basically to find him a bull and kill one and he drove up with a buddy and his buddy the first time I’ve given him keys to say drive seven hours to another day in a nice good truck with 30 sevens on there. Yeah. He brought, he brought my CR two, he brought, oh, he brought the CR two. I thought he had the power wagon. Okay, well I, I pulled it up here with the trailer and side by side just so it had a little bit and he, so we brought it up and I knew with this storm coming, there was gonna be two days if the four were not gonna be good. So first day, nothing, second day so we could find an out today. And, and you know, we got a big storm coming and just luckily I glassed up these two bulls and they were batted like mule deer. And anyway, we got in on ’em and it was windy and, and I said, well the one’s broken up. And he had about three or 400 feet of Bain time wrapped around his both bases of his antlers.
01:01:04:09 –> 01:02:03:11
The one Bullhead, it was mess. We know where we know where he summered. Yeah. I don’t know where he came from either north or south, about 20 or 30 miles, so is where I know, geez. Because that’s the nearest agriculture areas that he could have come from. But anyway, but the other bull was not broke up at all. And I said, well, you know, you know, if you might wanna get over here, I found some milk and he was crapping ’cause he hadn’t seen one. And as soon as he said, he says, oh yeah, I’m gonna shoot that thing. And it was like three or four o’clock on the end of the second evening and I’m like, yeah, you probably are, because the next two days are not gonna be good anyway. It was, it was fun. But to your point, yeah, you know, you can see either, but a lot of it doesn’t look a whole lot different then, then everything else. But for whatever reason, you know, the locals up here and, and that just have known where stuff happens and where stuff doesn’t happen as much and you know, you just try to glen as much of that information for as many people as you can talk to. And then you gotta just get out and ground through it for yourself.
01:02:03:12 –> 01:03:09:29
And then every year up here on some of these units that have some of these migrations go on is a little bit different plus or minus five to probably 15 days on whether it has some years, it doesn’t even gets good by the 31st. Yeah. Other years, you know, it, it does. And so hopefully we got a few good days left at the end of the week. We’ll see. Well if you’re like us when you learn new units right or at the very end of it, you’re like, all right, let me have a do over the last 10 days and I’ll do some that I, I, I think that almost every time and then it’s hard to draw, get attacked for the same exact area again as a problem. Like I’ve had several that if I could go back and redo Wyoming out come to mind, you know, some others that if I could learn, have the knowledge that I learned on that hunt by the time the hunt’s over and just redo it, I think I’d be a lot more effective. But yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s what we’re doing. Just trying to gain it. And in the meantime, sometime you get a lucky break when you’re just figuring something out. You gotta drive. Okay. Well if you bust a ball joint, you’ve got, you’ve got your inReach and the SOS button. Yeah. I hope I don’t have to use it. Yep.
01:03:10:08 –> 01:04:23:22
I’m you in the middle of nowhere, so. Yeah, I am. Alright. On a high windy ridge. Cold north wind today, here today are completely different after that storm got outta here. It feels cold. Yeah. But it’s, it’s gonna get good’s what you’re for. Hope’s gonna get good. Gonna get good. All right. All right. We’ll let you get back out there. Okay. Good luck. Okay. All talk to you later. Well, one another thing I was gonna say is when, when you’re using your GPS system, whatever it is, let’s call it onyx, whatever your old standard GPS, don’t be afraid to hit waypoints. I’m all the time I’m pivoting this thing and figuring out, okay, that knob I wish I was glassing on. Maybe tomorrow morning I’d glass on it and I’d find it on the topo version, see the ridge coming out, mark it and hit it with a pair of binos, you know, the, the little waypoint the way they do now, customize ’em. And then I, we, Josh and I always were hitting and John Chris the tracking and we’re always tracking our way out. So like at four in the morning, I’m following that track. I don’t have to remember all the different turns. It’s not my backyard. I can get there. I’ll be on that glassing knob at the crack at daylight, not after I can see it. And I hike up on it and now I’m past prime time.
01:04:24:00 –> 01:05:32:05
So I think don’t be afraid to mark things and then I’m deleting things if it, if I turns out to suck, I’m deleting it so it doesn’t clog me up and you know what I mean, cause me to. So just use it often if you see a deer sometimes, like I’m even, I was up in Wyoming, I’m marking where I’m seeing deer and then you can always look at the date on the waypoint and I mark it as a deer. And then you can look at the date and say, I obviously saw deer at this point in time and da da da crossing this road in the desert. What’s he doing out in the desert in October 15th? You know what I mean? Yep. Which happened. And so anyway, there’s just some things like that I think don’t be afraid to, it’s your onyx, it’s yours. And, and utilize the crap out of it and market, market, market and constantly be thinking where you’re gonna be glassing, middle of the day, Josh, nothing’s going on or Chris, nothing’s going on. You’re driving around, you’re looking where you’re gonna be at primetime. So you’re not wasting time at primetime. You know, one thing I do that dovetails with what you’re saying about marking is I’ll take my laptop and at night I’ll, I’ll double check with like the points that I’ve marked with Google Earth.
01:05:32:15 –> 01:06:32:01
And so I’ll, I’ll look and I’ll say, okay, there’s this area that I want a glass, I can’t see it very well from where I am now and there’s not enough time to get anywhere. I’ll look and try to find glassing knobs, mark those, then go into Google Earth and you know, do the ground view. See if I can really see the area from that point. If I can’t, you know, I might mark three on the, on the ridge and then decide okay, that, you know, that specific point. I can see that area that I want to. And I’ve gone to those points off Google Earth without ever have seen them in the dark. Yeah. And sit there and daylight comes up and you’re like, yeah, Google Earth was right. That’s pretty legit. Yeah. Because you can point it, you can get down on the ground on Google Earth and at least tell what you can see or what you can’t. ’cause there might be another hill that’s blocking, you know, the area you wanted to glass. And you can tell that from Google Earth at night, there’s so much more to it. There’s wallows, you can see an elk wallow, you know, middle of October that’s gonna do you no good ’cause they’re not gonna use it. But it would be great for an early archery hunt or whatever.
01:06:32:06 –> 01:07:46:29
And so there’s just, there’s always taking in data when you’re in a unit on and then utilizing what will help you for that particular hunt and that particular species. So I don’t know how else you quantify it. There’s one other thing we kind of glossed over a little bit. We talked a lot about talking to the biologist and then we talked about member experience program for those that are either new listeners or, or not members. The, the member experience program. Basically when, if you’re a member of Epic Outdoors and for a hundred bucks a year you get all of our services and the magazine and you can call and talk to us about specific units anytime. But also that member experience list is built for, if you draw a tag, you call in, tell us you drew the tag, and then we’ll send you a list of other guys who’ve hunted it in the past. And those units that take, you know, five to to 30 years, usually people will give you tons and tons of great information on that. I used it in my New Mexico hunt called people and, and I mean they gave me water holes. This is where I killed my bull type thing. Yeah. And, and I, you frequently hear that and so that service alone is, is worth your a hundred dollars if you draw a tag. Yeah.
01:07:47:00 –> 01:08:47:28
And I can flat out tell you, you can be a biologist a game more than whatever all day long over a unit, but really until you’ve put your feet on the ground and you’ve actually hunted it, that that, that information is just as valuable as what a, a biologist can tell you. ’cause a lot of times they don’t get the chance to hunt their units. And you, you look at it a lot different. And one of the things I always try to do when I was a biologist was to try and get a tag for that unit to hunt it for something, you know, just so that I could say, okay, I’ve actually hunted this because it is a little bit different when you’re trying to hunt something as to when you’re just managing, when you’re doing an aerial survey in December and you’re like, there’s a bunch of deer. Yeah. But when it, but when you’re in the field in October, you can, you can understand what’s, what the hunters are crying about. Yeah. And, and my experience is from a sheep unit is, you know, in a helicopter in December and I’m in a helicopter in December and you’re trying to hunt it in September, you know. Yeah. And, and there’s a big difference there. Well some of those units you were over, those elk aren’t even in that unit in September. Right, exactly. You know what I mean?
01:08:47:28 –> 01:09:58:00
And then all of a sudden maybe they winter there. So yeah, having, having talking to another hunter, even if it was a completely different year, just having their perspective and what they learned is very valuable. So I’d definitely use that as a tool. Don’t be, don’t be scared. Go out and do stuff. It’s better to be in the field. So go out and do stuff and, and learn and just start doing it. If you haven’t been doing it, if you are doing it, you know what we’re talking about. Grab your maps, figure out how to use the, the tools that you do have. Use ’em to the best of your ability. Epic maps, Onyx base maps, Google Earth, whatever. Use member experience programs. Talk to biologists, game wardens, talk to people in the field even if they don’t wanna talk to you, Chris. And then you’ve gotta wrap your arms around the unit. Learn the entire unit inside. Now I try to drive every freaking road, even if it’s half a road and whatever. That’s what trucks are for. And four-wheelers and side-by-sides. And don’t be afraid to take extra gear. Sometimes I throw backpacking equipment in and it never gets used multiple times. And sometimes I’m glad I brought an extra four-wheeler. Do I need a four-wheeler? No, but it’s good to have one. Maybe you do.
01:09:58:00 –> 01:11:01:09
Maybe that’s the one thing I a lot, a lot of times I’ll put a four-wheeler on one end of a ridge, drive around to the other end and hike the top back to the bike and then drive around to my truck, load it in and do it again. So I’m not covering the same country twice. I do a lot of that. I don’t know when I’m gonna need it. But sometimes you want it. Right? And so just have it available. Just don’t, don’t be lazy. Load the freaking bike, don’t be cheap. Put a lot of gas in your truck and get after it. You know what I mean? It only comes one time a year is what we think about all year round. Figure out what, you know, wrap your arms around the unit and then, you know, just talk to a lot of people and figure out what looks dear to you. Elk country, antelope, country, whatever. And then just start hauling in and and figuring it out and just do it. Don’t be scared. Make lot, lots of waypoints notes. Keep track of the water and glass and knobs. Who knows? You gotta use all the tools in the tool basket. Chris, you got a smile on your face. What are you, what are you thinking? I was just thinking you’ve talked more people about, I was just think I give you credit for it.
01:11:01:11 –> 01:12:12:04
I was just thinking about where in the world I’m gonna hunt next week. So you, you need a, you need a couple pointers because Chris, you’re going to a unit. Nobody knows better than you. Well but, but things change. Things change different year. And I have faith in you trying to figure out where to start. I’m not even concerned. I’m more concerned you’re gonna come out with a two 40 and I’m gonna come out with a for key. That’d be nice. I’m going to a unit I’ve never been to. I’m going to a unit I’ve never been to. My wife’s going to a unit she’s never been to. Yeah. I’m tired of learning new units. See I went. But I love learning new units. For the last two years I’ve been going to new units and so, or maybe the last three years. The last three years. Yeah. Gone to new units and yeah, I’ll have learned five new units this year. But I’ve sucked in all of them. So, so I dunno what to say. That’s how I feel about the last three years. There’s something to be said for having the confidence and going back and, and the history we’re talking about whether even if it’s your own history, your own history, the better. I know for a fact this unit can do it. I’m struggling these last few days but I’m not giving up. I know for a fact it can do it.
01:12:12:04 –> 01:13:31:12
There’s something to be said for the history. I think we underestimate the value of no one history of arias. Which is why people are so interested when there’s a big animal killed. Where was he killed? Well why don’t, Gary is dead. No, I do care. I wanna know where every big dead buck was from. And there’s history, genetic history feed, there’s conditions in that unit that created this animal. What is it? Or was that just truly one in a million never gonna happen again? And sometimes there are those, there was a couple of bucks into Mexico. I’m thinking about out. Never should have produced the animal they did and no name or unit and hasn’t hasn’t ever since. But that’s kind of rare. Usually there’s a trend going on, maybe that’s under undermanaged, underutilized whatever. And game and Fish could issue more tags than they are, but they don’t realize it. And all of a sudden we have an abnormal number of five, six, 7-year-old bucks. I don’t know, maybe it’s a burn like Josh is talking about and light winter conditions in Wyoming for four years in a row, whatever. I want to know where every big buck that died lived. And so anyway, I do care even if it’s dead. Anything else? Guys? That’s kind of a wrap up real quick. Can you think of anything else Josh? I don’t think so. You look, you look like crap. You look well around.
01:13:32:05 –> 01:14:58:16
I talked way too much is the problem. I like it. All right everybody. Well let’s throw out to our, a couple of our sponsors. One way to support us is join, get your membership and we’re gonna be announcing, you mean our giveaway? You mean our sponsors is us? Yeah, that’s one talk. Little shout out to Epic Out. Shout out to Epic. We appreciate them guys for everything. Keep going. They give me all my information. They give you all the tools in the tool bag. Keep going John. And yeah, our other sponsors that help it help. So we can, you know, put on these podcasts and give it to you for free. We’ve got Rugged Ridge outdoor gear and that’s Rugged Ridge outdoor gear gear.com. And I think on the last podcast I mentioned I used their, their bipods with the extensions. It was phenomenal on my last hunt. Loved it. And Chris even took it from me. I’m still borrowing Shameless plug, still borrowing them. I get that back. Geez. When’s you next time? Hey wait, I think there’s a couple windows though. This is what you can use brothers to never speak to each other again or borrowing stuff for long periods. I’ll give you the Rugged Ridge outdoor gear.com. Rugged ridge outdoor gear.com. Chris, they’ll sell you. Set call 5 4 1 5 2 6 18 20. I paid full price worth every penny. See I had the first generation of that bipod and John has this second generation. Yeah, yeah.
01:14:58:18 –> 01:16:08:01
And the second generation is pretty awesome. Legit. I’m gonna, I’m gonna upgrade. Are ya? That’s pretty awesome. Well, I’ll be good then. John could get his stuff back. Yeah. Hey, you know, sometimes we share around here. All right, well yeah, we do appreciate them Good people. They are. We also wanna throw a little shout out to stealth cam. Of course we sell ’em so it’s easy to promote ’em. We sell the stealth cam here at Epic Outdoors. They’re awesome. We got an ad in here for the Fusion, which is the cellular simplified. We also have many different solar panels. Josh. Yeah, we got solar panels. They were really hard to come by, right? I go, I’ve got one running on one now. It’s kind of funny. I went in and had two, do two different cell cameras, put fresh batteries in ’em, everything. I put a solar panel on one and not on the other one. The one goes to red when it gets really cold. Now it’s getting some snow. It’s about to die and then it’ll kind of revive itself a little bit and go back to green with the batteries when it gets warm. Yeah. And the solar powered one never goes red. It’s always come on full. Come on. It shows the battery on the camera is full. It shows the battery on the solar panels full. It’s gonna take pictures all winter. So it’s gonna be a good test for it.
01:16:08:02 –> 01:17:17:04
Well I was backpacking and came across a couple cellulars and I was like gonna have to, gonna have to do it. I’ve done the cellulars but I haven’t done the solar panel. Solar Oh, so panel. So you came across solar panels. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And yeah, I need ’em, if they’re service it would be the way to go because you can delete pictures from your phone so you don’t have to even worry about going in and changing the car. Change all your settings and everything. Yeah. So you can, you can literally just have it up there all year. So anyway, go check ’em out. Stealth chem.com. Gsm outdoors.com. We sell ’em if you need ’em. Give us a holler. We sold a few today actually. Did. We did, yeah. Yeah, we in stock. Okay. So yeah. Yeah, we did call us at (435) 263-0777. As for John or Josh. Or Jason or Chris. All right. And then also want us to throw a little shout out to Vortex. We appreciate them as well. We sell ’em as well. We’ve got a lot in stock. Got a huge order, actually. Just threw out a huge order and got a ton coming. Anyway, vortex. They do, they have incredible products. We sell everything that they make. I know from rifle scopes to what, what are you gonna say John? I do have to give a shout out to their VIP warranty.
01:17:17:28 –> 01:18:30:28
I just, let’s see, three weeks ago you drug some behind a four wheeler. I I had two pairs. One pair of twelves, one pair of tins that, anyway, they, they, something was wrong and we Yeah, they got drug or thrown or Yeah, kids used them. Yeah. Yeah. So one, one, the twelves, they totally fixed, sent ’em back. The tens they just replaced. Come on. Brand new, brand new. Way better than the ones I sent in. So, I mean it’s got like a carry case. They’re known for the best warranty in the business. No question about it. So free. It was fast. And it says it right here on their app v IP warranty. It was fast too. My buddy that I’m gonna Colorado with, he had a pair and he is like, they’re messed up. This was six weeks ago, right? Our hunt’s coming up and he said, should I send them in or should I wait? And I said, send him in. He sent him in and within two weeks they’re back fixed. Come on. Wow. And that’s Vortex is pretty incredible on their warranty stuff. Yeah. There’s nobody with a better warranty that I know of. So anyway, check ’em out. Vortex. They’ve got, of course this a’s talking about the razor H-D-L-H-T, we got some bunch of those. Those in, we got ’em in stock. So anything, anything you need from binocular spot and scopes. Rifle scopes, give us a holler.
01:18:31:19 –> 01:19:47:04
You can go check out their website. Vortex, I don’t know what is it? vortex.com. Yeah. And then I, I think just more than any anybody, VT vortex, optic vortex optics.com more than anybody else, they understand hunters, you know, they’re focused on hunting a lot. And like when I sent mine in, they asked, when’s your next hunt? When do you need ’em? And yeah, we’ll get ’em back before that. So by the way, we have some fury. Five thousandths. That’s the binocular, the 10 by 42 with the range finder inside a BS. Yeah. With the ballistics and it, yeah, it’s ballistics and it’s, they’re extremely hard to come by. We have member pricing on those. You probably should call us. We got a few sets in and those ones we’ve been ordered for 11 months. Yeah, something like that. So anyway, extremely hard to get products. We’ve got ’em, give us a call and we’ll sell ’em to you. Really good value on those. Oh, I mean, for, for what they are. And that, let’s call it dirt cheap, John. Yeah. Just dirt cheap. You, you want to what that bin, what that binocular does. I mean with the have not ballistics and stuff that’s, I I’m going from memory if it’s under 1500. So anyway, gives us a holler. All right. None of that about Hoyt. We love them. Hoyt bows are incredible, unbelievable best bows I’ve shot.
01:19:48:05 –> 01:21:06:13
I love my bow, so you’re not taking it from me. I don’t even wanna trade up even if it’s within a Hoyt this year. So anyway, you might check them out. Super good people, you know, based outta here in Utah. So it can’t be that bad, right? I mean, there’s certain places I’d question ’em, but I’m not, not here in Utah. All right. Anyway, that’s all I got for you. Anybody else wanna throw a shout out to anything? We do have, John did the epic outdoors.com. I think that’s a great shout out if you wanna do it again. Yeah, [email protected]. Okay. That was weird. Hey everybody. Epic outdoors.com for a hundred bucks a year. We have a monthly publication December through June, bimonthly, the remaining part of the year. ’cause we like to be in the field where we should be. And so it’s nine issues a year. Talks about all the western big game hunting. Gives you a drawing, odds, kill percentages, best units, and just everything you need to know. We, we hook you up with hunts. We’re booking agency, we hook you up with tags, hook you up with gear optics, whatever it is to be successful here in Western big game. We don’t have any aspirations to discuss fishing or up in game burnout. We do all of those things at times. Haven’t been to Africa may someday, but [email protected], we’re very focused only on Western big game. That’s all we do.
01:21:06:13 –> 01:22:17:07
That’s all we wanna do. And wanna be the best of what we do. Yeah, I think one of the biggest deals is, you know, for a hundred bucks you join, you member, you get all the benefits and you listen to us on the podcast, you ever want to just call and say, Hey, how do I do x I’ve never been to Wyoming. Where should I start? I have five points in Colorado. I’m looking between, you know, these two units. What do you think? I had both of those calls today. Yeah, yeah. And, and, and we’ll talk to you unlimited. I’m, I’m sitting here yesterday and I, I heard John take a call on a unit that he’s been to several times and he sat there and I just listened to the conversation and it’s so, you know, I’ve been to as well and I thought that guy got more than a hundred bucks, got more than a hundred dollars worth of information, even from one call. Maybe even made you slightly edgy. No. And Chris, the way I know him, giving him the throat slap stop, stop talking. No, it was, and that’s the kind of information you get. You call somebody that does That’s right. Does this for a living. And that’s right. So yeah, we don’t hold back, back in the day I was told, you don’t hold any secrets. You’re in the business.
01:22:17:19 –> 01:23:23:07
And I don’t know, we’re entitled to one or two secrets. Well, one or two, but not three. But I tell me, I tell, I help a lot of people, John, tell me I’m wrong. I freaking, but I, I also think, bear myself, I thought, you know, I’ll probably go back to that unit someday. I’m not hunting it this year, but that information is really good information. It it, it might change next year or when I go back, it might be a little bit different, you know. Well, I wanna go back to, to this sharing of info. I really appreciate it when somebody calls me back and updates me with the new info. Okay. I went there, I didn’t see Jack, but by the way, I did see a freaking giant over here. It helps so much. Right? And, and appreciate it. And I’m writing down, like I write down a guy’s name, so and so, I gave him too much info. Call him and see how him, see how he did. And I call him and, Hey, how did you do? Well, I had a guy last year that I, I was very specific on, go to this place. This is where I would go. If I had the tag, this is where I would go. Well, I end up seeing all these pictures of him. He killed a giant buck, but he never called me back.
01:23:23:16 –> 01:24:03:22
So I’m like, ah, I wish I’d like, I just wish I’d Well you wanna know, but you wanna know. And he, and you kind of deserve to know you help if you, you helped him and you’re very specific. And some, sometimes I feel like they, they owe it to you. So anyway, that’s, that’s the way I, I don’t know. I just feel like it’s, it’s a, it’s a token of appreciation to call ’em back and let ’em know how you did and that, and, you know, you, you helped me out. I went there. I didn’t see much, but I did kill this other buck. And I went over here and, or you know what? You put me spot on, dude. And I freaking killed a giant. All right everybody. That’s about it. Go out, kill something, feed the family. Make mama happy.
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